Slashdot Mirror
Why First Generation Apple Products Suck
mmAPP writes "CoolTechZone.com has an article up that pleads with Apple to focus on its quality assurance before releasing new products. From the article: 'If anything, I think Apple should do a better job at quality assurance than Dell, HP or other OEMs that deal with more units than Apple. The benefit of being a considerably small company (in comparison to other OEMs) is to focus on delivering quality products. There's no denying that Apple is perhaps one of the most innovative companies when it comes to consumer electronics, but ignoring quality as a result is not something it needs to ignore.'"
[sigh] Yet another vacuous "story" posted by someone just trying to drive hits to their ads. I'd like to see the day when the text on a page offered up more than a few paragraphs, surrounded by ads/other useless stuff.
... well "interesting"... Apparently a smaller company has *more* resources to devote to indirect profit activities such as QA. Apparently the larger you get, the harder it is to use that workforce. Seems ... odd to me.
Sure, Apple aren't perfect, but let's face it, who is ? Not that I'm at all religious, but I'm fairly sure there's some mention of "let him without fault throw the first stone" in some old book somewhere. Ok, so everyone has an opinion, hell there's no reason why you should listen to me - bitch if that's what floats your boat; but to do it purely to provide profit via another vector *does* annoy me. One more site to ignore from now on...
I'm sure pretty-much every company does their level best, within some budget, to give their customers the best experience - it's only good business sense. I think Apple actually do *better* at that than most. Shame the nay-sayers disagree...
Not to mention that the logic is
For what it's worth, I gave my sister a nano, she's an air stewardess, and it travels a lot, stuffed in a handbag along with loads of other luggage (tardis-like, in fact - another story...). Yes there are some (small) scratches on it, but no more than any of the other plastic items she carries - significantly less than her credit cards, for example. Yes, it's only one data-point, but the pictures of the unusable screens that were floating about the internet seem maliciously-driven to me - you'd have to take a scourer to the surface to get it that bad...
Simon
Physicists get Hadrons!
Apple can't ship better first generation products and is having a troubling time maintaining quality
...
Sounds like some other company that makes operating systems. Can't place my finger on their name right now though
I got a custom-build intel mac mini from their education discount hotline here in the UK, took a few days to arrive, and OMG, no problems whatsoever. You see when you buy a computer and it works jsut fine, you don't usually go on the internet to talk about it alot. Whereas if my mac mini was broken, you'd be damn right i'd moan about it till the cows came home/apple fixed it.
...is actually quite fantastic. I've bought lord knows how many laptops from them, with not a single dead pixel, ever. Never a failed hard drive, never a faulty component.
Where first-gen Apple products do have issues is not with QA, but with design stubornness. They used the scratchy ipod plastic not because they didn't know it was scratchy, but because Steve liked the look of it. The heat issues are not an issue of "whoops! look at that, processors produce heat!" They know that the machines will run hot, but want to keep the sleek form factor anyway.
All in all, I think Apple products have few overall bugs, but the tight design all around makes those few design flaws stick out like sore thumbs. (damn you, TiBook hinges!)
CTZ Exec: We aren't getting many hits lately, what can we do to get more?
CTZ Drone: Post an Apple troll?
CTZ Exec: PERFECT! Do it!
The article is 100% Pure Troll.
His "questions" he'd like to ask sound exactly like "Have you stopped beating your dog?"
Do you really do real world testing on early adopters?
Why is it that nearly all products you unveil are plagued with serious setbacks?
Why is your quality assurance department so incompetent?
Do you ever learn your lesson from previous mistakes?
If so, how do you correct them? If not, why not?
Could you please admit that you will continue to release products with serious flaws in the near future (that will at least give us something to count on)?
Why did he mention Dell several times in the article. They have considerably more QA issues than Apple and develop very few of their lines to a stable state. They have never released and Inspiron that did not require a BIOS update for thermal stability, at least not one worth using. Fact is some issues are hard to find in a controlled QA envionment. The nano screens was the glaring case of a failure in QA and Apple has acknowledged that.
From the colors, I'd say this doesn't look like Digg.
Who accepted this article again?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I have a first-gen MacBook Pro so I can attest to Apple's first-gen foibles. I got a MacBook Pro 2 months ago. Before I downloaded 10.4.6 it was slow, clunky and crashy as hell, and my iSight and FrontRow didn't work.
I think it's due to the rapid innovation cycle Apple operates on. If Gateway takes an extra 6 months to ship some beige box, who cares? But Apple, as a niche operator, is much more conscious of staying up on trends and must constantly put out improved and upgraded product. Hell, my 1.83 Ghz MBP isn't even made any more.
The good news is that Apple continually sends out fixes and OS updates, both software and firmware, and its user base is an active and (generally) technically savvy bunch who love sharing what they learn. Being an early adopter isn't always easy, but it's very rewarding.
This guy has no idea what he's talking about. I've gone through countless Apple laptops (okay, maybe ten or so) for various friends and family. One dead pixel on one of them. It got fixed free of charge a couple of years later. I did get a DOA new mini (core Duo), but they fixed it -- and the part which was bad wasn't a "new" part, it was an Airport Extreme card, something that's been out for years and Apple doesn't even really make.
