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Voiding Apple Care?
- Thread starter Mindprey
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RAM, no. Drive, yes. Whether you get away with it or not is another matter.
Mac mini (Late 2012) - Important Product Information Guide
Not necessarily. Apple could, according to the terms of the warranty, render the entire warranty void.
The Magnuson Moss Warranty Act prohibits that. Now if Apple tries to say you caused the IR receiver to fail by your HDD installation, this puts you in a bad spot trying to prove things either way... I agree. But manufacturers cannot say, "You opened the case so the warranty is void."
As usual, the question is: Where do you live? Whatever law you quote doesn't apply to 95% of the world (although it is common sense that different countries would often have similar laws).
I would interpret "user serviceable" or not as an indication how difficult an operation is or how difficult it is supposed to be. If you upgrade memory and it breaks _because it was too difficult_ you can blame Apple because it was supposed to be user-servicable, if you upgrade the hard drive and it breaks _because it was too difficult_ you can't blame Apple, and if the memory upgrade breaks because you were too clumsy, you can't blame Apple either.
You are of course correct. I should have specified in the United States.
I agree completely. Hacking around on non-user serviceable components is not without risk.
I could be wrong but I believe that mostly applies to when you decide to go to a 3rd party servicer as opposed to the manufacturer. Such as getting your car's inspection or oil changed by a Grease Monkey as opposed to your Ford dealership. Though I will be completely honest, I've never read the MMWA except for the summary in the Grease Monkey (which is why I mentioned it).
Put the drive in carefully, retain your old one at least for the duration of the AppleCare. If there's a problem, put the original back in.
Heck, I've sent them in -without- drives in them at all. My/clients data is simply not going to be exposed to service people who have no need for it.
That's when I'm sure it's the drive failing. With the price of drives, I tend to just eat the price on it anyway. The next drive you get is going to have a longer warranty than the remainder of the AppleCare anyway.
Put a new drive in, migrate the data, wipe and re-install the old one as new, and keep it. Need service, put that in, get it serviced, and you can use it to determine if the issue is the storage medium, or elsewhere, too.
Heck, I've sent them in -without- drives in them at all. My/clients data is simply not going to be exposed to service people who have no need for it.
That's when I'm sure it's the drive failing. With the price of drives, I tend to just eat the price on it anyway. The next drive you get is going to have a longer warranty than the remainder of the AppleCare anyway.
Put a new drive in, migrate the data, wipe and re-install the old one as new, and keep it. Need service, put that in, get it serviced, and you can use it to determine if the issue is the storage medium, or elsewhere, too.
Never broke mine, but that would (and is) really easy thing to do when doing a HD installation on one of these things.
I only mention this as a point of caution to anyone planning on doing this upgrade.
RAM is extremely easy to get at, they show you how to do it in the manual (basically unscrew the bottom) and will definitely not void your Applecare. The RAM that you add, however, will not be covered under Applecare and some recommend keeping the old RAM (I don't know whether there is any credibility to this but I kept mine just in case).
The hard drive is definitely more tedious to do, and may void your warranty (at least to some degree). It takes careful hands and a few special tools (namely this and these, alternatively just the Data Doubler kit) will do - what I used). Generally what I've seen is if you replace the hard drive/RAM/etc. with the original before bringing [Mac product] in to get fixed, they have no way of telling whether you opened it anyways (this is assuming you didn't wreak havoc on your way in).
I had no problems with the upgrade itself, but YMMV (careful with the IR receiver though!) OWC has a video tutorial that can walk you through the upgrade if you decide to go for it.
The driving (pun intended
) force behind MMWA was the fact set you described with auto warranties, but the law also covers the scenario I described with computers.There was some legal wrangling with Asus over them putting a "void when removed" sticker on their Eee PC machines. Asus eventually modified the warranty language to clarify the warranty would only be voided if the sticker was removed and improper service had damaged the machine, thus bringing them into compliance with MMWA.
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With Asus the sticker became a "if it's intact, no one has been inside, if it's broken, we know to snoop extra careful to find a reason to deny warranty coverage"
Oh I don't disagree with that at all. I suspect you might have the same issue with Apple looking extra carefully if you swapped the drive in your Mini like the OP here mentioned.
In the UK, for statutory rights against the seller (who may or may not be Apple, not against the manufacturer) for problems appearing between 6 and 24 months after the sale, you'd have to prove that the fault was present when the device was purchased (in the first six months, the seller would have to prove that the fault was not present). That might be more difficult if there is evidence that you opened the box. Otherwise you can say "it wasn't opened after it was purchased, so any damage inside the box must have been there when it was purchased".
This is why I want to get certified.
I figure, if you buy AC, don't mess with it. You are taking a chance and an expensive one too.
When I get the MBA I want, I'm getting it with the most RAM and smallest drive. I'll replace the drive myself with a bigger one. I plan to "void the warranty", I won't get it extended.
Good luck on whatever you decide.
I figure, if you buy AC, don't mess with it. You are taking a chance and an expensive one too.
When I get the MBA I want, I'm getting it with the most RAM and smallest drive. I'll replace the drive myself with a bigger one. I plan to "void the warranty", I won't get it extended.
Good luck on whatever you decide.