# Is Apple going down the drain?



## Boji (Oct 29, 2004)

Hi everyone,

Is it just me, or is the quality of Apple gone down the drains lately? Popping transistors on iMac G5s, hardware issues with single-CPU G5 towers, faulty iBook batteries and motherboards, noisy MacBook Pros, and assembly issues on iPod Hi-Fis, only to name a few out of memory. 

Before you dismiss this post as the work of a Winblows zealot, I've been a loyal Mac user since the early 90s, and have owned nothing but Macs, since I've always considered them to be superior computers (hardware and the OS), but I'm a bit disillusioned by the recent products. Now, with Apple caring for their bottom line more than ever it seems, it's moving its call centre to India, where they don't have to pay the tech support agents as much as they do in the Canadian call centre.

Any thoughts?


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## Boji (Oct 29, 2004)

Sorry, this should've gone in the Anything Mac/iPod section. Forum moderators, please move this thread wherever you believe appropriate.


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## JPL (Jan 21, 2005)

Ah the realities of business. Lest we not forget it is a business and the shareholders want to make money. They (the shareholders) don't care if the product is wonderful or not, just sell as many as you can and sort out the problems later if needs be.


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## Bjornbro (Feb 19, 2000)

Boji said:


> Any thoughts?


Yeah, how come you didn't mention how many millions of Apple's products that are made and work perfectly straight out of the box? What is the product failure percentage rate for Apple? How about Apple versus the competion, are they the best or worst in this percentile? What would be acceptable for you?

Is the glass half full or half empty?


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## MacDoc (Nov 3, 2001)

Apple is around 13% problems in the first year - a bit better than industry standards.
First gen problems are to be expected.

Call centre - stick with ehmac 

There ARE things about Apple to be disillusioned with - none that you've mentioned.


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## Tait Kahray (Jan 22, 2004)

MacDoc said:


> There ARE things about Apple to be disillusioned with - none that you've mentioned.


Now that's an enticing statement - what kind of disillusioning things are you referring to?


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## Boji (Oct 29, 2004)

Thanks for the post, JPL and Bjornbro. I don't know the percentage of product failure vs. competitors--is that available anywhere?

This hardly accounts for what I believe to be valid data, and will be the first to admit that this is more of an emotional response, but friends who have Dells, HPs, etc., all seem to be doing very well with their computers, while a friend's 12" PB died on him, another had his iBook's motherboard replaced twice. Another friend, who bought a single 1.8 G5 tower, had nothing but problems, and I've seen reports of the MBP being very noisy and, in one case, the power supply made the MagSafe connector melt. These may very well be isolated cases, but it seems to me that, years ago, you just didn't hear about anyone having problems with their Macs. Now it seems far more common.


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## MacDoc (Nov 3, 2001)

http://www.tellonapple.org/

••••

There have ALWAYS been various problems with Macs - I've been there since the very beginning. 
The 1.8 G5 was indeed a real issue but it was mostly Apple firmware team that dropped the ball on it.

Apple has been reasonable about covering design problems - the only one outstanding it the ram slot issue for Powerbook 15".

I think Gartner or JD Power have stats.
That magsafe story is a bit suspect - cats were involved.

MBPs are certainly not noisy tho there is some issue with a bit of hiss from one of the speakers.

ALL machines can fail - Apple does okay


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## Boji (Oct 29, 2004)

LOL! Yep, the gang on ehMac is by far the best. Who needs a stinkin' call centre!!!


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## Boji (Oct 29, 2004)

Tait Kahray said:


> Now that's an enticing statement - what kind of disillusioning things are you referring to?


Maybe I have an answer--I despise the fact that Apple is choking small Apple retailers by opening up their glitzy Apple Stores in their vicinity. Yeah, I know, that's business for you, but it's nonetheless sad to see the small Apple retailers, which always stuck by with Apple (even in the Gil Amelio days), and now that Apple is high and mighty again, Apple gobbles them up by directly competing with them.


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## Boji (Oct 29, 2004)

MacDoc said:


> http://www.tellonapple.org/
> 
> ••••
> 
> ...


Thanks for the reply MacDoc--perhaps it was speaker hiss, but I'm pretty sure the noise came from underneath the keyboard. Maybe it was a dud. ARGH!


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## MacDoc (Nov 3, 2001)

The answer is to be proactive - support the dealers and tell your friends to as well.
Go SEE it at the Apple store.
Buy locally.
That was the idea in the first plce - the stores were to be showcases not competitors.
IF the playing field was level it would be different......it's not as you see.

Apple is after Dell, plain and simple and the "channel" is incidental to that pursuit.
Most large companies have had historical issues with channel versus direct.


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## Boji (Oct 29, 2004)

MacDoc said:


> The answer is to be proactive - support the dealers and tell your friends to as well.
> Go SEE it at the Apple store.
> Buy locally.
> That was the idea in the first plce - the stores were to be showcases not competitors.
> ...


It makes more sense to me if I look at it that way--the Apple Stores in malls and other prominent places is constant advertising, plus the Stores have experts that, more or less, evangelize the Windows crowd and teach us Macheads how to make better use of our computers. Thanks MacDoc.


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## teeterboy3 (May 22, 2005)

I have been a MacUser since 1984.

Number of Macs that were faulty: 1
(And, It was replaced, under warranty, with an upgraded model no cost to me)
Number of Macs I have personally owned: 5
Number of Macs that my immediate family have owned: 36

So in all the Apple products (which you can add to the above totals when you consider iPods (I have 3, my family have them too), Apple lasers & inkjet printers) I have personally seen one product fail and it was covered uner warranty. That doesn't really support your theory.

