I just have a hard time believing that 8 out of your 10 Macs were behaving that badly. You are undoubtedly the unluckiest man on earth, or you have no idea how to self administrate, or maintain your machine what so ever.
Believe it or not, it is true and, well, I do happen to know how to maintain my machines. Yeah, I did have a run of really bad luck it would seem, but defective motherboards and power supplies and poorly assembled casings are not the customer's error. (I haver purchased personally and for my company thousands of dollars' worth of electronics over the past years and the only maker that I or we have ever had any trouble with hardware-wise has been Apple, to the point where my company will no longer purchase Apple products; I have an iMac on my desk at my own expense).
Things changed when I contacted Apple Japan and asked them if they were knowingly selling defective devices; I immedietely was offered a replacement of my then current and defective machine (repaired twice and returned with the same problem and new ones both times, not to mention that the first two machines I recieved had been DOA before the one that had unrepairable problems). The replacement machine purrs like a kitten and has had no troubles for one year, but then I asked them to check it before shipping it.
Apple Japan seems to have operated very differently from Apple USA for some time and is well known here for being difficult and having very poor service. Several retailers I know have dropped the Apple brand over customer complaints over the past couple of years.
Since the Apple stores opened in Japan (they are run by Apple USA), things have improved, and I buy only through them now.
All things said, I am the proud owner of six Macs at the moment (one of them is pushing ten years and still going strong) and would not trade them for anything. I just want to be able to buy from Apple without worry and believe Apple can and should do something about its quality control.
Apple Japan seems to have operated very differently from Apple USA for some time and is well known here for being difficult and having very poor service. Several retailers I know have dropped the Apple brand over customer complaints over the past couple of years.
Since the Apple stores opened in Japan (they are run by Apple USA), things have improved, and I buy only through them now.
Apple has repeatedly mentioned problems in Japan in their stockholders meetings as needing serious improvement, and I think they appointed a new head of affairs in Japan sometime within in the past year, or two, so it would appear that they are aware of this problem, and trying to get a handle on it.
Apple is great at taking jabs at PC's for all the cool things they do. The problem is when they start having hardware problems and don't address it properly it magnifies the "snob" image that they think their shit doesn't stink and turn a blind eye to their suffering customers. Right now the MacBook flat out sucks right now due to the logic board issue.
Apple has repeatedly mentioned problems in Japan in their stockholders meetings as needing serious improvement, and I think they appointed a new head of affairs in Japan sometime within in the past year, or two, so it would appear that they are aware of this problem, and trying to get a handle on it.
They certainly need to. After dealing with the Apple call center (Apple Japan) and the Apple Store (Japan), my wife and I visited the Ginza flagship store (Apple USA) and thought it was a different company. The staff were friendly, knowledgeable, and interested in their products. Apple Japan ain't friendly, don' kno' nuttin, and couldn't give a hoot about Apple products.
Wow, I never though anyone on this forum was going to agree with me. Bergeimester's problem is very common with profesional users. Especially the G5 users. Leaking cases yikes. If eveyrone like Bergeimester bought 10 powerbooks I'd guarantee one of them would moo, overheat, and maybe even not come correctly assembled. The only reason why apple is so messed up is by people like the ones on this forum that called Bergeimester Mr. Dell. If you people would stop turning a blind eye to bad quality and actually stop buying the product maybe all the problems could be solved. Maybe if all of you apple fanatics, aka windows jihad guys stoped taking it in the ass you wouldn't have to keep discussing how an apple portable is a notebook and not a laptop. My mooing,once overheating, and not properly assembled macbook is my last apple computer. And no I couln't get a refund.
Just to add another voice to the recently dissapointed Mac enthusiasts, at production company I work for we have had so so luck with Mac products. Just in the last 2 months we bought 3 quad G5's, 1 was DOA, replacement was fine, a Mac Mini DOA, replacement is fine, 2 MacBook Pro's, DOA, replacements work fine, 3 big Cinema displays all work great, 3 smaller Cinema Diaplays, all work, although we seem to be having some ghosting/image persistance issues on one of them.
