Hacker News Reader

Comment by matt_wulfeck | Hacker News Reader

Your anecdotal experience runs so completely contrary to mine that I don't even know what to say.

My MacBook works. It just works. No tinkering, compiling, fidgeting, anything -- and this is precisely why I like it and will continue to use it. I don't want my hardware getting in the way.

And reliability is certainly not a myth. In my days I've supported all three platforms and by far it was MPB that gave me the least grief. This is doubly true with hardware. Linux is close behind Mac but I think most engineers brave enough to venture it would competent to deal with problems on their own.

When a MPB has a problem: take it to a Mac store and get a replacement. When a Lenovo had a problem? Ship it to Virginia on your dime and wait 6 weeks.

I seriously suggest you take your MPB to a mac store and speak to them about your problem.

View on HN

What you in effect just did: "Your experience is anecdotal, so now I tell you that Reliability is not a myth based on my anecdotal experience."

The point he wanted to make is most likely not that all Macs suck all the time, but that Mac does not automatically mean reliable or more reliable than any other OS/system. So while it might not be worse than other systems (I don't want to make a judgement based on the few Macs I had to fix for friends without ever having used them myself), it certainly is no super-reliable saint either.

And my limited first-hand experience agrees with him.

Additional interesting anecdote: my brother and I bought identical macbook pros at the same time. I generally didn't have much of a problem with it. Him? Well, let's say it was barely more reliable than the windows laptop he had before. Powering down wrong, failing to identify displays, color gamut screwups, power issues, boot problems. Mostly transient, but very real, failures in both hardware and software.

> When a Lenovo had a problem? Ship it to Virginia on your dime and wait 6 weeks.

When I've had problems with US purchased Dell's, I had someone there within 48 hours with a replacement piece, despite being in 1) Austria and 2) Italy.

Lenovo support has been great to me as well. With my second-hand machine, a year out of warranty, they paid to have my laptop shipped to them for a keyboard and possible motherboard replacement for free. This is after I'd damaged the keyboard by intentionally testing, "How well DOES the water drainage system work?" by pouring water into the keyboard. I was frank with them about what happened, and it did not matter.

Care to elaborate on what happened when you poured water onto your laptop? Which model was it? Do you know why it failed?

I had a run-in with Lenovo support last year. Three-year warranty, two and a half years old, fried motherboard caused by the plastic in the power socket coming apart. Not sure how, don't care - it's wear-and-tear. On initial calls they refused to honour the warranty. I went through the complaints procedure and eventually they relented. It took six weeks but they covered all costs and completely fixed it.

In the meanwhile I'd got a macbook so I could continue working. The mac was driving me crazy. The keyboard feel, the trackpad feel, the lack of nipple mouse, the every-changing UI that never does quite what I want it to.

When the Lenovo came back I tried it out, fell in love again, and moved back to it. At some point the SSD will die and I'll get another one. There's nothing close to a Thinkpad. To me, they feel like they built as tools in a way that other devices lack.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com