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Macs are reliable. Are you sure?
- Thread starter fox777
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The thing that I think needs to be understood is the analness that many forum goers have about their machines.
If you go looking for problems, you will find them.
For example, if you look very very carefully at the keys on my Apple keyboard, they're not all perfectly even. Some users think an entire machine needs to be returned because of this.
There are also complaints of screen quality all the time. Of all the Macs I've seen ever, (mine, others', store models) I've never seen a display I haven't liked.
The hardware is great, the OS is really pretty good.
More reliable than competitive products? Probably.
If you go looking for problems, you will find them.
For example, if you look very very carefully at the keys on my Apple keyboard, they're not all perfectly even. Some users think an entire machine needs to be returned because of this.
There are also complaints of screen quality all the time. Of all the Macs I've seen ever, (mine, others', store models) I've never seen a display I haven't liked.
The hardware is great, the OS is really pretty good.
More reliable than competitive products? Probably.
I would rather spend my money on a Mac knowing for an extra $230 I can have 3 years of service to fix about 99% of my problems. How many people do you know with PC's that CONSTANTLY complain about problems? How many people do you know with PC's that send their machines in and are gone for weeks at a time? I sent mine in once and it was back to me in 3 days. I don't think Apple is "the best" but in terms of customer service, they're pretty good in my book. I would recommend Apple to anyone.
To answer the question asked by the OP, I am not sure Apple ever claimed to be the most reliable. I personally think they are above average even though I've personally had my fair share of mac issues. I work around dozens of IBM, Toshiba, and HP laptops which are re-imaged and rented out to our clients. If I were to list the myriad of problems we encounter daily, particularly with the Toshiba's and HP, this thread would end immediately.
I really like macbook's design and planning on getting one but like op i also do have some concerns and this hasn't done much help either.
I know its just a survey (reported by engadget) and everybody has his own opinion but i agree with it. I own two HP laptops which had numerous problems in their first year. And its just not me, every friend of mine who bought HP had some problem in the first two years, whereas my dad and sister's Sony laptop are going strong after 4th and 2nd year respectively.
But ill still buy Macbook pro and install windows 7 on it. I used OS X for couple of days and hated it. But thats not the topic here.
Ps. Go easy on me. Its my first post.
I know its just a survey (reported by engadget) and everybody has his own opinion but i agree with it. I own two HP laptops which had numerous problems in their first year. And its just not me, every friend of mine who bought HP had some problem in the first two years, whereas my dad and sister's Sony laptop are going strong after 4th and 2nd year respectively.
But ill still buy Macbook pro and install windows 7 on it. I used OS X for couple of days and hated it. But thats not the topic here.
Ps. Go easy on me. Its my first post.
i would say reliability is still very good , but factory defects is a different story,
the apple brand has been very good for me, i own quite a raft of there stuff and have had little issue.
i use my macbook air the most now , and it has never had a problem yet.
my first mac was in the 8600gt crisis....and im still here....
the apple brand has been very good for me, i own quite a raft of there stuff and have had little issue.
i use my macbook air the most now , and it has never had a problem yet.
my first mac was in the 8600gt crisis....and im still here....
I've been a Mac convert for 4 years. I started with an iBook G4 for travel, then switched my old Dell for a G4 mini. Last year I bought a 24" iMac and this year a 13" MBP. I also have an iPod Touch. Except for the mini, which I retired, all the systems are in use at times, and the iMac is on 7x24. None of them have had any hardware issues. I've never seen a kernel panic on any machine. I had one OSx software issue on the iBook due to a faulty software update.
Usually people are on the forum with issues; so you get a distorted view of reliability and issues.
I've heard of the infamous screen bleed on the 24" iMacs. I have to say that the only way I could find any evidence of it was on an all black screen and then looking at it from an odd angle. I don't see any problem day-to-day. None of my Mac screens have any dead/stuck pixels.
Usually people are on the forum with issues; so you get a distorted view of reliability and issues.
I've heard of the infamous screen bleed on the 24" iMacs. I have to say that the only way I could find any evidence of it was on an all black screen and then looking at it from an odd angle. I don't see any problem day-to-day. None of my Mac screens have any dead/stuck pixels.
