Comment by Grombobulous
14 hours ago
Apple absolutely does not fix bricked systems out of warranty, regardless of cause or fault. Certainly not two years removed from the warranty. They can, in very rare cases, get bricked by failed updates. It’s not totally unheard of.
“Unequivocally wrong” is highly debatable. You may feel that way but I don’t. I’m not defending anyone, I’m just providing a reality check on how things work when you buy a product from anyone.
I think the only thing framework did wrong is fail to provide a BIOS restore fallback function, which my desktop motherboard has, but not every laptop has a feature like this.
For one thing, any conclusion that a BIOS update failure is automatically Framework’s fault is a big jump to conclusions. A BIOS update has a small risk of failure with any device. Find me a motherboard manufacturer who will bail you out outside of the warranty period and I’ll do three cartwheels for you.
So you are saying if your laptop is out of warranty, they are free to do everything they want without any responsibilities ?
Like if this update bricked like thousands of out of warranty laptop, they are still free to go?
This sounds like an extension of my logic beyond my meaning. This implication is that any manufacturer can just brick devices en masse, perhaps even on purpose, with no consequence or recourse, which is not at all what I was saying.
Here's a little story to frame this a little better and help you understand my meaning: My second-to-last MacBook Pro before I quit the Apple platform was the 2016 MacBook Pro with the butterfly keyboard.
That machine had a flawed design that was never 100% fixed, and Apple swept the whole issue under the rug until media pressure intensified. They then made a warranty extension for the keyboards.
The fix did not work 100%. The underlying keyboard design was flawed. I got my MacBook Pro "fixed" under this extended warranty,
The result was a huge class action lawsuit, for which I just received my last check this year. I was not fully compensated or given a refund. What I ended up doing was unloading the laptop much earlier than my normal upgrade cycle to switch to the 2019 16" MacBook Pro (Intel) that no longer possessed this fatal design flaw.
This incident damaged Apple's brand perception with at least one customer, me.
So, I'm not saying there are zero consequences for Framework not making this right. At the same time, every company that makes products draws a line somewhere. A restaurant isn't going to compensate me for a bad meal I had a month ago. Dell isn't going to buy me a new computer because my 7 year old Inspiron is on the fritz even though I expect a device like that to last longer.
If you bring a 2016 MacBook Pro in to Apple to get the keyboard replaced under the keyboard replacement program, Apple will not do it for free. The program has expired. Even though the system cost Apple millions of dollars in a class action suit and the design is fundamentally flawed, Apple will not make it right for their customers indefinitely. They offered a limited time resolution for customers who experienced that issue.
There is not a customer expectation that all the products they buy will last forever or will be indefinitely fixed for free regardless of issue, so in practice it's a balancing act between minimizing your long-term support costs and pissing off your customer base.
To directly answer your question though, a lot of times bricking or severely handicapping products happens and companies are free to go. Ask me what happened to my second generation Google Nest thermostat. Of course, my reaction to that was to throw the thing in the trash and resolve to never buy a piece of Google hardware ever again. But I'm sure thousands of people responded by justifying an upgrade to the latest and greatest and calling that a win because shopping for something new and unboxing a package is a fun dopamine hit.
I don't think that everything I described above is what is happening with Framework in this situation. I don't think there is any indication that failed BIOS flashes are a widespread issue. It seems that the standard rectification for a bad BIOS flash is a replacement board because it is considered a rare occurrence.
Remember that, if you don't want to worry about this or any other hardware failure, you can go ahead and buy a 3-year extended warranty at time of purchase, and that sort of option is available with basically every piece of consumer technology on the market.
I would agree that it would be better for them to be able to service it for a lower cost or maybe have a BIOS recovery function built-in to the hardware, but other than that I don't see anything that deviates very far from standard industry practice and policy.