how to ruin your ipad pro

This article strays a bit from our usual topics - finance and programming - but, after having been through this horrible (and very expensive) experience, the least I can do is warn others. Because Apple isn't going to! Reading this might save you a lot of money (not to mention anger). If that's the case, writing this little article was well worth the time.

I’ve been the owner of an iPad Pro for about 7 months when I left for a rare vacation. During that trip, the iPad was in my hand baggage at all times. I kept it there precisely because I didn’t want it to get manhandled (and also because I had intended to use it on the plane).

Long story short: when I did finally arrive at my destination (saying that it was a long trip would be an understatement) and took it out of my bag, I was shocked to see two massive fractures running diagonally through the entire screen.

Adding insult to injury, Apple refused to acknowledge the problem: if I wanted it fixed I literally had to sign my rights away - and pay $700 bucks. While its hardly worth the cost, this experience has taught me several things:

1. Apple doesn’t honor warranty and treats its customers like criminals. If you don't pay extra for the ridicolous Apple Care you don't matter to them. They won't even bother to give you a replacement for the time it takes to do the repairs (actually they simply swap it out for a new one). This is standard practice with every large company, most of which sell products that cost a fraction of an iPad Pro.
2. As a consequence, I will never buy another Apple product. There's a limit to everything. It easily ranks as one of the worst product-support experiences ever. Actually, I'd say it was easily the worst.
3. Together with the ‘Catalina’ debacle described previously, it cemented my decision not to develop software for macOS (though nothing is written in stone: if things go well I might still do that one day). It’s bad enough that one has to pay for the privilege of developing for their platform, and now also pass time consuming and completely arbitrary inspection by Apple, but Apple doesn’t seem to realize that the continued popularity of their platform is a function of its value to users. That value is generated by software. The days when only certain professionals bought Macs are long gone (they've pretty much given up on them anyway). For a time, a Mac was actually a pretty attractive platform. Now, not so much.

The bottom line - and warning - is simple: don’t take your iPad Pro on an airplane unless you're prepared to pay for it. (In case you're wondering: as far as I can tell, the smaller models are unaffected by this issue). I certainly won’t do that again, and I sure wish someone had warned me about it. Hence the motivation behind this small article.

Just to be clear: I'm not saying this will happen if you take an iPad Pro on a plane, however it did happen to me. Your mileage may vary. Just be sure to keep $700 bucks on hand.