The thread title makes me think of the following: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TO5tA0QEaE&feature=related
Nothing is perfect. Indeed, compared to the $1200 HP Pavillion that people have complained overheats and dies (in as little as 15 days of accumulated usage) and the salesman telling me to go buy a laptop cooling pad, MacBooks are perfection. And why should I pay $40 for a glorified fan because HP was too cheap to build their plastic and not be bothered to put in a proper cooling mechanism? I mean, to make the cost reachable all they had to do was cut corners. Oops... not really, people will just buy more and HP can tout "We sold more, hooray for us, wheeeeee!" and give themselves bonuses for selling such dilettante slop... hey, they fire CEOs who muck up the company and give them 8-digit severance checks as a reward for mucking up the company so what's left to say?
Lots. About the operating system, which is where the distinct differences live in. So, about Windows:
1. A Windows veteran of 20 years, I knew there would be problems when Win95 came out with its registry... it can be cleaned, but not compacted. This means it grows larger over time. This means it gets fragmented over time. And that increases the chance of file corruption
2. the paging file can be fragmented - the way Windows "works", file-level fragmentation is the norm and no other platform is this lazy
3. wasn't NTFS originally touted as being fragment-proof? ( I hope that's just an urban legend)
4. Reactivation hassles, just installing a video driver can break the system - or a BIOS upadte
5. Installing a software update (e.g. FSX Acceleration pack) also causing reactivation and being told it's not a valid license... say WHAT???
6. Buying a $500 suite that just came out and, when reporting a bug that affects any web browser that isn't IE, being told to wait for the next version (like I can tell MY customers to wait 18 months for a fix)
oops, digressing from windows
7. No OS should take 16GB of disk space (Win7)
8. Windows Vista, 'nuff said
9. "Windows DLL Hell" - do a web search. 'nuff said
10. Uses parallel processing and ordered loading to make it appear to boot faster, though it still takes a couple of minutes for the system to be properly used.
11. non-BMP compatibility isn't in the OS engine, it's in the IE engine and hooked into the OS. I've had problems happen there too
12. Using Microsoft Knowledgebase to find problems, the solutions they propose never work
13. Screen size changing should be a user-specific setting, not system-specific
14. network printers should be system-specific as well, for any user logging into that PC in that area
15. Thanks to the registry (and software activation issues), you CANNOT transfer apps between old and new computers.
16. PCs sold at the store have "crapware" integrated by 3rd parties. These subsidize (lower the cost of) the computer's price, but once you install software, you can clean but you cannot compress the registry. Some have the nerve to say vendors should not pre-install these. Then don't whine if prices go up by a couple hundred dollars... oopsie-doodles to y'all...
17. PAE exists for the servers so why not the client OS? All drivers MUST be digitally signed so they are well-made and therefore not the cause. NT up to Win2000 had this. XP onward had it dropped. WHY??? PAE allows 32-bit OSes to use more than 4GB of RAM. And with Vista and Win7 being real little piggies devouring the market, as 32-bit will always be far more compatible with real-life apps, why not enable it? More incompetent skeletons in Microsoft's closet, perhaps...
18. Word 2007 crashes by working with graph art and other graphical features, when making charts. (I also got Word 2008 for Mac to crash the same way, but now I digress again...) On my Mac, the only apps that crash as such are Adobe Flash and Office products. Score 1 for Adobe and 5 for Microsoft. Everything else, right down to the OS, is rock-solid stable.
19. Better use of memory. Heck, OS X tells you HOW the memory used. Windows, even win7, still does not. With vista, they said "Unused RAM is wasted RAM" so how come, on a computer with 8GB running Vista-64 (Ultimate rip-off edition), it used 1.8GB for itself and never bothered with the remaining 6.2? Or tell me what it was using it for? Superfetch, you're selling me on? Does it come with a bridge too? No, Vista was poorly scribbled, wasteful slop. Windows requirements are usually based on a factor of 4. If MS says "Minimum RAM is 64MB" then use 128MB if you want something that performs almost decently. And that was Win2000. XP needed 256MB (128 claimed). Vista said 512 but everybody knew it needed about 2GB just for itself... Disk space requirements always seemed to go up by 2. Until Vista, where XP's 1.5GB (which I thought was a piggy in 2001) is nothing comapred to Vista's 15GB.
