after months of rumor and innuendo, it’s funny to see
apple fess-up that that my frequent need for a new logic board wasn’t not just an “abberation”, as one of the apple techs tried to tell me when i asked if it was possible that i might have purchased a lemon instead of apple. i wonder how much of a difference the iBook Logic Board Repair Extension Program, since most of us have presumably gone through multiple go-arounds with paid applecare support. in fact, if i was being conspiratorial, i might suspect that jobs and company were waiting until a significant portion of people paid to have their logic boards replaced before rolling out a free program, since it was obvious from the beginning that the issue was widespread.

01.30.04 update: a reader sent me an email asking if i realized that the iBook logic board repair extension program would reimburse customers for any repair costs suffered, which could “…sort of [shoot] holes in the above conspiracy theory.” admittedly, there was a big unchecked assumption in my theory predicated on a number of conditions that i didn’t make entirely clear.

i assumed that the reimbursement wouldn’t include paying me back the money i paid for applecare support, which rightly or wrongly i only purchased when the ibook died the first time. i didn’t buy applecare when i originally purchased the computer, but “decided” to get it when it failed after only having it for two months, because the cost of applecare was about the same [ perhaps less, i can’t remember ] as just paying for a single repair.

i talked with apple today and while they are “researching” the issue, the answer seems to be that you will not be reimbursed if you bought applecare, even if the only reason you bought applecare was because your logic board went bad. so, had i decided to not get applecare and just pay the repair charges, i’d be getting reimbursed. but alas, i chose to fork over the $250 for the service plan that i otherwise wouldn’t have needed, but won’t get reimbursed. how lucky for them.

so my original conspiracy theory still stands, albeit slightly modified. it’s possible that someone in apple probably ran the numbers and saw that ‘x’ percentage ( eveyone i know had the first failure within the first three months ) of the logic board failures were occuring within the first three months. of those that weren’t “pre-emptively” covered by applecare, apple techs were told to to upsell people to applecare on the “it’s less than the cost of the single repair” argument [ indeed, i was told by the apple tech at the time that he couldn’t talk to me at all until i purchased applecare. and the other people that i know who had the problem all either had applcare already or decided to get it when the logic board failed ]. and now, apple gets the good p.r. of rolling out a reimbursement program, when most of the customers don’t qualify for the reimbursement.

then again, maybe it’s all just one big coincidence. uh, huh.