New MacBook Pro gets bent

By Stephen Withers
Monday, 10 November 2008 08:48

Opinion and Analysis

Much has been made of the stiffness of the 'unibody' MacBook and MacBook Pro cases, but one owner has reported that picking up a MacBook Pro one-handed resulted in a slightly bent chassis.

The MacBook and MacBook Pro models introduced last month feature an enclosure manufactured from a single block of aluminium. The result was said by senior vice president of industrial design Jonathan Ive to be "fundamentally thinner, stronger and more robust".

But in a post to Apple's discussion forums, 'greene-r74' wrote "I picked it [a MacBook Pro] up on the left side with my thumb over the ethernet port and bent the chassis slightly. You cant see it but you can sure feel it, I also have a few little depressions in the left speaker grill from my fingers."

He subsequently posted photos showing a slight deformation around the Ethernet port. (I'm assuming greene-r74 is male due to the appearance of the thumb in one of the photos - apologies if that was unwarranted.)

The reaction of other users was mixed. Some were sympathetic, some said the report would put them off buying the new model, and others were outright hostile, accusing greene-r74 of "neglect" or implying that the damage was caused by leaving an Ethernet cable connected when picking up the notebook.

It wasn't: "I use wireless, the only time an ethernet jack was ever plugged was to see if it was bent enough to not plug in. If it was neglect or abuse I would have titled this thread don't drop your macbook with the ethernet jack plugged in," responded greene-r74.

While several posters suggested he sought a repair from Apple either under warranty (assuming that the case had been machined thinner than spec, or that there is an inherent design problem) or on an ex gratia basis given the company's comments about the robustness of the design.

greene-r74 observed "I'm kinda bummed just because its new. Its really not that bad, so I'm not going to worry about fixing it. Just wanted people to know about it so they can be carefull."

So far, this seems to be an isolated case, but unibody MacBook Pro owners might be keeping their eyes open for further reports. Carrying an open notebook one-handed is probably too common a practice to allow any vendor to write it off as abuse or neglect.

There have been various reports of earlier aluminium MacBooks ending up with bent or dented cases as a result of mechanical damage.