I should find the chart I typed out on a Windows tech forum, but I'm sure you know where to find the original stats for MS OSes and how to apply the calculations... Win7 is more relaxed on RAM, but MS still can't be bothered to show what RAM is used where and how. Lazy...20. ...
I could go on forever, literally, but I've made my point more than crystal clear. Microsoft writes slop and everything form 2003 onward is buggy as bleep.
Rename it as "Hassle-D'ohs!" and there you go.
No, everything manufactured CAN have problems. The nVidia debacle (nvidia's fault, not Apple's) is one example. Battery blow-ups go to the subcontracting manufacturer in China as I doubt there's a lot of competition to make batteries, despite the false notion that "competition lowers costs"... Apple is not immune; they go for the subcontracting manufacturer they think is best and hope for the best. Unless they make their own mfg plants in China, which is is more costly...
Back to that HP, it's possible the company they used to have their laptop hotplate manufactured screwed up. But given the price of the unit being so low, I highly doubt it.
The iMac I had, 24" and early-2009 model, did not have the bleed. It's possible the manufacturing company Apple contracted screwed up.
I have read the play thanks. And so terribly sorry but the post just screams "I am here to only to start issues."
Here is a thought, up until August I was a die hard PC user, I have built 5 desktops for myself, I have a had at least 3 laptops and they have all had been good machines but they have all had their independent issues so minor others quite serious. I still love my desktop and Windows, but the many manufactures that make Windows machines because they make so many different products dont have the same quality as Macs. Sure the my MBP has had an overly tight hinge but that doesn't effect anything with the performance of the machine and doesn't prevent me from doing my work.
Like the many others had said you are on a HELP forum where 101 of 100 people come here asking for help with their issues, and so of course its going to seem like there is a huge reliability issue, but if you actually look at the threads most people just need to do a SMC reset or reset the PRAM and problem solved. The biggest hardware issues are usually because of spills or they were unlucky and got a faulty machine. Apple isn't perfect, and can still be the most reliable even if some of their machines have problems.
And on that point of the OP saying that he has been here for a year and I have only been here for 4 months, look at your post count and then look at mine.
Really, thats all there is to it.
PCs have these too, ive had to RMA pcs before
Reliable? yes, without a doubt. (i have less mac related issues than pc by powers of 10) currently i cant use my windows pc, because 7 failed to activate on a upgrade from vista, i now have to wade through customer service, who will treat me like a 3rd grade idiot, i have NEVER experienced this with apple, go to the store, and the geniuses take care of it in less than 30 min.
People paid a premium for a mac, therefore, they expect perfection, hence they return it for a dead pixel, most pc users wouldn't even notice it
Let's have some data
I was hoping that someone might actually post some reliability data, you know like failure rates. In about 2minutes of googling, I got to http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9141839/Macs_retake_reliability_ranking_top_spot which claims that Apple is around about no.1.
I like to support my local mac store as I like the option of going and talking to people if things go wrong. Sure, there is anecdotal evidence that things will go wrong (indeed enough to make me hesitate over a new iMac for a month or two) but that said, I got Leopard the day it released and had not a single issue.
Roll the dice....
I was hoping that someone might actually post some reliability data, you know like failure rates. In about 2minutes of googling, I got to http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9141839/Macs_retake_reliability_ranking_top_spot which claims that Apple is around about no.1.
I like to support my local mac store as I like the option of going and talking to people if things go wrong. Sure, there is anecdotal evidence that things will go wrong (indeed enough to make me hesitate over a new iMac for a month or two) but that said, I got Leopard the day it released and had not a single issue.
Roll the dice....
Well... my MBP is mostly made from the same parts as many other laptops, and is assembled in China.
