Apple Hardware Reliability?

My wife and I switched over to Mac within the past couple years. OS X is great, "it just works," and we love the aesthetics of the hardware. But I'm starting to question the reliability of the hardware.

Our first Mac was a Mini, which we had to take in twice to be repaired. Turned out to be the hard drive. Then I got an iBook G3 from a friend. It had to have its logic board replaced under recall. So we got my wife a Powerbook G4, and it hasn't had any problems. But we got her mother a Macbook 2.0GHz, which just had its battery replaced under recall (it wasn't being recognized at all).

And I just got myself a Macbook 2.2GHz, which is now in the shop due to the Superdrive having mechanical trouble ejecting discs, and most worryingly, the LCD having the color banding/gradient problem. I just heard from Apple's repair shop, which said they couldn't reproduce my problem. Well all they have to do is compare the display side-by-side with another Macbook, like the geniuses did in the Apple store and all agreed looked really bad.

Now, I know that hard drives fail and battery recalls aren't uncommon for any PC manufacturer. Apple probably doesn't make those things itself. But as much as I love the Macs we've purchased, when I think that four out of the five have had hardware problems it's annoying.

What is everyone else's experience? Have I just had bad luck?

 

The iBook G3 is 800MHz, runs Tiger fine, and is still useful -- and has value on these very forums. It wasn't that old when the logic board was replaced. And it was a recall for a known design flaw anyway. It's not as though it was abused and just broke. In fact Apple replaced the logic board at no cost to me. Which is a good thing. Apple support has been great in fact. All I'm saying is that there's a difference between something getting old and worn out, and it being prone to problems.

And my wife's mother's Macbook and my Macbook aren't old at all. I just bought mine in January! I can understand that portable computers are more likely to require repairs due to their being lugged around in potentially harsh conditions. But a defective battery and a sub-par LCD aren't the result of wear and tear. Our Macbooks came that way in the box.