https://eclecticlight.co/2025/06/21/a-brief-history-of-hardware-epidemics/ Skip to content [eclecticlight] The Eclectic Light Company Macs, painting, and more Main navigation Menu * Downloads * Freeware * M-series Macs * Mac Problems * Mac articles * Macs * Art hoakley June 21, 2025 Macs, Technology A brief history of hardware epidemics Living creatures aren't the only things to be ravaged by epidemics. Computers, even Macs, can die prematurely when there are widespread manufacturing failures. I'd like to unearth a couple of mass graves from the past that have surely contributed to landfill around the world: capacitor plague and lead-free solder, and a recent problem with butterflies. Capacitor plague 1999-2007 Capacitors or 'caps' have a chequered history. Acting as temporary stores of electric charge, they're used extensively in most computer hardware and other equipment, such as 'starters' or 'ballast' for fluorescent tube lighting. They consist of conductive materials sandwiched with substances of low conductivity, or electrolyte. When manufactured to high standards they should last for 15 years or more, but cheap components are prone to overheating, electrolyte leakage, and in the worst case even fire. With manufacturing driven to minimise the cost of components, some who procured supplies of capacitors have saved a few pence using cheaper sources. Many have turned out to be duff, so-called counterfeit capacitors: in the early years of this century, a series of fires in mainly industrial and commercial premises were blamed on catastrophic failure of strip light ballasts. Computer motherboards and other components, including some batches of iMac G5 and eMacs, have also suffered 'capacitor plague' when counterfeits have somehow entered the assembly plant. Since first reports in 1999, successive waves have cost major manufacturers hundreds of millions of dollars to rectify. [capplague]An ABIT VP6 motherboard with a blown capacitor alongside others that are bulging or leaking (2007). Image by Ethanbrodsky, via Wikimedia Commons. This PC motherboard from ABIT has one blown capacitor obvious just to the left of centre, among others that are starting to bulge and leak. Fortunately, Apple's products were among the least affected, and since 2007 very few problems have been reported, although failed capacitors and leaky batteries remain problems in any computer over 15 years of age. Lead-free solder 2006-2017 No sooner was capacitor plague dying out than a new wave of failures was reported, mainly affecting better graphics cards, including some installed in various models of Mac. The most prominent was probably that in 2011 MacBook Pro models, but several other MacBook Pros, iMacs, and others were affected. My own iMac 27'' Mid 2011 (iMac12,2) suffered failure in its Radeon HS 6970M graphics card, and was one of several models whose warranties were extended because of this issue. Apple wasn't the only computer manufacturer to have such problems. Various models, mainly laptops, from PC manufacturers including Asus, Lenovo, and HP, had similar high failure rates in their graphics cards. Although some occurred as a result of GPU failure, the single common cause accounting for many was most probably the use of lead-free solder. High-performance graphics cards run hot, because they do a lot in a small volume, particularly in compact systems such as laptops and all-in-one desktop models. Laptops have very high thermal stresses, because they're often left cold for long periods, then run and become hot enough to warm bare thighs. Components, especially the GPU, may thus cycle between cold and hot several times a day. On 1 July 2006, the EU banned the use of significant quantities of lead in most consumer electronics products, including computers and their accessories. Although this had the beneficial side-effect of reducing occupational exposure to lead fumes in those manufacturing and repairing electronic circuit boards, the drive for this came instead from growing concerns over lead in electronic waste. The most immediate impact of that ban was the withdrawal from sale of Apple's iSight camera at the end of that year, as that couldn't be made using lead-free solder. Since then, substitute lead-free solders have become universally adopted in consumer electronics manufacture, but some non-consumer products continue to use traditional lead-based solders. This is because, despite sustained efforts to develop lead-free solders that perform as well, in practice products manufactured using them are more prone to failure, and have shorter working lives. Over the last decade, improved manufacturing techniques have reduced the chances of early failure, but now I'm happier using Apple silicon chips in any case. Butterfly keyboards 2015-2019 In 2015, Apple released new MacBooks that incorporated a keyboard using a novel action, described as butterfly. These enabled their integrated keyboards to be thinner, and because this mechanism distributed finger pressure more evenly, Apple claimed the keys were more stable in use, and required less movement. Although some preferred these butterfly keyboards, and had no problems in use, others started to report early failure, with keys getting stuck, repeating, or failing completely. These have been attributed to the accumulation of debris in the greater space within the keys. Attempts were made to tweak their design to eliminate these problems over the following four years, but ultimately Apple had to return to the proven scissor mechanism, which it did from 2019. As a result Apple had to operate its largest repair programme ever. Apple Service Programmes Although at times Apple might appear intransigent when problems occur with its products, its record ranks among the best of all computer manufacturers. There are currently two active service programmes, for 15-inch MacBook Pro batteries dating back to 2019, and more recently for a small number of M2 Mac minis. I repeatedly hear of those whose Macs have been replaced or repaired at no cost in order to satisfy customers, even though warranty, AppleCare or extended service programmes have expired. It's one of Apple's distinguishing features. 