It's not only a horror, it's idiotic and completely avoidable.
Some people say it's an upgrade, but I don't see why they couldn't upgrade and keep the other ports around, since people need those daily.
For sure I've used my 89-euro dongle a lot more than I've used the USB-C port (which is never), until I got sane again after 8 years of getting overcharged by Apple and switched to Microsoft hardware running Xfce Linux (which are both wonderful).
Why does it matter, and why is it so important to you? Does it change anything?
It was the only adapter I could buy at Juice in Florence, Italy (where I bought the laptop) that had HDMI at the time.
The laptop was EUR 1799 ($2,150), the dongle was EUR 89.
After 2-3 months the keyboard started failing. It was replaced by Apple--along with the battery which they found out was faulty, and it started failing again (missed keystrokes, registering twice) after a short while. They replace it _again_, then after 3 days the logic board dies, taking all data with it. Apple replaced it, I sold that piece of shit of a laptop for EUR 1,000, and the guy called me after 2-3 days that the logic board died again and Juice (no Apple Store in his area) would give him a new one.
That was my about 5th and last Apple laptop.
I read lots of reports of these things happening to lots of people, but not getting a lot of attention anywhere for some reason, despite the fact that those things cost $2000 and you should absolutely be able to type for more than 2-3 months without replacing the keyboard.
> Why does it matter, and why is it so important to you? Does it change anything?
Yes. Your original point was something along the lines of you being overcharged by Apple because you now had to buy an expensive dongle. I showed that the expensive dongle you were talking about wasn’t actually as expensive as it seemed, which weakens your argument somewhat.
Regarding the keyboard on your laptop, I’ve heard plenty of anecdotes of the it just stop working on people, so I’ll concede that it probably has some sort of inherent issue there. You seem to be unlucky with an extreme case of this.
When the third failure/warranty claim happens, you have a right to refuse the repair, return the item and ask for the money back (the same amount that is on the bill). So by selling to the third party, you took the loss.
And even the "third try" rule is the most lenient case for the seller here. Firstly, For mass produced devices (not with BTO models!) you generally have the right to demand a new replacement instead of waiting weeks for the repair.
And the "three tries" is actually only an upper limit (and AFAIK only explicitly stated in a few countries) - if you agree to a repair you can demand a reasonable deadline, which trumps any number of tries. So, no, you don't have to accept "repair->2 weeks->failed->another 2 weeks".
(All this under the assumption this happens in the first 6 months, when the law assumes a fault at the time of sale as a default and consumer rights are strongest)
In Europe..? I wasn't aware of that. I mentioned returning it to Apple and they said the could give you a new one at the most, but only after multiple repairs for the same problem failed.
Yes, in Europe. It happened to my brother, but with Asus (so they didn't try to talk him out of it). After third warranty claim, he took the money and got an Thinkpad.
I guess I meant that was an equivalent price for electronics.
Around 20% is normal. The USD has slipped further than I thought compared to the Euro, and prices are usually a bit higher here. There are various explanations:
> Your original point was something along the lines of you being overcharged by Apple because you now had to buy an expensive dongle. I showed that the expensive dongle you were talking about wasn’t actually as expensive as it seemed, which weakens your argument somewhat.