I'm using DOA kinda generically, some did turn on for a and worked to various degrees, but had problems sever enough that we demanded they be replaced, and since we have spent a lot of money on Mac products, they take our complaints seriously, and have remidies each of our grievances. It has been a pain though.
Our PC experiences are harder to document, because we have custom workstations built specifically to run Maya, although they generally work fine.
Apple is great at taking jabs at PC's for all the cool things they do. The problem is when they start having hardware problems and don't address it properly it magnifies the "snob" image that they think their shit doesn't stink and turn a blind eye to their suffering customers. Right now the MacBook flat out sucks right now due to the logic board issue.
While it's true that Apple is not the only company to have problems (Dell, HP, all of them do from time to time) it's also absolutely true that they rushed the MacBook out the door and made some bad design decisions -- probably in the name of cost reduction.
One also has to consider that the MacBook was one of the first low-end Core Solo / Duo notebooks on the market, and if the logic board is bad, it may well be Intel's fault: Intel has a whole division dedicated to providing reference designs for their chip. At the very least, Apple is handling the situation fairly well.
If they hadn't rushed it out the door, it wouldn't have these silly problems. period. Any uncompressed product development cycle goes through field testing before production. It seems hard to believe that the problems -- that are quite empirically evident -- would have been absent in field testing. If you had ever been a part of an electronic product development cycle, this wouldn't be an area of uncertainty for you.
If they hadn't rushed it out the door, it wouldn't have these silly problems. period.
If this were true then no one should ever have any problems with their machine. But every laptop manufacturer at some point has had some type of problem.
It isn't my intention to be mean. You stated that Apple rushed the MBP pro as an absolute truism, when as we all have no idea how long the MBP was in development nor do we know by what method or how long it was tested.
The laptops are indeed having repeated problems that Apple needs to fix as quickly as they can. But honestly we don't totally know what all the problems are from. Everyone is so trained on Apple no one is really noticing if PC laptops are behaving in any similar way.
I was hoping you could shine some factual knowledge to how computers are made and tested that would add context to your feelings.
To say that we don't know enough about computer electronics is not good enough to say absolutely for sure the MBP was rushed.
Comments
Originally posted by onlooker
I just have a hard time believing that 8 out of your 10 Macs were behaving that badly. You are undoubtedly the unluckiest man on earth, or you have no idea how to self administrate, or maintain your machine what so ever.
Believe it or not, it is true and, well, I do happen to know how to maintain my machines. Yeah, I did have a run of really bad luck it would seem, but defective motherboards and power supplies and poorly assembled casings are not the customer's error. (I haver purchased personally and for my company thousands of dollars' worth of electronics over the past years and the only maker that I or we have ever had any trouble with hardware-wise has been Apple, to the point where my company will no longer purchase Apple products; I have an iMac on my desk at my own expense).
Things changed when I contacted Apple Japan and asked them if they were knowingly selling defective devices; I immedietely was offered a replacement of my then current and defective machine (repaired twice and returned with the same problem and new ones both times, not to mention that the first two machines I recieved had been DOA before the one that had unrepairable problems). The replacement machine purrs like a kitten and has had no troubles for one year, but then I asked them to check it before shipping it.
Apple Japan seems to have operated very differently from Apple USA for some time and is well known here for being difficult and having very poor service. Several retailers I know have dropped the Apple brand over customer complaints over the past couple of years.
Since the Apple stores opened in Japan (they are run by Apple USA), things have improved, and I buy only through them now.
All things said, I am the proud owner of six Macs at the moment (one of them is pushing ten years and still going strong) and would not trade them for anything. I just want to be able to buy from Apple without worry and believe Apple can and should do something about its quality control.
