My first computer, purchased by my parents after nearly a year of begging, was an Apple II+. That was 1982. I was a Windows user for the next 20 years, but went back to Mac when they switched to Intel chips a couple of years ago. Since then I’ve bought seven Macs for myself, as well as at least one of every iPod and both iPhones. A lot of these were test devices that I’ve passed on to friends and family.
My obvious enthusiasm for Apple products is fairly evident to readers of this blog. But recently I’ve had a string of bad apples come my way, so to speak. It’s time for Apple to stop screwing around and start paying attention to product quality.
I’ll excuse the one hour of battery life I seem to be able to get out of my iPhone. An arrangement of extra power cords (USB, car, wall) and external batteries gets me through the day. I’ll also excuse the fact that iTunes seems hell bent on not syncing applications from my desktop to my iPhone, and inexplicably removing apps from my phone without any notice. I love that damn phone, and it will take a lot more than lost apps and dropped calls to get it out of my hands.
But I don’t have the same blind dedication to other Apple products, and a string of costly problems has left me more than frustrated.
Mac Mini, Macbook Air, Macbook Pro and Macbook, All Failed
I was pretty excited about my Macbook Air, which packs a ton of hardware into a slim and elegant case. But it was unable to stay connected to Wifi for more than a minute or so, even on the brand new Apple Time Capsule router we’re using at the office. I took it into the Apple store - they kept it for a few days and said nothing was wrong. I argued with them and they did nothing. And since I waited more than two weeks after buying it to bring it back in, I couldn’t simply return it. That $1,800 piece of hardware has now been dismantled for parts for a project we’re working on here.
A high end black Macbook made it through one meeting before having some sort of hardware problem that shut it down for good. I still have a few days left to return it for a refund.
The one year old Mac Mini I was using to drive my living room television failed a month ago. It turned itself into a brick. Parts of it are on my coffee table.
My main travel computer, a seven month old Macbook Pro, had a keyboard failure two weeks ago. Apple repaired it and I’m using it now.
That leaves three other Macs in good working order. One is a Macbook pro that my dad now uses. The other two are iMacs that have never had any problems.
But having major issues with four out of seven computers is, um, unacceptable.
MobileMe Has Screwed Up My Work Ecosystem
I have Macs in my main office and my bedroom, as well as my travel computer. I have spent years getting .Mac, which syncs calendar, contact and email data across machines and in the cloud, working properly. It tended to break a lot, but if you kept the OS constantly up to date and were willing to tinker with it, it was a great way to keep synced across any number of computers. I didn’t really care which one I picked up to access email, write a post, etc.
Then came MobileMe and the Apple’s automatic transfer of .Mac customers over to that ridiculously broken new service. I had a suspicion it wouldn’t work at first given how touchy .Mac was, and so I didn’t touch anything on my old computers. But I have never gotten it working on the new Macs I purchased, and now .Mac has failed on all of the synced machines. No more calendar access, contacts syncing, etc.
Apple keeps giving customers free time on the service as a way to apologize for the problems. But that isn’t good enough. I’m not price sensitive to the $99/year they’re charging for the service. But I need it to work, and I need it to work right now.
The failed computers could just be a coincidence, although the wifi problem with the Macbook Air is well documented. The MobileMe debacle, though, is affecting everyone. Apple shouldn’t have merged the services, at least old .Mac customers wouldn’t be enraged today. They need to get their house in order or they risk alienating all these new customers they’ve added over the last few years. The new buyers aren’t Apple fanatics and won’t sit quietly as they try to access broken services via failing hardware.
I wish, i have this problems - vista screw up every day several times… looking forward to germany to downgrade it back to xp.
The last two sentences of the post and THIS comment say it all — why is progress not quite always progress?
Patrick
(ex-XP user, 3 month old MacBookPro user, ex-iPhone 3G user, currently back to my *reliable* BlackBerry 8100 on Tmobile.)
The cult mentality of Apple fans has covered up for a long time how crappy the products are.
They’re sexy, but don’t work like they should all the time and always have all sorts of problems. And people still buy! And pay 2x what it would cost for a PC!
I agree with Julie. Change the names in the article from Apple-centric to MS-centric, and imagine the last couple of sentences. The Mac fanbois would have a field day.
However, 4 out of 7 failures isn’t reason enough to stop using their products? Weird.
Rene, you must be pretty screwed up to have Vista “fail several times a day”. I am both an OS X and Vista user across five machines, and your statement is pretty much bullshit. Do I love OS X, and think it has an architectural edge over Vista? Yes, but Vista SP1 isn’t bad at all, and stability is the least of my grips with it.
Really? I have 4 computers running XP or Vista, including an XP/Vista dual-booter, and I haven’t had any problems on Vista.
But I digress. This is a post about why Apple products suck. And I agree with what Mike said, since the shoddy shit hardware that Apple churns out is why I switched to Windows in the first place. Software is irrelevant if the hardware isn’t stable enough to begin with.
My hackintosh OSX is more stable than Vista on the same PC. That’s telling you something. Don’t believe the pro-Vista counter spin.
You are just illustrating everything that’s wrong with this article. Mike is taking his anecdotal experience with Apple products, and extrapolating that to Apple’s entire output. You are taking your anecdotal experience with Vista, and extrapolating that to all Vista users.
Sorry, it doesn’t work that way. Different people have different experiences. Some people get lemons while most other people are getting glitch-free hardware. And some people have good experiences with a product, even as most other people are having problems with it.
Simply put: just because Vista runs fine for you, doesn’t mean that it’s not faulty for others. And vice versa.