Worst Apple product ever: The "saucer" power supplies. I've seen at least ten of them fail, some in ways that involved visibile flickering sparks over a period of time. We've had to mix and match parts to cobble together working power supplies. They sucked so much it's unbelievable... Even three years after they came out. Why? Not "rushed to market". "Fundamentally stupid design."
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
The real question is, why does Apple get all the grief for this? Remember pretty much every release of Windows ever? Remember the PS2 read errors?
All the heat problems people had with Inspirons in '03? The Pentium floating-point bug? It's just that Apple happens to release new products more often than most other companies, so they crop up now and again. I have a first-gen iPod that still works okay (though the battery is pretty much shot after all this time), and one of the first white iBooks that still works grandly.
I would say from my personal experience, Apple's biggest problem is breaking stuff with software updates. In the past, I've had sleep, cd burning, and fink unexpectedly broken with minor revisions; currently (10.4.6) airport is flaky. But that's not what people are talking about when they complain about first-gen products.
It's so funny that the biggest complainers about Apple products are people that generally don't even own an Apple product. When these people post to the Apple message boards, if you ask them simple Apple-centric questions to try and help them with their supposed problems they don't respond or when they do, they respond with things that clearly indicate that they aren't using, and never have used, any Apple products.
I've had four first gen Apple Desktops with zero incidents. I own a first gen iPod that still runs great, yes the battery still works just fine. I have a first gen nano with zero scratches on it, but I also don't carry it around in my pocket with my friggin' keys. I'm on my second first gen Apple laptop with no issues.
Granted personal experience isn't going to define a company, but my experience has never run into any of the problems complained about.
Sometimes you just have to wonder.
The most obvious reason is of course money, but also it's because of the culture surrounding Apple. Apple is a darling of the tech and consumer industry. People love their iPods and are getting turned onto their computers, and for the most part investors are warm to their financial performance.
So, when someone has some bad experiences, they cry louder than, say, someone who has a problem with a Microsoft product. "Oh, Windows broke again? Well, it does suck, that's just the way things are, oh well, no sense in complaining."
Being in support, I know all about the hyperboles users make when complaining about their problems. They go on and on about how this is a critical problem that must be fixed, how there's no quality assurance going on, and that everyone else in the world must be experiencing this same problem. Meanwhile, no one else has reported this problem, there are confirmed tests of this problem not occuring in many standard configurations, the user has a highly specialized configuration, and the affected area is not in fact a critical function.
The guy wants a little extra satisfaction, and wants to be heard. However, he wraps it in the cloak of an editorial, like most bloggers, so called journalists, and other web writers do.
Did the guy get into a crap situation? Probably, and that sucks.
Did the guy get crappy support? Maybe, and that would suck.
But making a sweeping generalization that the products just suck when millions of human beings completely disagree with you is not going to get you any points with Apple or anyone else.
Whatever happened to writing about the facts? If you want to editorialize about any technology company, you have to go find the facts and then lay them out. Finding the facts means getting information on other peoples experiences, surveys, reviews, etc. You then take that information in context and write your own article.
However, if he was going for ad hits, congratulations. Good job there.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
What, no one's posted a link to the famous Apple Product Cycle yet?
First thing that came to my mind. Not that I agree with the article (pretty far from it, actually), but it seemed an obvious link to post here.
Really? A simple software update fixed the perceived problem, but that makes the MacBooks suck. So sayeth Gundeep Hora, the same person that starts out the article by stating:Nice preface to your FUD and blatantly unbiased attacks against Apple.Gundeep Hora just said that only 1% of the nano's were affected and replaced and that the MacBooks had a software update address a perceived problem. Where are all the examples of recalls? One percent does not justify the concept that first generation nanos were replaced, only those, seemingly, owned by the careless and ignorant needed replacement. So where does Gundeep Hora come off making such a vast generalization? Well, regardless of what he claims in his preface, Gundeep Hora obviously does hate Apple and their recent success. How does this article classify as a "featured story" on CoolTechZone? How does the "editor-in-chief" release such garbage? Maybe he just sucks?
Wow, verifiable facts, I love those. "Mass hysteria" comes from 1% of the users, now that's mass hysteria... I'm sure that Apple does no QA before releasing to the public, I believe Gundeep Hora, he's some kind of expert. I had no idea that they were so lucky. What a hack this moron Gundeep Hora is. Somebody should really reconsider his position.This article is tiring. Gundeep Hora's incomepetence is tiring. Those two weak examples of Apple's supposed incompetence aren't sufficient for these extreme anti-Apple sentiments. What has this douchebag got against Apple? Did Steve Jobs run over his cat or something? Sheesh...
Some people believe the exact opposite. Get the first generation products because they are so solidly engineered.
After the first generation, manufaturers start looking for ways to cut costs.
I saw a great show on the BBC once about washing machines. They took apart an old first gen washing machine and showed a beautiful machined flywheel. The thing was a work of art and I can't imagine how long it must of taken to make or how much it must of cost. The latest version of the same style of washing machine had the equivalent of a coffee can filled with concrete fulfilling the same role. I kid you not.
When I look back on CD players or VCR's that I bought, the first generation models were like tanks. They weighed a ton and held up under constant use for over a decade. I bought them in the mid-80s, and I gave them to the Salvation Army when I moved in 2001, I'm sure they're still running still 20 years on unless someone tossed them out. I only switched to newer models for the new bells and whistles.