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Apple Tops Consumer Reports List
memoryhole writes "It seems Apple has come out on top in recent Consumer Reports surveys regarding technical support and hardware failure. Way to go Apple!"
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Apple products: they're not just to keep the doctor away.
The difference between Apple "Inoperable Failure" machines and Dell "Inoperable Failure"machines looks to be very small - the real difference between them is in machines that were "Broken but Still Operable".
Maybe they're seeing people who got their computers working, then discovered they were running XP...
[ducks, runs for cover...]
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
Once, in the late 80's, I was young and was over at a friend's house. He father had two of the old B&W Macs sitting on his desk. One had a crack in the screen and was obviously broken. The other looked like it hadn't been touched in a while.
.. in the course of the conversation, we started talking about computers and I asked him if his Mac worked.
We were playing with Legos in the room when the father came in and starting chatting with us
All of a sudden, he stopped cold and stared out the window, with his mouth half-open. I thought maybe he was having a stroke or something, but eventually he swallowed and said in a monotone "THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH MY APPLE COMPUTERS. THEY WORK PERFECTLY."
And then he left the room. It freaked me out a little. My friend looked at me and shrugged. "Don't ask him about those computers. My mom has a Tandy that she uses to do her work and every time we talk about the Apples dad spazzes like that, so we just don't talk about it."
I didn't think about it much after that, I mean I had this one friend who freaked out anytime you touched his guitar without washing your hands.. people are like that sometimes.
But over the years I noticed this more and more. Apple computer owners simply don't admit any problems with their machines, and when confronted, their eyes glaze over and they refuse to talk about it.
Friends, girlfriends, relatives; Mac Classics, Powerbooks, iMacs... I've seen it with all of them. The funny thing is, it's only the Mac owners, folks who just use a Mac don't seem to suffer from it.
I wondered about this for a long time, ever since that strange day in 1988. That is, until last week.
That's when I saw the sunflower. It's on the back of their necks.
Every Mac owner has a small sunflower-shaped tatoo on the back of their neck, just inside where the hair grows. It's about 3mm in diameter. I'd never noticed it before. I didn't know what to make of it at first.
I was fooling around with this cute graphic designer friend, just teasing her one night, and I saw it. Then I saw it on my uncle, a hard-core Mac user. Last week I saw it on our Unix sysadmin as he bent over to pick up a cable for his iBook.
Well I had to find out what this was about. I tried mentioning it but they all denied its existence. Just yesterday I went to the nearest Apple store and waited and watched.
Yes, it was as I thought. Every new Apple purchaser was taken to a small, gleaming white room with a curtain, supposedly to pick up their Mac. As they came out with their bags, some of them stopped to rub the backs of their necks.
Now I understood.
I also understood why Apple made it so difficult to become an Apple reseller: the store had to have "Special Equipment".
I have no idea what that tattoo means, or what happens to those poor people in that smooth white room, but I can tell you one thing: I'm not touching a Mac ever again.
Funny, I was thinking the same thing about the effect which OSX has had on my OS chops, too ... since I 'switched' to OSX (been a Unix junkie for years) I've definitely felt a general happiness come over me. I don't get bothered by OS stuff, I just see it for how it is.
... well, we'll see, anyway. ;)
So anyway, to cure my happiness, I got Plan9 for my BeBox, and as soon as I get a video card for it which actually works, then plan9 it is, baby
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Apple failed all consumer reports for not adequately dealing with the customers calling in for hardware/software issues on X86 compatible clones people built in their garages.
I had a sucky sig.
I got a replacement keyboard for my iBook about 2 days before the warranty ran out.
"The letters on the keys are rubbing off!"
"And?"
"It doesn't look nice"
"And?"
"Design is one of your unique selling points..."
"Oh, alright then"
This keyboard has lasted much better. Either the first one was just not up to scratch, or they coat the keys with thicker varnishy stuff now.
Come on, now. Have you looked at Ford lately?
-- thinkyhead software and media
Apple is tops in hardware failure. Way to go Apple!