Every Mac I've owned has failed
37signals.com
37signals.com
Some statistically small time after that, I'll fail as well. Bummer.
My point is though: Apple treated me right when my machine fails, the other laptop manufacturers (Dell, Acer) do not, not by a long shot, and for that reason alone I'll keep buying Macs.
When my MBP died earlier this month I called Apple, and without any hassle whatsoever, they volunteered to replace it with a brand new unibody model.
What a world of difference in service. BTW, Toshiba charged more for the extended warranty than AppleCare.
My roommate spilled soup onto his Dell laptop. He immediately shut it down, tried to dry it up but the laptop didn't boot. So he called the support and on the next day a gentleman from Dell knocked on our door, replaced the motherboard and voila, the laptop was as good as new. It was interesting just to look at the man from Dell how skillfully he disassembled and reassembled the laptop.
One other friend exploits this package. When he thinks he should have a new MB or CPU or anything, he just calls them and tells it "squeaks". Next day, a man comes and replaces anything with a new piece. No questions asked.
And this package is valid throughout the world, no matter where you are. Dell rocks.
Your experience differs from mine :) I've always used PCs because they were cheap and I needed them for work, but last year I was working as a consultant (so integration wasn't such a big deal) and there was a tempting offer on MacBooks. I got one, I loved it.
After about a year, the bit of the case where you rest your palms started to crack. The intarwebs told me this was a known problem, and should be covered by warranty. I contacted on Apple service centre, to be told "no problem, just drop it in and we'll fix it." Of course, it would take two weeks, and there was no way to expedite things.
So I tried another Apple retailer, and was told to bring it in that afternoon. "Great," I thought, "this is why you pay a bit more for a Mac - service!" Unfortunately, when I got there they said the same thing - two weeks, no exceptions. After about 40 minutes of arguing and cajoling, the Genius agreed to do it there and then. Although I was pleased about this, it would have been better if they could have done it without the arguments.
I just bought a new Toshiba and passed the MacBook on to my daughter (she's a real Mac fanatic). The new PC is great, I'm surprised that I actually like Windows Vista, and it only cost UKP400. So if it goes wrong I could easily buy a replacement. I might even buy a Netbook with the cash I didn't spend getting another Mac.
In my family, we have had 5 macs. An iBook G3, a Macbook Pro, two Macbooks, and an old Powerbook 170 from 1991. All of them are still in perfect working order, and have only ever broken as a result of physical damage (drops, spills, etc.) The Powerbook 170 was used as a word processor for about 15 years, and still remains in working order.
I have had nothing but positive experiences with Macs, but I need to emphasize that my experiences are not data. They are anecdotes, and thus can't prove anything one way or the other.
But he said he has enough anecdotes that it feels statistical to him.
But he said he has enough anecdotes that it feels statistical to him.
To turn anecdotes into data, you need good answers to these two questions:
- Are the samples very similar? (ie, same models, same usage patterns)
- Do they vary in a predictable way from a control group?
The only things which are the same between the samples are the owner, and the brand. We don't know any specifics about internal product testing and development, so it is a stretch to say that those details are the same across all samples.
The control group is non-existent: it is assumed to be a group of computers identical in every way to those being tested, except they never fail. That is: the control group is imagined to be just what is needed to prove the desired conclusions.
Having said all that, I have had repair-under-warranty problems with all the Macs that I have owned too.
"The ACSI scores measure a consumer's overall satisfaction with a company, which includes product quality, value, customer service, and essentially anything else that impresses or annoys a customer of a particular company. Apple scored an 85 on the index, its highest score ever and a full ten points higher than second place finisher Dell."
One of our dogs only lasted 17 years, the other failed after just 15. The chooks weren't much good; we only seemed to get about 4 or 5 years from them. The finches are all dead, and so are the budgies. The rabbit died too.
My wife had a dog they gave away, but they kept in contact with the new owner, and after 6 years with the new owner, that dog was dead too.
Let the torrent of anecdotes begin.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=323829
Totally kidding. :)
But I'm leaving Apple with my next laptop. For coding, Linux is better (same dev/deployment environment, and better repos / package managers), and for gaming, windows is better. Also, the hardware is much cheaper (about $500-1000 less for an MBP equivalent non-Apple laptop). Most OS X apps are too mouse driven for my taste anyway. The only apps I'll miss are Textmate, Smultron, Dictionary. The only OS feature I'll miss is painless plug and play.
