I bought my Imac 3 years ago. It died because of the power supply problem that I had fixed once before. It happened again and now my mother board is damaged. Has anyone dealt with this same situation and if so can we complain to apple? Already I took it to apple and they said that the extended warranty ended in december and I would have to pay for the power supply and for a new mother board. So the nice lady told me that I should just buy a new computer. After spending 1800$ on their top of the line computer now 3 years later my only choice is buy another one... WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO APPLE!!??
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My G5 1.8 GHZ POWER SUPPLY!!!!
- Thread starter trojannman
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Was there a question in there somewhere? Some computers fail. That's life. You can probably make a few hundred dollars by selling the parts on eBay.
In some cases if you call AppleCare and talk to them politely about it, they may be willing to make an exception and repair it for free. This is more likely if it's an educational purchase, I believe, though maybe only institutional.
I've personally seen three of these failures myself, all of which were repaired by Apple for free.
Just to note, though, so far as I know the models affected by the premature power supply failures were manufactured through June 2005. Meaning either your iMac was bought second-hand and is actually closer to 4 years old, or the failure is unrelated to the batch of bad power supplies. Stuff does sometimes break after 3-4 years, after all. There's a reason most extended warranties don't go higher than 3 on electronics.
My point being that I wouldn't get *too* worked up about a 3-4 year old computer breaking. Apple has a deserved reputation for quality, and I would certainly *hope* my Mac would last much longer than that (in fact, I take care of several that are 7+ years old and running perfectly), but statistically some do break. At which point it's out of warranty and your problem--that's just the way it goes.
If you think the situation would be any different when the power supply in a 4-year-old HP or Dell blows up and takes the motherboard with it, you would be wrong.
I've personally seen three of these failures myself, all of which were repaired by Apple for free.
Just to note, though, so far as I know the models affected by the premature power supply failures were manufactured through June 2005. Meaning either your iMac was bought second-hand and is actually closer to 4 years old, or the failure is unrelated to the batch of bad power supplies. Stuff does sometimes break after 3-4 years, after all. There's a reason most extended warranties don't go higher than 3 on electronics.
My point being that I wouldn't get *too* worked up about a 3-4 year old computer breaking. Apple has a deserved reputation for quality, and I would certainly *hope* my Mac would last much longer than that (in fact, I take care of several that are 7+ years old and running perfectly), but statistically some do break. At which point it's out of warranty and your problem--that's just the way it goes.
If you think the situation would be any different when the power supply in a 4-year-old HP or Dell blows up and takes the motherboard with it, you would be wrong.
Frankly, I think Apple's "reputation for quality" is hardly "deserved" given the history of the manufacturing issues over the past several years. While we're fans of the hardware, one also has to be realistic and acknowledge that Apple has had both major and minor snafus in putting out reliable consumer products.
Shall we overlook dead pixels and LCDs in iMacs that fail?; Apple certainly wasn't immune to the bad capacitor plague of a few years back; then there's the laptop battery issues and a host of other defects that those "mere PCs" seem to suffer from.
All in all, Apple does a good job, but they are a long way from being substanatially better than other major brands.
That's the thing though. **** happens, and while Apple did chose those particular parts, Sony makes the batteries and LG or Samsung(?) make the LCDs. Every PC manufacturer does the same and is just as susceptable to the same defects. Since there are so many different PC manufacturers, and people typically have low expectations (and they are sometimes less expensive, and many people are used to buying one every 2-3 years) for them you don't hear about it as much. Apple folks as a whole expect better build quality, but the unfortunate truth is that everything fails after a given amount of time, anyone is susceptable to getting a DOA product, and stuff happens to all manufacturers who use various parts from others.
Exactly, Apple is hardly immune from poor QC at its overseas manufacturing facilities or the vendors it uses for subsystems.
No, they're not. But on average, they source good components and have good factory QC. Not perfect, but well above average. That doesn't mean they're unquestionably the best in the world, but they are very good.
You can search for surveys from PC Mag, Consumer Reports, and any number of smaller outlets on the topic, and you'll find that Apple is usually in the top 3 or so (usually in competition with Lenovo/IBM, occasionally Sony, and somewhat surprisingly in the last year Asus). They're consistently ranked quite a bit higher than Dell, HP/Compaq, Gateway, Toshiba, and most of the other big-name brands.
Notably, they almost always rank at the top of customer support satisfaction--short wait times, quick and polite service. Based on my experience with Applecare vs. Dell support (or, for that matter, more or less any company I've ever called on the phone with a tech issue), I can see why.
That said, I also base my opinion on an admittedly small sample of the several dozen computers I personally manage at work or see come through my hands doing freelance tech support. Apple computers are not immune to problems--I've had hardware failures with my personal machines, and seen plenty of others--but they're less likely to suffer from them on average than other manufacturers I have experience with.
Regardless, I do think it's a little unrealistic to get irate about a hardware failure on a 4 year old machine, even a high end one.