Apple quality is worrying me.

[logandzwon]

I've been having a lot of issue with nearly every apple product I have. It's getting ridiculous. iCal doesn't support meeting request from outlook users if they time-zone is different. iMail.app nor iPhone will let me manage which imap folders I subscribe to, to the stupid thing download hundreds of thousands of message headers. While I fully understand that these are issues because of MS screwing up standards, every competing device or application supports these oddities. Ultimately the applecare rep basically said ical doesn't work and to use MS entourage.

My iPhone was defective. There is static on some phone calls. It's random and intermittent. It happens with the BT headset, the built-in headset, and speaker phone mode. The phone will not complete the data restore after a firmware restore. Loosing all your data sucks. sms logs, youtube favs, socks map favs, weather settings, notes, call log. The auto dimmer simply turns the backlight off sometimes. My wife's iPhone does has none of the problems. Yet, still it has consumed hours of our time talking to applecare. The first support person was flat-out rude to us. The next phone support person made us wait a week and half while they reviewed the logs, then came back with noithing. So I tolk it to the apple store and finally after over 3 hours in the store showing the guy it failing he tolk it in for repair. Afterwards I noticed he wrote the problem as being something about the headset.

About a month ago I had a mac mini's video card fail. They replaced the board and system it home with me. The problem? The new board was defective and only one of the memory slots work. No one noticed the machine only had 256 of ram after the update...

We got an ATV the day they came out. Mine constantly rebooted every few hours and finally just stopped booting all together after the update. On an up note, this issue was taken care of above expectations with a replace issued on the stop.

I've had a HD fail my CD MBP 17". That sucked.
I've had the audio port fail on my wife's CD MBP 15 with the, "it thinks there is a toslink cable in there," problem disabling the sound.

I've had two different power adapters' plugs melt, where the cables comes out of the magi-lock. And I have had two batteries that failed. One of the did the swelling up and splitting at the edges.

 

[Grimace]

wow, that sucks.

I've had dozens of Apple products and all have been flawless (minus a BT keyboard.)

I seriously think that some people just have recurring bad luck with Apple, through no fault of their own.

 

[logandzwon]

Well, to be fair we use a lot of apple products. We have 2 adults and two children, (only one old enough to use a computer though.) In service we have a CD MBP17, a CD MBP 15, one CD mini, one G4 mini, and a C2D MBP15. We have an apple TV, Airport extreme, express, and the new extreme BS, three ipods, two iPhones. Plus, family packs of iLife and iWork. This doesn't count the machines we've bought and take care of for our family.

 

[KershMan]

We have a similar circumstance, but compounded. The wife and I have 4 children, and everyone but the youngest has a computer and iPod. My wife has an iPhone. We have an old PowerMac G4 as a file server and a newer C2D iMac as the media server, movie maker, etc. All total there are two MacBooks, a PowerBook G4, iMac G4 (flat panel), Mac Mini G4, and a PowerMac G4 plus two Nanos, 5GB first gen iPod, a shuffle, a 10GB 2nd gen iPod, and an iPhone. All of these have been fairly flawless except for the original MacBook, which had the original video problem.

The only computers that have died on me from Apple is a G3 iBook that my 12 year old son destroyed (key pad/hard drive) from abuse and my 14 year old daughters 12" PowerBook that was dropped and broke off the power adapter inside the plug shorting the computer out.

The flat panel iMac has been in the family over 6 years as the primary house computer and then through three of the kids. Still runs.

We buy all Dell at work. Many more DOAs and longer term issues percentage wise then I have had to experience at home.

And, oh by the way, not one Mac has ever had to be rebuilt.

 

[danny_w]

Yeah, my wife just called and said that it looks like her iMac just died (previous rev, not the new one).

UPDATE: My wife just called back and said she unplugged it and replugged and it came right up. Whew!

 

[markfc]

Do you have a surge protector or UPS connected to your equipment.

If not it may be worth investing in one.

 

[ghall]

I've never had a problem with an Apple product. Except for the flawed-by-design 12-inch PowerBook G4.

 

[logandzwon]

Do you have a surge protector or UPS connected to your equipment.

If not it may be worth investing in one.

Most devices over $50 in my house are plugged into either high end surge strips, or high end UPS backups. Anything that isn't has it's own transformer.

 

[aristobrat]

I seriously think that some people just have recurring bad luck with Apple, through no fault of their own.

There's plenty of threads on here to back that up!

iGary was especially jinxed, as I recall.

My house has gone thru:
1 3G iPod
1 1G iPod Shuffle
3 G4 Mac minis
2 1G iPod Nanos
2 15" G4 PowerBooks
1 Airport Extreme (UFO)
1 15" CD MacBook Pro
1 Intel Mac mini
1 MacBook
1 Airport Express
2 15" C2D MacBook Pros
1 5G 80GB iPod
1 Airport Extreme (802.11n)
3 5.5G 80GB iPods
1 24" aluminum iMac

(thank whomever that you can get decent resell values on most products, or that list would be a loooooootttttttttttttttttt shorter! )

Of that list, only three products have give us problems:

One of the Nanos (bought on launch day) was DOA.
The CD MacBook Pro had all of the initial issues: LCD buzz, CPU whine, heat
The MacBook had the RSS issue.

The only issue Apple didn't promptly resolve for us was the MacBook Pro, which CompUSA was nice enough to give us a full refund on (after demonstrating all of the issues to the store manager and explaining that they weren't fixable (at that time)).

 

[MacsAttack]

Perhaps my friends and I have just been lucky...

Mac Mini G4 1.42 (bought when the Mini was introduced). Over 2 years old and still going strong. Never a problem.

iPod Nano - 4GB black. Bought when the Nano was first released. In perfect condition - not a scratch on it. Still works fine after 2 years.

MacBook -10 months old. Perfect screen. No temp problems. No cracks. No battery issues.

Mac Pro. Got it about three weeks after they were introduced. Thing is a tank. Fantastic machine. Looking forward to seeing what performance improvemens will come with Leopard.

Or course I never had much problem with computers. In 20 years I've had one HD die on me (after 3 years of use), a 5 year old CRT gave up the ghost, and a PSU blew out on a new machine when it was turned on for the first time (replaced the next day by an on-site engineer visit). All those problems were with Windows PCs.

My company is another Dell shop (now) but even before that - in the 14 years I've been there - there have been very few hardware problems I can think of. Well - not on out end. A big chunk of business is running first and second line support desks (not my department thankfully), and they obviously do deal with customer hardware issues... Things do break - but I'm not seeing a pattern of anything breaking more than anything else.

Nobody I know who bought a Mac off the back of seeing my gear (lots of Minis got sold because wives and girlfriends think they are "cute") have had any problems.

Yet.