Consumer reports actually place Apple as one of the top performers for reliability but exact reliability figures are closely guarded secrets for any CE company.
They have mostly the same issues as any MP3 player and about the same incidence rate from what I've heard. Only difference is they sell a hell of a lot more so you hear more about it . Of 6 iPods (a 3G, a mini, 3 shuffles, including one I dropped 3 stories and a nano) I am yet to have a single issue outside of the system freezing on the 3G, which is easily corrected by a restart.
Had a shuffle for a couple of months, and a mini for about 7 months, and no problems except having to hold down reset once. I think a lot of problems are caused by dropping it and damaging the hard drive, or people not realising that if it freezes (as all computers do) you just reset it. I work in an electrical retailer and had a customer who claimed their mini was broken because it was frozen. I held down reset for ten seconds, it restarted and had a flat battery, so there was absolutely nothing wrong with it.
My wife has a 3 year old 10GB iPod which still works flawlessly annd my 2 1/2 year old 30GB is still functioning as well as the day I opened it. They both have some scratches but not as bad as I would have expected.
i have a 3rd generation 20gb ipod and never had a problem with it. production errors do tned to occur. that is consider a cost in any company. apple is not excempt of them. that is normal. with high volums, erros increase in the same rate. that is why there are ipodbatteretc.com bs website and all that. the more of a product ther eis in the market, the more diverse situations it will be submitted to. and engineers can't predict all 22 million different cases(number of ipods sold) they can only do what seems right at the time of desition)
just as a note: i saw a guy with the sony replacemt for the suffle and claimed he love it and i quote "electronics shouln't be fashionable, cause they are electronics"....i raelly didn't want to argue at the moment. but you can see that people can just get enay excuse to hit on the big dog on the block. same for the reliability issues.
I have a g3 10gb ipod and asides for freezing a few times I have had no problems, despite droping it a hell of a lot of times. It works more reliably than my desk top PC which I built myself and is half the age of my ipod. Apple has very few reliablility issues. Now if only they would make a good gaming computer.... Oh wait they are, the X86 thats coming out in a year...
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They have mostly the same issues as any MP3 player and about the same incidence rate from what I've heard. Only difference is they sell a hell of a lot more so you hear more about it . Of 6 iPods (a 3G, a mini, 3 shuffles, including one I dropped 3 stories and a nano) I am yet to have a single issue outside of the system freezing on the 3G, which is easily corrected by a restart.
just as a note: i saw a guy with the sony replacemt for the suffle and claimed he love it and i quote "electronics shouln't be fashionable, cause they are electronics"....i raelly didn't want to argue at the moment. but you can see that people can just get enay excuse to hit on the big dog on the block. same for the reliability issues.