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Can Apple make ANYTHING that works anymore?

G

g-boac

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Oct 7, 2007
291
1
[1] MacBook Pro Core i7 - won't hold an AirPort connection after wake
[2]iPhone4 - absolute piece of ****. can't make, hold, or receive a call; bluetooth doesn't work either.

[3]AppleTV - just received. Set it up. Worked fine. Went to work. Came home. Won't turn on. Unplugging and plugging back in only way to turn on. Now won't connect to Mac library - say "home sharing" must be turned on. It IS turned on.

[4] Recent calls to AppleCare - after about five minutes of cursory troubleshooting, they simply throw in the towel, recommend that I "reboot" everything and "give them a call back if I'm still having problems" (following, of course, and extended hold time).

Having consistently and satisfactorily used apple products for over a decade, the recent quality of their products has just gone into the *******. Am I the only one in this boat?
 
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g-boac said:
Can Apple make ANYTHING that works anymore?
Click to expand...

Just because you are having problems with Apple products, doesn't mean that every single Apple product on the market is faulty. Using works like "sh**ter" will simply get no helpful responses or warned/banned from this site.
 
John Doe 57 said:
Just because you are having problems with Apple products, doesn't mean that every single Apple product on the market is faulty. Using works like "sh**ter" will simply get no helpful responses or warned/banned from this site.
Click to expand...
Generally, I haven't had problems and in those rare instances where I have had problems, they've been quickly resolved. This is what kept me coming back to Apple time and time again. But, after investing a substantial amount into products that everyone accepts paying a premium for, I've had product after product not work.

I could certainly accept "bad luck" or a defective product if it were one issue with one product - everyone has a bad day. But this is becoming a string of misses. One after another, coupled with a downward trend in technical support (both responsiveness and resolution). Prior to this year, I've NEVER had anyone in AppleCare simply give up - they've elevated issues previously to their product engineering team; in one instance, the issue I was working with my advisor ultimately was patched in the Leopard 10.5.3 update. But two days ago, the best they could offer me was "I don't know"??? Come on!

So my real question here remains - whether I'm seeing a string of outliers personally, or whether other people are similarly experiencing a decline in both product quality and service.
 
Both AppleCare and the local Apple Store were incredibly responsive and helpful to me when I needed my MBP's optical drive replaced under AppleCare.
 
They are making all of their products smaller and using strange enclosures. That leads to higher rates of failure. Metal enclosures suck for wireless signals and glass enclosures break easily. The whole design of the iphone 4 was called a design flaw before they even sold one. This is well known and a little bit of common sense would tell that the iphone 4 would have many problems, not to mention all the bad reviews it got.

Apple tv, well, that is a pretty new product revision, but it's known not to get stellar reviews. There are plenty of alternatives. What was the reason you bought apple tv over the others?


g-boac said:
[1] MacBook Pro Core i7 - won't hold an AirPort connection after wake
[2]iPhone4 - absolute piece of ****. can't make, hold, or receive a call; bluetooth doesn't work either.

[3]AppleTV - just received. Set it up. Worked fine. Went to work. Came home. Won't turn on. Unplugging and plugging back in only way to turn on. Now won't connect to Mac library - say "home sharing" must be turned on. It IS turned on.

[4] Recent calls to AppleCare - after about five minutes of cursory troubleshooting, they simply throw in the towel, recommend that I "reboot" everything and "give them a call back if I'm still having problems" (following, of course, and extended hold time).

Having consistently and satisfactorily used apple products for over a decade, the recent quality of their products has just gone into the sh**ter. Am I the only one in this boat?
Click to expand...
 
No matter what company, every batch of a product is going to have some that don't work as well as they should. It just happens.
 
I would recommend buying products that work and returning ones that don't. my iphone 4 and mbp work great.
 
That's a pretty low standard for choosing products. The old Sony tv's used to be rock solid. People should expect the products they buy to work.

R94N said:
No matter what company, every batch of a product is going to have some that don't work as well as they should. It just happens.
Click to expand...
 
I have the exact same problem with the AirPort, wont hold a connection with my wireless at home, and the only way to re-connect is to disable and the re-enable AirPort, and then enter the network details in at the "other" section. Just clicking on the SSID and clicking connect doesn't work, I HAVE to restart the AirPort and enter the details manually.

No exactly something that sends me into a blind rage and makes me want to post on a forum over it though. If you have a problem, take it into the Apple store rather than phoning or moaning about it, seems to have a better success rate.
 
One must take into consideration that Apple products are mass produced, just like the competition.

They are made of many components sourced from various vendors, just like the competition.

There is no "perfect phone, laptop, desktop, monitor, etc. Just like the competition.

So... what to do?

Stop, breathe, relax.

Call Apple Care, they are fantastic and will always help you resolve the issues.