I wouldn't take the rants or 'stories' on message boards and news feeds - the soap box of our generation - as a conduit to collective, accepted reality. But more correctly as opinions of a segment of the collected whole who feel that their opinion is worth more than those they disagree with.

I see the move for the call centre really as a non sequitur. I have rarely called an Apple Call Centre in my years as an Apple user. And I think that goes for a lot of Apple users. We pride ourselves in being able to install and maintain our systems with little to no help. And the help we do need we use command question mark or the web for the answers. So what do I care if the call centre is in Moosejaw Saskatchewan or the Mars for that matter. Bottom line is, Apple is probably trying to save a few dollars. Bring down the bottom line. And as I would guess to able to price their products a little more competitively - the one thing everyone seems to bitch about. And oddly enough, now that it seems they are trying to do that, we complain that they are going down the tubes.

All-in-all I am more excited about their product line these days than I have ever been and just as assured in their quality as I have no reason to think otherwise - unless of course I was to adopt the internet sqwak-box over my own personal experiences.

I have been a Mac User and person long enough to learn one truth: For every decision to be made in life, there is a person who has no personal stake in the result, that will somehow be able to tell you why that decision was wrongly arrived at.

And the truth is, only as far as your own experience. How many Apples have you owned, and how many have failed on you?


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## Boji (Oct 29, 2004)

teeterboy3 said:


> I have been a MacUser since 1984.
> 
> Number of Macs that were faulty: 1
> (And, It was replaced, under warranty, with an upgraded model no cost to me)
> ...


Thanks for the post Teeterboy. You're right, the Net is the modern day equivalent of the soap box. With that in mind, however, perhaps my friends have had bad luck with their products. To answer your question, none of my Macs have failed me *knocks on wood*, but with everyone around me complaining about their Macs, I was starting to think that I was an exception more than the norm, hence why I began this thread. 

I understand that Apple is bringing down their bottom line, and one way of doing is to move their call centre to India. I would just like to see Apple being able to do the same while still keeping Canadians employed.


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## vapour (Feb 18, 2003)

At the same time it bugs me that a lot of these resellers jack up the price as well. Locally there are only a few places to buy macs and with the exception of BestBuy there is always an add on premium. I think the small resellers have also had a bit of a monoply locally because my options have been limited, hence the higher price. Having said that the bigger corporations are out to make maxium profit and if they can control the playing field they will.


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## MacDoc (Nov 3, 2001)

Much of that is Apple's doing in cutting dealer margins and what they pay their dealers for service.
Retail in any electronics field is tough these days as you are competing with big box AND the internet......no easy task.


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## (( p g )) (Aug 17, 2002)

Electronics get more sophisticated as the cost of assembling them keeps dropping. It's not just Apple that is contending with this. 

Look what $1400 will buy you today from Apple. That's less than half of what an old Mac (Lisa?) was going for in the 1980s.


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## UnleashedLive (Aug 9, 2004)

Boji said:


> Who needs a stinkin' call centre!!!



The poor smuck whos computer won't turn on.

But other then that. ehmac is great


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## Gerbill (Jul 1, 2003)

(( p g )) said:


> Electronics get more sophisticated as the cost of assembling them keeps dropping. It's not just Apple that is contending with this.
> 
> Look what $1400 will buy you today from Apple. That's less than half of what an old Mac (Lisa?) was going for in the 1980s.


"Less than half" is putting it mildly. The Lisa cost just short of $10,000 US in 1983.


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## Chealion (Jan 16, 2001)

Thread moved to Anything Mac & iPod


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## Jason H (Feb 1, 2004)

Yes, apple is going down the drain. 
New machines are disposable. Not worth fixing when they break. Its sad.

I've had the following hardware failures:
5x ibook g3 logic boards, 1 sleep led ibook g3, top case on an ibook g3 (came cracked), ibook ac adaptor(ibook g4), DC board (iBook g4)


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## Jestered (Aug 18, 2005)

My thoughts...

Apple has to compete and in order to drive prices down they have to use parts/suppliers that provide lower quality than they use to provide. I personally would rather have lower prices and deal with the hiccups, which are covered under warranty by the way, than spend $4000 for a MBP. I still believe the Apple experience is much better than the PC world in that area.

As far as Apple going after the smaller Apple retailers by opening up Apple Stores... that is ludicrous. No one at Apple said, "hey, lets choke out our retailers by opening our own stores". What happened is that Apple saw what Dell was doing and said, "you know what, we can do that too". As an effect of that, the smaller retailers lost some business. I don't think it is as big as what some may think. The markup on Apple computers is hardly anything. The small Apple retailers make much more money on service than they do on selling computers. Apple was going after the competition in the computer market and not their own retailers.

As far as the problems with Apple computers, I firmly believe that it is not that bad. I think the fact that all you read about with any computer is the bad. "This does not work... I can't get this to work.... this went bad....". That is all that is on the net so people start thinking that it is a problem. The fact is that the few problems are all you read about, but you never get anyone posting, "hey everyone, I have no problems and just wanted to say hi". It is all a false sense of reality.

Yes, I know that in certain circumstances some people may have the odd chance to have multiple problems all at once and it seems like Apple is now just crap, but that is not the case in my opinion.

Just my 2cents....


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## supremelyawesome (Sep 17, 2005)

hey everyone, i have no problems and just wanted to say hi


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## MacDoc (Nov 3, 2001)

Apple machines are far better made now than ever before - they've ALMOST stopped using sticky tape. 
The internal design, finish and dressing, the case fit on the G5 towers is gorgeous.

Design and execution on the G5 and Intel iMacs aside from power supply probem is also top of the heap.


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