Originally posted by hmurchison
so does idiocy
I'm glad you can tell. Usually people are oblivious to that which is near, or a quality of them.
Originally posted by Bergermeister
Apple Japan seems to have operated very differently from Apple USA for some time and is well known here for being difficult and having very poor service. Several retailers I know have dropped the Apple brand over customer complaints over the past couple of years.
Since the Apple stores opened in Japan (they are run by Apple USA), things have improved, and I buy only through them now.
Apple has repeatedly mentioned problems in Japan in their stockholders meetings as needing serious improvement, and I think they appointed a new head of affairs in Japan sometime within in the past year, or two, so it would appear that they are aware of this problem, and trying to get a handle on it.
Originally posted by onlooker
Apple has repeatedly mentioned problems in Japan in their stockholders meetings as needing serious improvement, and I think they appointed a new head of affairs in Japan sometime within in the past year, or two, so it would appear that they are aware of this problem, and trying to get a handle on it.
They certainly need to. After dealing with the Apple call center (Apple Japan) and the Apple Store (Japan), my wife and I visited the Ginza flagship store (Apple USA) and thought it was a different company. The staff were friendly, knowledgeable, and interested in their products. Apple Japan ain't friendly, don' kno' nuttin, and couldn't give a hoot about Apple products.
I'm using DOA kinda generically, some did turn on for a and worked to various degrees, but had problems sever enough that we demanded they be replaced, and since we have spent a lot of money on Mac products, they take our complaints seriously, and have remidies each of our grievances. It has been a pain though.
Our PC experiences are harder to document, because we have custom workstations built specifically to run Maya, although they generally work fine.
Originally posted by antartican
A simple solution to this is to just give a bunch of advanced users at least 100 computers to test for around 4 months.
4 months is a lifetime, besides that what early adopters are for.
Originally posted by GreggWSmith
Apple is great at taking jabs at PC's for all the cool things they do. The problem is when they start having hardware problems and don't address it properly it magnifies the "snob" image that they think their shit doesn't stink and turn a blind eye to their suffering customers. Right now the MacBook flat out sucks right now due to the logic board issue.
While it's true that Apple is not the only company to have problems (Dell, HP, all of them do from time to time) it's also absolutely true that they rushed the MacBook out the door and made some bad design decisions -- probably in the name of cost reduction.
One also has to consider that the MacBook was one of the first low-end Core Solo / Duo notebooks on the market, and if the logic board is bad, it may well be Intel's fault: Intel has a whole division dedicated to providing reference designs for their chip. At the very least, Apple is handling the situation fairly well.
it's also absolutely true that they rushed the MacBook out the door and made some bad design decisions -- probably in the name of cost reduction.
What empirical evidence makes this absolutely true?
Originally posted by Splinemodel
it's also absolutely true that they rushed the MacBook out the door and made some bad design decisions
It's also absolutely true that you made that up on the spot.
If they hadn't rushed it out the door, it wouldn't have these silly problems. period. Any uncompressed product development cycle goes through field testing before production. It seems hard to believe that the problems -- that are quite empirically evident -- would have been absent in field testing. If you had ever been a part of an electronic product development cycle, this wouldn't be an area of uncertainty for you.
If they hadn't rushed it out the door, it wouldn't have these silly problems. period.
If this were true then no one should ever have any problems with their machine. But every laptop manufacturer at some point has had some type of problem.
It isn't my intention to be mean. You stated that Apple rushed the MBP pro as an absolute truism, when as we all have no idea how long the MBP was in development nor do we know by what method or how long it was tested.
The laptops are indeed having repeated problems that Apple needs to fix as quickly as they can. But honestly we don't totally know what all the problems are from. Everyone is so trained on Apple no one is really noticing if PC laptops are behaving in any similar way.
I was hoping you could shine some factual knowledge to how computers are made and tested that would add context to your feelings.
To say that we don't know enough about computer electronics is not good enough to say absolutely for sure the MBP was rushed.