I never buy any new Apple Product without Apple Care. And believe me I have tens of thousands invested in Apple products over the last decade... :)

I'm a very happy Apple Customer
 
Cracked screen macpro

You are not alone my friend,

I had to explain that there was no way that I caused damage to my new macpro. Other than standing out in freezing weather, the mac should have been able to handle this. I was soo pissed that they determined that there must have been some hairline fracture , that, coupled with the temperature, must've caused an even greater break in the glass. The computer was in its foam casing the whole time! My much older Macpro has been working great and no issues. But now.... I thought maybe it was a glitch and ended up with those few that just didn't come out right at the manufacture line. But no, Apple assured me their engineers said it was my fault without explaining the type of "new and improved material" or "should I say, new and cheap quality" they decided to go with on making their product(s).

Best,
 
All my Apple stuff works perfectly. I don't even get dropped calls with AT&T on my iPhone (Phoenix area). Bluetooth works perfectly with my BMW. I've had a lot of Apple stuff too, from my Mac SE to my Mac Pro, and a big slice of everything in between.
 
AGF said:
You are not alone my friend,

I had to explain that there was no way that I caused damage to my new macpro. Other than standing out in freezing weather, the mac should have been able to handle this. I was soo pissed that they determined that there must have been some hairline fracture , that, coupled with the temperature, must've caused an even greater break in the glass. The computer was in its foam casing the whole time! My much older Macpro has been working great and no issues. But now.... I thought maybe it was a glitch and ended up with those few that just didn't come out right at the manufacture line. But no, Apple assured me their engineers said it was my fault without explaining the type of "new and improved material" or "should I say, new and cheap quality" they decided to go with on making their product(s).

Best,
Click to expand...


Which Mac Pro has a screen that can crack?

Interesting how newbies sign up to post macs are horrible.. I've been seeing that trend rise lately.

To the OP - please stop generalizing. Yes, you might feel that their quality is going down, but for me there has been no difference between the first Ti Powerbook I bought for $3500 and the new MBP I bought for $1799 - both are rock solid performers.

And yes, it is possible to get a bad apple 2-3 times in a row. The SSL Matrix on which I spent $25,000 arrived DOA - so trust me when I say - every product *can* have issues.
 
Music_Producer said:
Interesting how newbies sign up to post macs are horrible.. I've been seeing that trend rise lately.
Click to expand...

You have noticed a trend of increasing product complaints among new customers, yet you don't think this is significant?

I am one of those new customers. I have never seen a need to spend the extra money on an Apple product despite two of my brothers insisting on this for years. I have been a PC user, both laptop and desktop for over 15 years. I have purchased and used at least ten different PC systems for myself and my family during that time. All of them from Dell. During that time I have had a grand total of one (1) failure - a hard disk drive on a laptop failed. Probably because I shut the case too hard when it was writing.

Anyway, in December I decided that we finally had the money to go Mac. I was really excited about this. I bought my wife a MacBook Pro 13", and myself a MacBook Pro 15". Mine came fully loaded with the HR screen, the 2.8 i7, 8gb RAM. Six weeks later my computer is back at the Apple store because of white dots all over the display. They replaced the screen. Two weeks after that the logic board had failed somehow. I got a brand new laptop. Two days ago I opened up my laptop and got the gray screen of death. Brought it in to the Apple store again. An unrecoverable and spontaneous hard drive failure. The manager felt so bad that he not only gave me a new laptop, but it was the next generation - the superfast 2.3 i7 quadcore. Great customer service but a major hassle nonetheless.

I am still trying to restore my computer as I am typing this. This is the second time I have had a Macbook pro replaced inside of four months. Good customer service really can't make up for the many, many hours of lost productivity. I would much rather have had a good, reliable product out of the box than to experience Apple customer service, no matter how good.

I am a brand new Mac user. I realize that Apple does not manufacture their own products, they simply assemble them in a nice proprietary case, add in their special OS X and box them up. However, that being said, will I recommend the Apple product line to others? After two catastrophic failures how could I do that? And we had plans to purchase a MacBook Pro for my daughter as a High School grad gift for her to take to college. Oh well. Not going to happen.

What happened to Apple reliability?
 
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For any computer, or manufactured device for that matter, a certain percentage will have problems. If Apple sells 1,000,000 Macs, and just 1% of them have problems, that's still 10,000 Macs that have problems, but 990,000 that work fine. Some people will get the 1% that have issues.

I have 5 Macs in my house, a PPC Mini, an iBook G4, a C2D mini, a 24" iMac, and a 2009 13" MBP. None of them have had any hardware issues at all. I only had to reinstall once, and that was an iBook G4 where the first software update messed up the modem, but when I re-installed from scratch and reran the update it was fine.
 
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