The horrible truth about Apple's repeated engineering failures.
Why Hacker News recommends it
Mostly cited by critics of Apple hardware quality, and as a rabbit hole for people curious about laptop repair.
What it is
Louis Rossmann, a Macbook repair shop owner, goes through a long list of Apple hardware engineering failures, from GPU defects to keyboards and repair practices.
Recommended by 2 HN commenters across 2 different months, 2018 to 2023.
What Hacker News said
Recommends Severian · 2018-10 · on “Why Apple Eventually Lost Me and I’m Switching Back to Windows”
Louis Rossmann, a well known advocate for right-to-repair and a repair shop owner has a lot to say about Apple's build quality. [this video] His videos are a great rabbit hole to go down, if you are interested in laptop repair methods. He knows his stuff.
Recommends computerex · 2019-10 · on “Ask HN: Feasible Alternative to the MacBook Pro?”
Louis Rossmann made a video highlighting a lot of the engineering problems with Apple laptops. His whole business is about repairing Apple laptops so he has all the reasons and incentives to defend Apple and downplay their issues. [this video]
Cites kbenson · 2018-04 · on “Giving Up on the Current MacBook Pro Keyboard”
> I like the OS, and I've never found a PC laptop to come remotely close to the sweet ergonomics of those Macbooks. So, an interesting takedown[1] of Apple engineering was posted on /r/videos yesterday. I can't speak to the veracity, but there's some interesting claims there that if true would make me think twice before buying an Apple Laptop (specifically because of very long-standing issues and warranty shenanigans). There's a segment on the keyboard towards the second half as well. 1: [this video]
Cites disk0 · 2018-04 · on “The truth about Apple's engineering [video]”
First, that isn’t Louis Rossman’s voice. That’s either an employee or a paid voice actor. That's him talking, there's daily live streams of him ranting and repairing that make that obvious. I do know he has a history in audio engineering and has multiple mics he uses for different situations, it seems to me the differences I hear in the videos below come down to capture/processing differences in his live capture and edited setup: Livestream from this month [LINK] "The Truth About Apple's Engineering" [this video]
Cites jankotek · 2019-04 · on “Baked MacBook Air: A cautionary recipe”
If I recall correctly, Louis Rossmann claimed official Apple repair center baked some motherboards as well. I don't have a link to exact video, but it is probably covered here: [this video] And yes, I use Dell :)
Cites dehrmann · 2020-05 · on “2020 13-inch MacBook Pro review: The standard macOS workhorse”
It's like structures in earthquakes and crumble zones in cars. Flexing helps absorb impacts. That said, I've had issues with BGA chips and flexing, so it comes with problems, too. I couldn't find him talking about flexing, but here's Rossman's take on a lot of Apple's mistakes: [this video]
Critical bitmapbrother · 2018-04 · on “The truth about Apple's engineering [video]”
The BGA rework on those warranty serviced boards was pretty damning. they BBQ it to a point where it's only going to last 2-6 months and then fail again [this video]
Critical danmg · 2018-05 · on “I switched from iPhone to the Pixel 2: One-week report”
Take a look at what someone who repairs them on a regular basis says about Apple's quality: [this video] .