PS: Written on a 2 year old macbook whose screen flickers after sleep and which is constantly in danger of overheating due to fan failures.
The only computer I have had that hasn't eventually failed was my old Dell laptop - which funnily enough was dropped more times than I care to imagine.
The worst of which was when it slipped off the hood of my car, slid down the hill (upside down) that the car was parked on top of for about 35 metres, before coming to a rest after it collided with the curb.
Strange.
1) ascribe it to Dell and not the relevant component maker?
and
2) continue to buy Dell products after a few failures?
Also, you often have to be a PITA to Dell to make sure that international service happens.
That's my experience, as a former Dell business tech support dude.
I guess I may have gotten lucky, but it really left a good impression on me.
I'd have to say that my experience of Apple hardware is even worse than his, modern Macbooks are at least user serviceable meaning you only need to undo a couple of screws to get at the hard drive, the count on the old iBooks was between twelve and 17 screws to get to the hard drive.
I blame all of these on myself. Even paying 3k for a top of the line laptop, I really dont expect the computer to last more than 1.5 years at the way I use the computer. Pounding away on the computer for 60 hours a week on average, and working out of lots of coffee shops, I'm hardly the typical use case for a computer user.
Just like a consumer coffee machine cant be expected to stay functional for long if it were in use in a restaurant, I dont expect my consumer laptop to work for the same time period as an average consumer would.
However, if you're using a laptop for commercial purposes, and at such a high capacity, you should probably expect to be investing at least yearly in your equipment.
This same argument used to come up then too, in regard to the European bikes (KTM and Husky) vs the Japanese ones. Essentially, people would get upset that their new European bike, for which they had paid a substantial premium over an equivalent Japanese bike, would still break and require maintenance. I've owned both a KTM and a Husky (plus a Honda and a Kawasaki), and can attest to the fact that they are just pieces of machinery, like everything else. But... (and this is the bit people find hard to understand) ... the Euro bikes had something the Japanese ones didn't; something that made you forgive their mechanical woes and their extreme price. Man I miss those days...
Hardware failure is inevitable; the real question is, does Apple do a better job when that inevitability strikes?
Every other Mac I've ever had since then is still running. Another iBook, a MacBook, PowerMac G4, and the Mac Pro I'm typing on.
It's a little annoying, honestly. At least the PC hardware has the decency to die and get out of the way when I stop using it. :-)
My other old mac a G3 (i forget how old it is) is still working well with Tiger (albeit a bit slower compared to everything else)
My laptop rule of thumb: always buy the extended warranty.
My Mac Pro's RAM failed within 6 months.
My MacBook Pro's battery died and had to be replaced within 11 months.
Of course, it DOES fail on the software side... Windows gets pretty painful as it ages.
I've always aid that Mac vs. PC is a decision of whether you want crappy-but-pretty hardware and good OS or ugly-but-solid hardware (assuming you do your research) and a mediocre OS that ages poorly.
I'm seriously considering a hackintosh for my next machine.
Hard drives are probably the component most likely to die in either and they all use the same group of vendors. Display failures are also more common in laptops and again, they all use the same group of vendors.
More like they deserved what they got. A four or five year old hard drive should b expected to die yesterday and full backups should be an absolute requirement. I have had plenty of drives die long before that and would never dare push a hard drive to such a long limit with no backup, especially a laptop one that is moved around a lot.
And just to top it off "hard drives" are not Apple special hardware. I have noticed that some comments have negative points, how do I vote down something (in this case the article)?
Almost every hard drive I have had has failed.
I just had a new 500 gig I used for backups fail after less than a year. It replaced a 160 gig that died after 2 years.
Every laptop I have owned has had the hard drive die (3, one mac).
I have had cd and dvd drives fail in various machines.
Personally the least hassles resulting from failure has been with Macs because I buy the applecare warrantee, and I just bring the machine in to get it fixed in a few hours. I imagine Dells service would be comparable, I would probably do that if I had a PC as my primary machine.