In the notice, Apple notes that Mac Pros manufactured between February 8, 2015 and April 11, 2015 are eligible for repairs due to issues with the machine’s graphics cards that “may cause distorted video, no video, system instability, freezing, restarts, shut downs, or may prevent system start up.”
Apple goes into a bit more detail about the symptoms eligible for repair:
- Distorted or scrambled video on the external display
- No video on the external display even though the computer is on
- Computer freezes or restarts unexpectedly
- Computer will not start up
Apple has instructed staff and authorized service providers to fix eligible Mac Pros showing signs of graphics issues at no charge to the customer. The repair will consist of Apple swapping out the graphics card and on average will take 3-5 days.
And here’s a look at Apple’s internal notice to employees and service providers:
Apple hasn’t publicly announced the program, and it’s unclear if it might do so at a later point or leave it to retail staff and authorized service providers to inform customers on a case by case basis. A search on Apple’s support forums does show lengthy threads with a number of users complaining of similar problems with the Mac Pro including both machines that fall within Apple’s guidelines for eligibility and some that don’t.
While this is the first repair program launched for the Mac Pro (Late 2013), Apple in February of last year launched a repair extension program for MacBook Pros manufactured between 2011 and 2013 due to similar graphics related issues.