The main part in an MBP the logic board is not used in other laptops and is unique to Apple, and along with the keyboard, trackpad, and possibly display (if I remember correctly). So really the MBP doesn't have much of anything in common with other laptops, other than other Apple laptops.
Sure, everything posted on the internet is true.
For example (Oprah goes on national TV with "fact" from the internet):
https://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?p=8920153
The fact is, with millions of Macs sold, how many "bad" cases do you hear?
FYI: Apple leads HP, Dell in consumer satisfaction survey
http://www.electronista.com/articles/09/06/25/apple.consumers.satisfied/
For example (Oprah goes on national TV with "fact" from the internet):
https://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?p=8920153
The fact is, with millions of Macs sold, how many "bad" cases do you hear?
FYI: Apple leads HP, Dell in consumer satisfaction survey
http://www.electronista.com/articles/09/06/25/apple.consumers.satisfied/
And what about the Intel CPU and Nvidia GPU and all the other chips? and no the displays are Samsungs, LG's and various other brands.
Also:
My HP died twice and just 2 weeks ago my friends HP died. I doubt I'll be ever getting a HP again. ever.
Over a year and a half of non-stop use of my Macbook Pro.
No hangs, no problems, no need to reinstall anything, no crashes, no nothing. Just a 100% working computer always. Always on.
All 5 PCs owned by my roommates in my apartment have reinstalled their OS within the last year at LEAST once.
I am not saying I like one over the other... I am just stating facts.
I guess I do miss PCs for gaming.
No hangs, no problems, no need to reinstall anything, no crashes, no nothing. Just a 100% working computer always. Always on.
All 5 PCs owned by my roommates in my apartment have reinstalled their OS within the last year at LEAST once.
I am not saying I like one over the other... I am just stating facts.
I guess I do miss PCs for gaming.
And what about the Intel CPU and Nvidia GPU and all the other chips? and no the displays are Samsungs, LG's and various other brands.
Also:
My HP died twice and just 2 weeks ago my friends HP died. I doubt I'll be ever getting a HP again. ever.
Well I wasn't sure about the displays, and while you are correct about the CPU and GPU, Apple has in the past made intel make a special CPU just for them, and the GPU's integrate into their own boards.
Have you not considered who comes to the forums? Yes, mostly people who need help and people who are upset within one way or another. Not a good way to judge Apple's reliability.
Yeah, no one comes here to say "My Mac is working fine" every week or so.
as other people say...most of the people come on these forums only for help...
and you also read many stories about apple's customer care...and how they personally take care of each person affected ( there was a thread today that one dude got yellow shade on his new imac's screen and he got a new one absolutely free and that too upgraded to i5 ...)
no company is perfect...hp/dell/etc have worst quality...sometimes they are better...but they don't have this kind of customer service.
and you also read many stories about apple's customer care...and how they personally take care of each person affected ( there was a thread today that one dude got yellow shade on his new imac's screen and he got a new one absolutely free and that too upgraded to i5 ...)
no company is perfect...hp/dell/etc have worst quality...sometimes they are better...but they don't have this kind of customer service.
A free upgrade to i5? Hard to believe. But yeah, Apple's service is hard to beat.
Im no apologist for MS - and I hate both Windows and Linux, but my extensive reading of Mac forii (and discussions with mac using colleagues and friends) I'd like to put in my two cents as a potential switcher. I thought the grass would be so much greener on the other side *but*:
1. A Windows veteran of 20 years, I knew there would be problems when Win95 came out with its registry... it can be cleaned, but not compacted. This means it grows larger over time. This means it gets fragmented over time. And that increases the chance of file corruption
Yes, registry sucks
2. the paging file can be fragmented - the way Windows "works", file-level fragmentation is the norm and no other platform is this lazy
Not a huge issue.
3. wasn't NTFS originally touted as being fragment-proof? ( I hope that's just an urban legend)
4. Reactivation hassles, just installing a video driver can break the system - or a BIOS upadte
Agree, *but* MS need a method to protect their revenue structure. Apple have it easy because they can just do a EFI/BIOS check.
5. Installing a software update (e.g. FSX Acceleration pack) also causing reactivation and being told it's not a valid license... say WHAT???
