is my macbook dead?

Ok, not Apple then. Their reviews are pretty crap if you google. We have one similar locally (Stormfront). They are just salespeople, don’t know much technically & have to send everything away. Wouldn’t use personally! (Not much help now obvs)

hmmmm thats a shame.   just been researching  what i could have done if id gone down the official apple route.  went to apple site as tho i needed a repair, followed the links to sending it away to them and found myself on a page that prompted me to find out if a shop was an ‘independent repair provider’ or ‘apple authorised service provider’.  my shop appear to be the latter, and reading the bumph at the bottom then i really would have expected a better service as the techs receive apple training and are ‘backed by apple’.  not sure i could have done much else besides use this shop really, as it was the apple site that led me to them.

While it’s a bit disappointing that the messaging was off and it’s £50 wasted, it’s not outrageous.  It’s a laptop that’s over 10 years old – way outside any warranty – and someone’s spent quite a bit of time fiddling with it, and shipping it somewhere, for £50 – the labour you’ve had on it was worth more than that.

Apple themselves, if you go into an actual Apple Store – would probably have meant you didn’t have to pay the £50

ah yes, ive just clicked a diagnostics tab that only we can see. your SSD (i think) and battery are kaput,

I wonder whether only the actual Apple Store has access to that diagnostic. It’s always seemed ‘off’ that theres are diagnostics like this that aren’t available to the end user.  But I had the same when the Fusion Drive failed on an old iMac.  I couldn’t get any useful messages out of it, but the Apple Store were able to say that the spinning disc part of the drive had failed but the rest was OK.

Select are the absolute worst I would these days always travel to a proper Apple store worth the pain for the proper service.

Since Stormfront were mentioned, I’ll just pipe up that the Bristol Stormfront fixed Mrs Lex’s MBP at a fair price, with reasonable speed (it was during late 2020) when Apple quoted a price around 2/3 of the replacement cost.

it’s not outrageous.  It’s a laptop that’s over 10 years old – way outside any warranty – and someone’s spent quite a bit of time fiddling with it, and shipping it somewhere, for £50 – the labour you’ve had on it was worth more than that.

yeah not arguing with that, the issue is i suspected it was knackered (from advice on here) so didnt want to spend a single penny on diagnosing.  it was only the fact that they were certain it was software and they could fix it that made me part with £50 thinking thats not bad for a fix.  if theyd even hinted at possible hardware itd have gone straight in the bin.

Select are the absolute worst I would these days always travel to a proper Apple store worth the pain for the proper service.

dont think theres a proper apple shop in town, the apple site itself led me to these, so i think this was the best i could get for a quick confirmation of a fubarred macbook.

cheers

well ive picked it up from store.  whereas i previously mentioned they said they were doing an ENR, id misheard on the phone and it was actually E&R if that means anything to anyone.  obviously didnt work tho, and they still wouldnt refund me 😀

so…. its a scrapper.  or is it?  i thought id ring up a small local shop that do a bit of IT for us at work and ask their advice.  ive left it with them, theyre going to price up a SSD and battery and get back to me.  im interested to see how it compares to fix it vs that refurbed A1502 @b33k34 linked to on first page.

i get that the quality of a refurbed/fixed ancient macbook will still be better quality than a new chromebook say, but would i just be spending money on something that cant be updated or kept secure cos software/OS is obsolete?  not that ive struggled so far i suppose.

cheers

Rather than splashing on a large SSD, I put 250GB SSD to replace the old HD having the same message some years ago, now you can pick one up for less than £20. My intention was if it worked then I’d splash out on a larger SSD. I never got around to it as it only gets used to watch Netflix etc. Last year I had issues with unsupported browsers as they were too old to run Netflix. Then I found OSLegacy Patcher and put the last OS that was running on Intel Macs. It works well enough to watch videos, but I know I’m on borrowed time before all the browsers become unsupported.

 Last year I had issues with unsupported browsers as they were too old to run Netflix. Then I found OSLegacy Patcher and put the last OS that was running on Intel Macs. It works well enough to watch videos, but I know I’m on borrowed time before all the browsers become unsupported.

hmmm i actually hadnt considered that.  its ok a small IT shop putting in a new SSD maybe, but what do i load onto it, and will it support chrome/firefox etc?

i’ll wait to see what they can do, and if they reckon they can sort it fairly cheaply i’ll ask the question.

well theyve just rang me and confirmed apples diagnosis, dead battery (ballooning cells) and dead SSD.

theyve told me that usually theyd charge £140ish for a new battery, and around £75 for an SSD, but as we use them for work professionally, theyll just charge me for the battery and stick an SSD in from one of their refurbed machines or something, so total cost to get it back working would be £140.

sounds reasonable, but he did explain that it may only just last another 18 months or so before apple make the software unusable (monterey i think he said?).  he did explain how and why that happened but i didnt really understand it.  he was honest enough to tell me that its a fairly short term fix to give me time to sort another machine out.

he also said that he’d stick me a few free programmes on too, and that it may actually work in my favour not having an apple ID, id just be using basic software, not needing to sync anything.

the macbook lives on!  for now 😀

FWIW, I had a 2012 MBP running Chrome and a 250gb ssd it was perfect. I only updated as I needed a stable and reliable MS TEams as that wasnt being supported on the old OS.

250gb was plenty with GDrive / Dropbox..

but he did explain that it may only just last another 18 months or so before apple make the software unusable (monterey i think he said?).  he did explain how and why that happened but i didnt really understand it.

it won’t suddenly stop working, but the software has already been discontinued in the sense that there won’t be any more updates for it (so some newer apps might not work, and some websites fail to load – probably not now, but at some point in the future), and crucially no more security updates, so they’d be no protection from new malware/viruses/exploits etc.

Whether any of this is a big deal or not really depends on what you’re using it for!

he did explain that it may only just last another 18 months or so before apple make the software unusable (monterey i think he said?).

Not a brilliant explanation. Apple are not going to make anything unusable. Security update for Monterey are ceasing Nov 2024. The world will not end. Eventually (like in several years) Safari will likely stop supporting the latest security that might stop you accessing your banks website. 99% of websites will work fine. You can probably extend a bit further by using Chrome or Firefox.

he also said that he’d stick me a few free programmes on too, and that it may actually work in my favour not having an apple ID, id just be using basic software, not needing to sync anything.

Sounds legit.

Stupid forum duplicate post issues – deleted.

Whether any of this is a big deal or not really depends on what you’re using it for!

99% of websites will work fine. You can probably extend a bit further by using Chrome or Firefox.

yep, pretty much just be using these.  i never updated the mac all the years i had it as it always said there wasnt room to do so, so im happy enough to just see how long it lasts.

Sounds legit.

haha ill check what they are, but i think he just meant stuff like chrome/firefox etc.

thanks

it lives!!

just picked it up and am currently typing this on it.  £145 has got me up and running again with new SSD and battery,  for how long who knows…..

and just for my reference if i need the details again, OS is monterey and the macbook is apparently a ‘retina 13 inch early 2015’.

its taken an hour or so to find my passwords to log in to my email accounts and find out how to reverse the scrolling etc but its good to have it back.  the almost new touchscreen windows work laptop i was using just doesnt cut it 😉

i dont have an apple ID, i shant be using any of their apps, just browsing on chrome with firefox as a back up.  im a man of simple needs 🙂

thanks for all of your advice on the way to getting here.