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Bookmark the permalink. 25Comments Add yours 1. 1 Alan B's avatar Alan B on June 21, 2025 at 7:25 am Reply My eMac (remember them?) suffered from the infamous Raster Shift problem caused by a faulty video cable, and, of course, occurred when the machine was well out of warranty. https://www.applefritter.com/node/11028 LikeLiked by 2 people + 2 hoakley's avatar hoakley on June 21, 2025 at 8:16 pm Reply Thank you. Howard. LikeLike 2. 3 Alberto's avatar Alberto on June 21, 2025 at 8:49 am Reply I don't want to share fake or incorrect news, but I'm pretty sure that the first generation PS3s all die because of the lead free solder used for the GPU. By the way, GPU manufactured by nVidia LikeLiked by 1 person + 4 Ivan's avatar Ivan on June 21, 2025 at 11:25 am Reply Lead-free solder was never the issue. The main reason a lot of GPUs released in the mid to late 2000s failed was the use of low-temperature (low Tg) underfill between the die (the chip itself) and the substrate (which is soldered to the motherboard), not the lead-free solder between the substrate and the motherboard. The solder balls used to connect the die and the substrate are actually high-lead, not lead-free. The underfill is supposed to relieve the stress on the solder balls caused by the die and the substrate expanding and contracting during heat cycles. Low-temperature underfill got too soft at the target temperatures and simply did not work as intended. This caused the high-lead solder balls to develop cracks. LikeLiked by 1 person o 5 hoakley's avatar hoakley on June 21, 2025 at 8:22 pm Reply Thank you. Do you have a reference or link to that, please? You wrote "The solder balls used to connect the die and the substrate are actually high-lead". It's my understanding that no high lead solders have been permitted in the EU since 2006, except for certain limited categories of products such as avionics. Howard. LikeLike # 6 Ivan's avatar Ivan on June 21, 2025 at 8:58 pm Yes, of course. This is widely known as "bumpgate" and you can easily find a lot of resources about it, mostly focused on (but not limited to) Nvidia GPUs. Besides Nvidia GPUs and PS3 GPU, ATi and early Xbox 360 GPUs were also affected. I recommend watching a series of videos by RIP Felix on YouTube if you want to learn more about this. The presentation style is not for everyone, and it's mostly focused on PS3 side of things, but it explains and researches the bumpgate in detail: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list= PLX11hU99eHE4Nh-J16ff5F_6iCzxr_cec As for high-lead solder balls, high-lead solders with >=85% lead content by weight are exempt from RoHS due to the lack of suitable alternatives under RoHS exemption 7(a). As far as I know, there are no alternatives even to this day. https://www.greensofttech.com/ blog-2025-eu-rohs-exemption-renewals-published/ "Lead in high melting temperature type solders (i.e., lead-based alloys containing 85% by weight or more lead) for internal interconnections for attaching die, or other components along with a die in semiconductor assembly" LikeLiked by 1 person # 7 hoakley's avatar hoakley on June 21, 2025 at 9:00 pm Thank you. Howard LikeLike + 8 hoakley's avatar hoakley on June 21, 2025 at 8:16 pm Reply Thank you. Howard. LikeLike 3. 9 HC's avatar HC on June 21, 2025 at 10:02 am Reply I was still so confused with this recent repair program from apple for my M2 Mac Mini. First I chatted with two people from apple on their site but both said I don't qualify to send my mini in. I explained to them that the nearest apple store would be a 400km drive and I have no car. They just kept saying if I was travelling near that store one day to bring my mac in. I felt that was unreasonable. So I asked to speak on the phone with a supervisor and he was even worse. Told me even if I were to bring or send my mac in there was no way to test for this issue. Just told me I have 3 years from the date of purchase of my mac to have it repaired if and when it will not start. Very confusing info from apple that was no help to me. I know you told me this is not what apple says on their site but its why I mention this since I did contact people at apple directly and this is what I was told. They didn't seem to want to help me more due to my mac working fine right now. But maybe if my mac actually wasn't booting I would have got more help. I bought a refurbished 2018 mac mini that died when using just a week after I bought it from apple. They let me send it back right away but I guess I was in that return window of time. But still I don't know why I can't send this one in for repair. I've never lived near an apple store. But that supervisor even told me they couldn't do anything for me if I brought it in. So I don't know if they are doing any repair or just replacing