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Apple's Growing Pains
Tyler Too writes "Is Apple having an unusually large number of quality control problems since its switch to Intel? Ars Technica runs down the litany of problems MacBook and MacBook Pro users have experienced since their launch. From the article: 'Is Apple's quality control slipping through the cracks with this Intel transition? Given the volume of available evidence that has appeared in such a short timeframe, it's simply impossible to say that Apple isn't having problems.'"
Apple has become a jewelry company specializing in audio appliances - it's certainly not a computer company, in the sense of Dell or HP. look at where Apple's revenue is! the computers they sell are primary offshoots of the audio-jewelry line, so how important is it that they work perfectly? as part of the fashion industry, Apple focus is and should be to manage their spin and buzz, mainly through appearance and drama, rather than reliability, price/performance, etc. it can't slow down the pace of product intros to iron out all the little flaws, since the sudden unveiling is a standard fashion-industry technique. who ever heard of Armani trumpeting the beta2 of rev 4.3 of the italian, 3-button pinstripe suit? Apple is the Manolo Blahnik of the computer-electronics industry.
quit judging Apple by hardware-vendor standards! it's a fashion company, and should be measured appropriately. I'm just waiting for Steve Jobs to literally walk the runway with some new do-dad (bluetooth earrings?).
Yes, their market share on on the desktop is almost equal to that of Linux now. Dell & HP probably build more beta units for a new model than Apple ships of Gen 1 product.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
I've been a Mac basher throughout my life. Not because of the hardware, but because of the software.
Now I'm a Mac convert.
The hardware is slick and well spec'd, but the reason I am moving to Mac at home and at my workplace has everything to do with the software. There simply is not a comparable product on the market. It doesn't matter if you buy a machine from Dell, HP, IBM, Sony, Gateway, Acer, or etc they all run Windows.
OS X is the only OS I've ever used that allows me to spend more time working (or more time posting on Slashdot) then tweaking the machine to keep it running.
I'm an experienced Windows, FreeBSD and Linux user, but nothing compares to OS X. I love FreeBSD and use it on all my servers. I've used Linux on many of my desktop machines in the past. Bottom line, nothing else out there touches OS X for a general purpose OS.
Though Linux and BSD both have their niche uses where they are much more suitable.
Windows is just a nuisance still around for reasons of compatibility as for as I am concerned.
All that being said. In the last year I've purchased several Apple systems both for myself and my colleagues and the experience has been excellent.
I have a PowerMac G5 (my primary workstation at the office) an iMac G5 (the machine I'm working on now and my main machine at home) two 15" MacBook Pro's and a 17" MacBook Pro. All of these machines have been running flawlessly since they were purchased.
I may just be very lucky, but so far I couldn't be more impressed.
I don't deny that they have the odd manufacturing defect. Though I haven't personally run into any. Even if the hardware stunk, there is no alternative. Anything that isn't running OS X just isn't comparable.
I think Apple the near impossible task of building an OS that a novice can use while not getting in the way of the hardcore geek.
They what? Clue: "Replace. Rinse. Repeat." is not "fixing problems" - when they replace your battery that expands with another that has no design changes, that is /not/ fixing the problem. When they replace a logic board with the same logic board, and then replace that logic board when it fails again, with the same logic board, and then replace that logic board when it fails again, with the same logic board, that is NOT FIXING THE PROBLEM.
... weren't they?
--I thought I was wrong once, but I was mistaken.