2016-18 MacBook Pros are suffering from "Flexgate"

[I-r0k]

On 1/22/2019 at 10:54 AM, bcredeur97 said:

Keyboards, and now this.

wow. last few years has been a terrible time to buy a MacBook

 

I have a 2015 I got as a gift. literally the last "good" year. suprised they aren't going for a premium yet. If they ever do, I'll gladly give someone mine for like $3k XD

I have a late 2011 one with the MacSafe charger. Surprising it still works. A real shocker for an Apple product.

[Ashley MLP Fangirl]

5 hours ago, I-r0k said:

I have a late 2011 one with the MacSafe charger. Surprising it still works. A real shocker for an Apple product.

a 15"? those are plagued with GPU issues. I speak from experience. you can 'fix' it by forcing it to run on intel gpu only though. but that involves a bit of command line magic. 

[Thaldor]

7 hours ago, DrMacintosh said:

iFixit seems to have done some in-depth coverage of the issue

 

Well that ain't gonna have "easy" DIY fix. Probable DIY fix would be to get the display assembly appart (quite probably ton of glue behind there, because "reasons", so some heat and very possible damage to the display in the process), cut the flex-cable, strip it and solder a new one. But as said, that is as far away from easy as Apple is from open. You would need to have good quality solderiron (adjustable) and skills to solder very small solders without any shorts in a small space because there isn't probably any extra space (appart from removed glue) back there. Also that would be very much the definition of bubblegum fix, it would fix the problem but only temporary and you would have the same job ahead in about a year or even less, depending on how good work you did and how much you open and close the lid.

 

Better fix would be to get access where the flex-cable is connected to the displays circuitboard, but that would mean to dismantle the display itself which is even more work and way more changes to break the whole display. But if you were able to get access there, you could possible solder small connector instead of the flex-cable and cut a hole for it (not to the lid but the inside metal sheet covering the display) so the next time you need to change the cable (because in any case, it's now wearable part and requires changing, like the battery, thank Apple for that) you don't need to solder anything and you would have already removed the glue and fixed Apples very bad design "flaws" (dittos because I think this is very much calculated thing on Apples part).