the motherboard or power supply. So very confusing to me. I just hope my mini won't have this issue even though my serial number is said to be one of the affected units that could possibly have this issue. LikeLiked by 1 person + 10 hoakley's avatar hoakley on June 21, 2025 at 8:20 pm Reply I recommend that you arrange a day or two out visiting that city, with a pre-arranged appointment at the Apple store there. Then you'll be able to get your Mac mini properly looked at by a qualified technician there, and I'm sure they'll be able to clear all this up and put your mind at rest. I know it's a big commitment, but I'm sure there are others things you can do there on your visit to make it even more worthwhile. Remember that the Apple Support staff you speak to on the phone aren't the technicians who perform this service. Howard. LikeLike 4. 11 Graham's avatar Graham on June 21, 2025 at 5:14 pm Reply I would add bulging batteries to the mix. In one of my previous jobs there was a laptop trolley containing 30 aluminium unibody MacBooks from 2009. After a few years, the majority of them had a bulging battery stretching the case. Perhaps because they were almost always on charge. Apple were very gracious though and replaced all the defective ones with 2013 MacBook Pros, as they couldn't source the batteries anymore even though they were removable in those days. Great service. LikeLiked by 1 person + 12 hoakley's avatar hoakley on June 21, 2025 at 8:23 pm Reply Thank you - I agree, although that story is more protracted and far more complicated. Maybe one day I'll try writing it up here. Howard. LikeLike 5. 13 PowerCubed's avatar PowerCubed on June 21, 2025 at 5:35 pm Reply Maybe Apple is the "best" at service programs compared to other manufacturers, but that must be a very low bar. most, if not all of these issues were things Apple denied, made customers pay full price for repair, then either were sued or otherwise forced to provide a repair program. Of course, these were short lived and often replaced parts with identical parts that would have the same issue happen again (see the MBP GPU issues). Then of course there's all the issues Apple refuses to acknowledge and instead lets their customers pay them $700+ for new logic boards or replacements when they know they are manufacturing defects. The bad flex connectors on MacBooks, which is somehow still a thing (on the iMac M1, no less), the touch IC issues on iPhones. There's also a known issue with a certain iPad model where the CPU separates from the board and the iPad is bricked. Louis Rossmann has talked about these issues for many years. To say Apple is some saint is disingenuous at best. LikeLiked by 1 person + 14 hoakley's avatar hoakley on June 21, 2025 at 8:41 pm Reply Thank you. First, allow me to make some factual corrections. Nowhere do I claim that 'Apple is the "best"'. You don't have to look far up the page to see that I actually wrote that Apple's "record ranks among the best of all computer manufacturers". That's based on numerous independent surveys of customer satisfaction (as well as 35+ years of personal experience, and more). If you have evidence to the contrary, then please provide it. You wrote "To say Apple is some saint" which doesn't appear anywhere in my article, does it? In fact I do record Apple's apparent intransigence, if you care to read what I wrote. I don't recall intransigence being a characteristic of saints. Next, allow me to remind you that ad hominem insults such as accusing me of being "disingenuous at best" are thoroughly rude. You're welcome to express your opinion about the subject, and to disagree, but if you can't do so without degenerating into insults, then I might decide to delete your comments, as is my right. Finally, in the over 35 years that I have been answering Q&As for magazines including MacUser (UK), and currently MacFormat and MacLife, I encounter occasional - and they are surprisingly uncommon - complaints about Apple's service. I find these paradoxical, because Apple's are premium products in a market where there's no shortage of competition. If I felt that Apple supported its products poorly, then I simply wouldn't buy them. Only a fool would pay good money for any product that was poorly supported. I have come to the conclusion that many of those who complain about Apple must be trolling, as surely no one would continue to buy Apple products if they didn't have confidence in them. Howard. LikeLike 6. 15 Bart's avatar Bart on June 21, 2025 at 5:44 pm Reply I never understood why they chose to do the Butterfly keyboards to themselves. The others are somewhat understandable. But I tried one of those keyboards in a store and it was like trying to type on a rock. I held off buying a Mac until they completely ditched that mistake. Seems like that would have been an easy one to avoid, just have someone actually use it. And there's no way it survived automated stress testing, and if it did their methodology was clearly flawed. Must have been performed in an actual clean room. LikeLiked by 1 person + 16 hoakley's avatar hoakley on June 21, 2025 at 8:49 pm Reply Thank you. I've had a couple of MacBook Pro models with butterfly keyboards and loved them. They were nothing like "typing on a rock" at all, and I had no problems with their keys either, as they worked better than Apple's separate wireless models, and many users preferred them. And I live in a dusty 200-year old cottage in the country, where there's no shortage of debris to enter keys. I'm not saying that there weren't widespread problems, but there was also widespread satisfaction, and that's always one of the difficulties with such failures. Howard. LikeLike + 17 DC's avatar DC on June 23, 2025 at 7:32 pm Reply I loathed the feel of the Butterfly keyboard and waited out a few years of MacBooks as well, nursing an old 11'' MacBook Air along until the 2020 MacBook Air came out with a return to scissor-switch keyboard design. Of note, Apple's marketing copy specifically touted increased "key travel" among the benefits of the scissor-switch keyboards back in 2020, so I think they got the message that for many users the Butterfly keyboard was a failure not just in reliability, but in tactile feedback as well. LikeLiked by 1 person 7. 