Never had this occur, but see above.
6. Buying a $500 suite that just came out and, when reporting a bug that affects any web browser that isn't IE, being told to wait for the next version (like I can tell MY customers to wait 18 months for a fix)
Haven't had this myself.
7. No OS should take 16GB of disk space (Win7)
There's a heck of a lot of legacy support in Win7. SL has dropped support for machines as young as 4 years old (PowerPC architecture)
8. Windows Vista, 'nuff said
Haven't used Vista, no comment.
9. "Windows DLL Hell" - do a web search. 'nuff said
Haven't had this problem in 18years of Windows usage. Have had library hell in Linux a lot though.
10. Uses parallel processing and ordered loading to make it appear to boot faster, though it still takes a couple of minutes for the system to be properly used.
Windows 7 boots fast enough for me on my 1.66GHz dual core. Lenovo is showing boot times down to 5seconds with their EFI BIOS. So it's not a MS/Windows issue per se. (Linux takes a while to load too) - if you make the HW and OS it's a lot easier, right (;
11. non-BMP compatibility isn't in the OS engine, it's in the IE engine and hooked into the OS. I've had problems happen there too
12. Using Microsoft Knowledgebase to find problems, the solutions they propose never work
Nor does Logitech. And hey, Apple's website claims to have a fix for SATA II on MBP, and *lots* of users still complain about BBOD, etc.
13. Screen size changing should be a user-specific setting, not system-specific
agree, but not an issue for me
14. network printers should be system-specific as well, for any user logging into that PC in that area
agree, but not an issue for me
15. Thanks to the registry (and software activation issues), you CANNOT transfer apps between old and new computers.
Agree
16. PCs sold at the store have "crapware" integrated by 3rd parties. These subsidize (lower the cost of) the computer's price, but once you install software, you can clean but you cannot compress the registry. Some have the nerve to say vendors should not pre-install these. Then don't whine if prices go up by a couple hundred dollars... oopsie-doodles to y'all...
Partially agree - this is the price the consumer pay for OS/HW independence and low (too low?) prices
17. PAE exists for the servers so why not the client OS? All drivers MUST be digitally signed so they are well-made and therefore not the cause. NT up to Win2000 had this. XP onward had it dropped. WHY??? PAE allows 32-bit OSes to use more than 4GB of RAM. And with Vista and Win7 being real little piggies devouring the market, as 32-bit will always be far more compatible with real-life apps, why not enable it? More incompetent skeletons in Microsoft's closet, perhaps...
18. Word 2007 crashes by working with graph art and other graphical features, when making charts. (I also got Word 2008 for Mac to crash the same way, but now I digress again...)
On my Mac, the only apps that crash as such are Adobe Flash and Office products. Score 1 for Adobe and 5 for Microsoft. Everything else, right down to the OS, is rock-solid stable.
The number of posts (BBOD) show that this is not true for everyone. Windows has been pretty stable for me (c.f. KDE 4.1 under Mandriva, which crashes every 50us). Quite a few versions of OS X have had bugs, some more serious than others.
19. Better use of memory. Heck, OS X tells you HOW the memory used. Windows, even win7, still does not. [...] Win7 is more relaxed on RAM, but MS still can't be bothered to show what RAM is used where and how. Lazy...
Have you looked at 'Resource Monitor' (Start Menu, type 'Resource Monitor') this gives a lot of useful info?
20. ...
I could go on forever, literally, but I've made my point more than crystal clear. Microsoft writes slop and everything form 2003 onward is buggy as bleep.
Back to that HP, it's possible the company they used to have their laptop hotplate manufactured screwed up.
Earlier (pre 2008?) Macbooks are known for running *really hot*
1. A Windows veteran of 20 years, I knew there would be problems when Win95 came out with its registry... it can be cleaned, but not compacted. This means it grows larger over time. This means it gets fragmented over time. And that increases the chance of file corruption
Yes, registry sucks
2. the paging file can be fragmented - the way Windows "works", file-level fragmentation is the norm and no other platform is this lazy
Not a huge issue.
