Many users who purchased a MacBook Pro between February 2011 and May 2012 have had issues with Apple's use of a certain AMD video card. The discrete graphics have caused many users problems, and Apple has basically been silent on the issue. Finally, someone has filed a class action lawsuit against Apple, and hopefully the suit will at least bring a resolution to thousands of users who have had the issue.
The law firm of Whitfield Bryson and Mason filed the suit, and wrote on their blog today, “our firm recently filed a class-action lawsuit in a California federal court against Apple, Inc. on behalf of residents in the States of California and Florida who purchased 2011 MacBook Pro Laptops with AMD GPUs who experienced graphical distortions and system failures.”
Users in Apple’s own forums have written over 9000 responses on the issue and it has been viewed over 1.7 million times. A petition was even created at change.org that included 22,000 signatures. This is clearly an issue for a lot of people, and Apple really needs to address it publicly.
I have a personal interest in this story as my 2011 MacBook Pro suffered this issue and went into the repair depot because of it. I had to pay the $310 standard repair fee.
Besides the regular failure of these graphics cards, they appear to affect the advertised battery life of the MBP. I believe Apple advertised it as 7 hours of battery life, but that was never really realistic. Even at half brightness, running nothing but Safari, I was never able to get more than 4.5 - 5 hours of battery life. Many users in Apple’s discussion forums wrote about similar experiences and it seemed to be the graphics card that was the culprit.
If you have a 2011 MBP, stay tuned.
The law firm of Whitfield Bryson and Mason filed the suit, and wrote on their blog today, “our firm recently filed a class-action lawsuit in a California federal court against Apple, Inc. on behalf of residents in the States of California and Florida who purchased 2011 MacBook Pro Laptops with AMD GPUs who experienced graphical distortions and system failures.”
Users in Apple’s own forums have written over 9000 responses on the issue and it has been viewed over 1.7 million times. A petition was even created at change.org that included 22,000 signatures. This is clearly an issue for a lot of people, and Apple really needs to address it publicly.
I have a personal interest in this story as my 2011 MacBook Pro suffered this issue and went into the repair depot because of it. I had to pay the $310 standard repair fee.
Besides the regular failure of these graphics cards, they appear to affect the advertised battery life of the MBP. I believe Apple advertised it as 7 hours of battery life, but that was never really realistic. Even at half brightness, running nothing but Safari, I was never able to get more than 4.5 - 5 hours of battery life. Many users in Apple’s discussion forums wrote about similar experiences and it seemed to be the graphics card that was the culprit.
If you have a 2011 MBP, stay tuned.