18 David's avatar David on June 22, 2025 at 12:43 am Reply "...The most prominent was probably that in 2011 MacBook Pro models..." I have one of those. Apple fixed it and it (probably) still works. LikeLiked by 1 person + 19 hoakley's avatar hoakley on June 22, 2025 at 6:35 am Reply Thank you, David. Howard. LikeLike 8. 20 Paul R's avatar Paul R on June 22, 2025 at 2:54 pm Reply One observation about Apple service: they say don't offer free help after the warranty period, but they don't mean it. I've never been charged for phone support, even when calling about a product years out of warranty, or even years past Apple's obsolescence date. For a while I'd keep my credit card information ready. But was never asked for it. And my calls are never simple. By the time I reach the point of calling for help, I'll have spent hours or days going down every troubleshooting rabbit hole that I can find. So without fail, my cases get escalated. I once found myself on the phone with a former engineer who had authored the part of the OS relevant to my problem (he didn't manage to fix it, but I was still impressed). My only complaint is that the help agents often aren't as well trained as I'd hope (that engineer was an exception). They're limited in what they know how to do. For example, when I've offered to send logs, they confess to having no idea what to do with them. But I deeply appreciate that Apple offers what's essentially infinite help service. Even if they try to keep this a bit of a secret. Incidentally, this extended to hardware recently. I brought in my 3 year-old iphone that seemed to have a faulty lightning jack. I'd tried and failed to fix it by cleaning it. The Genius did hardware diagnostics, then took it to the back, used a special tool to clean it properly, and brought it back working like new. No charge. LikeLiked by 1 person + 21 hoakley's avatar hoakley on June 22, 2025 at 8:06 pm Reply Thank you, Paul. My experience is similar. Howard. LikeLike 9. 22 Brian's avatar Brian on June 22, 2025 at 4:12 pm Reply Thanks Howard for that information. Apple is probably better than most with service, but they have problems like anyone. I took in an iMac to solve a hardware failure requiring repair, and after replacing the logic board it had a different, worse problem. After a few such trips the store gave me 100% of my purchase price in Apple Gift cards, for this almost 3-year-old iMac because I had Applecare. Great customer support for horrible service. Calling Apple for software support or bugs, is usually a frustrating waste of time. They're almost always friendly and try to be helpful, but most of the time don't seem to know what they are doing, following a checklist of basic things to try without having years of experience for actual troubleshooting help. Most of the time, I know more than they do and end up finding the solution on my own. Scheduled call backs from support don't always happen, where level 2 support staff can't find an answer during the first call. Sometimes they call back with answers at scheduled times, but not always. Right now, I need to find a different level 2 engineer, as one never called me back at scheduled times or responded to direct emails after 2 weeks. I expect to find that answer without their help. Apple's in-person support for hardware repairs has been more satisfying that phone support for software failures and bugs. LikeLiked by 1 person + 23 hoakley's avatar hoakley on June 22, 2025 at 8:10 pm Reply Thank you, Brian. I don't waste time with Apple Support when it comes to bugs, although I do know of some that have been reported to engineers through Apple Support contact. Howard. LikeLike 10. 24 Tim's avatar Tim on June 24, 2025 at 7:38 pm Reply According to the Wikipedia article, the capacitor plague wasn't caused by counterfeits, or old age. It was a mis-copied formula, which was spread to multiple manufacturers through corporate espionage, and led to a shortened lifespan for capacitors manufactured during that specific time period. Do properly designed capacitors fail after 15 years? I've never actually seen a capacitor from before or after the Plague fail. LikeLiked by 1 person + 25 hoakley's avatar hoakley on June 24, 2025 at 9:26 pm Reply Thank you. I actually link to that article. Capacitors are one of the components, together with batteries, that tend to fail first in ageing computers, including Macs. I gather that a properly made capacitor should be good for at least 15 years, but after that they may develop a tendency to leak and damage logic boards, much as old batteries will. Your mileage may vary, but it's a recognised problem among those who use vintage computers. Capacitor plague notwithstanding. Howard. 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