3. wasn't NTFS originally touted as being fragment-proof? ( I hope that's just an urban legend)
4. Reactivation hassles, just installing a video driver can break the system - or a BIOS upadte
Agree, *but* MS need a method to protect their revenue structure. Apple have it easy because they can just do a EFI/BIOS check.
5. Installing a software update (e.g. FSX Acceleration pack) also causing reactivation and being told it's not a valid license... say WHAT???
Never had this occur, but see above.
6. Buying a $500 suite that just came out and, when reporting a bug that affects any web browser that isn't IE, being told to wait for the next version (like I can tell MY customers to wait 18 months for a fix)
Haven't had this myself.
7. No OS should take 16GB of disk space (Win7)
There's a heck of a lot of legacy support in Win7. SL has dropped support for machines as young as 4 years old (PowerPC architecture)
8. Windows Vista, 'nuff said
Haven't used Vista, no comment.
9. "Windows DLL Hell" - do a web search. 'nuff said
Haven't had this problem in 18years of Windows usage. Have had library hell in Linux a lot though.
10. Uses parallel processing and ordered loading to make it appear to boot faster, though it still takes a couple of minutes for the system to be properly used.
Windows 7 boots fast enough for me on my 1.66GHz dual core. Lenovo is showing boot times down to 5seconds with their EFI BIOS. So it's not a MS/Windows issue per se. (Linux takes a while to load too) - if you make the HW and OS it's a lot easier, right (;
11. non-BMP compatibility isn't in the OS engine, it's in the IE engine and hooked into the OS. I've had problems happen there too
12. Using Microsoft Knowledgebase to find problems, the solutions they propose never work
Nor does Logitech. And hey, Apple's website claims to have a fix for SATA II on MBP, and *lots* of users still complain about BBOD, etc.
13. Screen size changing should be a user-specific setting, not system-specific
agree, but not an issue for me
14. network printers should be system-specific as well, for any user logging into that PC in that area
agree, but not an issue for me
15. Thanks to the registry (and software activation issues), you CANNOT transfer apps between old and new computers.
Agree
16. PCs sold at the store have "crapware" integrated by 3rd parties. These subsidize (lower the cost of) the computer's price, but once you install software, you can clean but you cannot compress the registry. Some have the nerve to say vendors should not pre-install these. Then don't whine if prices go up by a couple hundred dollars... oopsie-doodles to y'all...
Partially agree - this is the price the consumer pay for OS/HW independence and low (too low?) prices
17. PAE exists for the servers so why not the client OS? All drivers MUST be digitally signed so they are well-made and therefore not the cause. NT up to Win2000 had this. XP onward had it dropped. WHY??? PAE allows 32-bit OSes to use more than 4GB of RAM. And with Vista and Win7 being real little piggies devouring the market, as 32-bit will always be far more compatible with real-life apps, why not enable it? More incompetent skeletons in Microsoft's closet, perhaps...
18. Word 2007 crashes by working with graph art and other graphical features, when making charts. (I also got Word 2008 for Mac to crash the same way, but now I digress again...)
On my Mac, the only apps that crash as such are Adobe Flash and Office products. Score 1 for Adobe and 5 for Microsoft. Everything else, right down to the OS, is rock-solid stable.
The number of posts (BBOD) show that this is not true for everyone. Windows has been pretty stable for me (c.f. KDE 4.1 under Mandriva, which crashes every 50us). Quite a few versions of OS X have had bugs, some more serious than others.
19. Better use of memory. Heck, OS X tells you HOW the memory used. Windows, even win7, still does not. [...] Win7 is more relaxed on RAM, but MS still can't be bothered to show what RAM is used where and how. Lazy...
Have you looked at 'Resource Monitor' (Start Menu, type 'Resource Monitor') this gives a lot of useful info?
20. ...
I could go on forever, literally, but I've made my point more than crystal clear. Microsoft writes slop and everything form 2003 onward is buggy as bleep.
Back to that HP, it's possible the company they used to have their laptop hotplate manufactured screwed up.
Earlier (pre 2008?) Macbooks are known for running *really hot*