MacBook Air w/SSD has only had OS related issues for me. Otherwise, it is the best product Apple has ever created. BTW, my first Mac was a Duo 230 in the wake of owning a C64 back in the day[tm].
wow ! cant believe I am reading a post on techcrunch which is so negative of apple!
made my day ….i guess now i can read the msft bashing posts with more credibility….i dismissed all of those as biased posts so far
Uh..Did you honestly think he was imagining all of the problems with Microsoft??
Holy … is that crazy talk or what? You stand one hour battery life, lost apps and DROPPED calls? If my Nokia would do those things, I would immediately throw it to the wall. This is crazy as hell.
What’s crazy is throwing things against the wall. Anger management problems much?
Have to agree with you, Joe. Are you beginning to understand just how sicko these Mactoid fanbois really are? Even more awesome, the kool-adie cult members who chime in with “well, everybody has some problems now and again.” If he were talking about Dell there would be bonfires in the street, but it’s Apple, so . . . .
I haven’t had one single hardware issue with any of the macs I have owned. *shrug*
No no, if Michael has a problem with something he bought, then that whole product line has failed. It is written into his contract.
Anecdotal evidence is the best kind!
The point here is that Mac used to be known for rock-solid reliability and that is what kept their loyal users happy when Apple almost went under. Now, with Macs showing up everywhere, Apple is starting to show the problems that inevitably come with a large scale operation (just like Microsoft.)
I’m surprised Michael doesn’t have Apple Care. For like $100 - $200 more, they extend the warranty and fix all of the hardware failures for 3 years. These days, hard drives and power supplies fail more and more all the time (Mac or PC), so it’s worth it more than ever.
Why buy something to expect it to fail? That’s exactly what Apple Care and all these other warranties that stores ask you to buy. Those are a farce, trying to cheat consumers into buying something they don’t need. If a product is sold, it is expected the product to work and work for a duration of time. Unless, if you expect to buy a product and the next day for it to not work. That’s the problem with the manufacturer and if you were to buy insurance for it to work a few months more or a few years more, then the product isn’t worth buying.
@AppleCare?
Then you, my friend, must have never had a hard drive fail before. It just happens even to the best of them. Over the years, I’ve had at least 4-5 hard drives just give out, sometimes sooner than others.
The whole point of paying the extra money Mac products inexplicably cost is to avoid the kind of problems he and many others have with these things. It’s insane to me that he’s able to put up with a phone that deletes apps, drops calls and has one hour of battery life.. and I’m still wondering what exactly is hardware packed about the Mac Book Air, especially when compared with other computers of similar size… The answer is to usually just avoid this stuff no matter how much the commercials and people standing in line for hours like sheep make you think you need to own them.
Likewise. I still have a curvy black mac laptop from 1999 which runs OSX. It’s a little slow, but it’s got about 300,000 miles on it. My MacBook Pro (fingers crossed) has never failed. It does tend to overheat, so I have an extra little fan for it.
It would be good if Mr. Arrington, rather than relying on his own personal anecdotal experience created some kind of study on the matter that could reveal some real numbers.
applecare is for your peace of mind. hardware failure is a function of the environment you use your computer and luck. don’t push your luck by blocking an exhaust opening. no product is failure-proof. lots of things in this world fail outside of warranty. the initial warranty period is balance between profitability and customer good will. good luck shopping around for the failure proof product.
part of the failures mentioned in the article were consumer decisions not to pursue remedies available if you buy something to just try it out, be sure to return it in the prescribed period. if it fails after that, keep pursuing the warranty service. it may be inconvenient, but to choose not to is more your problem than apple’s. remember service people are not perfect. understanding that helps you get better service.
Bring on Android!
I’m not convinced that anyone other than nerdy developers are excited about Android..
And it’s those nerdy developers that will be developing applications for Android that everyone else will check out.
How to do a mass product with top quality at affordable price? This is a hard equation to resolve and it sounds like Apple is having problems with that.
I have an iMac and Airport Extreme, never had any problems with them (although Airport Extreme software upgrade few months ago was very much needed to fix USB hard-drive issues). I also know that buying v1.0 of Apple products can be a risky business - with the iphone it appears that v3.0 will be the one I am going to buy.
I don’t think the price of quality control is the problem.
The biggest problem with Apple products is simply their insane need to make everything so secretive prior to launch makes it impossible to test products properly. It ends up making their first year customers beta testers.
Affordable Price?
Yup. http://www.tomshardware.com/re.....,1985.html.
we are slowly converting everybody to macs in our office …. but today was not a good mac day for us as well … one macbook pro had its hard drive toasted with complete data loss … other froze …. scary signs
Check out Leopard’s Time Machine.
Apple are constantly in denial about their problem. And that problem is mass corporate arrogance, although their honesty over Mobile Me is a positive change. I have also been a Machead since 1991 and had untold problems with every laptop, except the lovely pre-Titanium dual bay Lombard / Wallstreet design that was probably Apple’s most reliable and well conceived laptop. Anyway, last month, I flogged my MacBook Black (that had failed 4 times) and bought what I hope will be a nice stable Mac Mini (so far, so good). With Apple going all wrong with the iPhone (it’s only grace is multi-touch when you think about it), going to get a Nokia E71 and then take a look at developing for Android and do things my way being Apple have let us down.
Totally agree. Furthermore, who wants to send an Email with name (at) me.com?
Please kill MobileMe.
I’ve owned several Macs, and the ones that fail are the ones that have non-paid for music and video.
Ah, you mean the ones that you actually used.
My experience is similar to that of the author. I’m a fan of Apple software but the quality of their hardware leaves a lot to be desired. I’ve never had such a troublesome computer as my black macbook, and I recently returned an iPod Touch that - immediately after I unboxed it and hooked it up to iTunes - asked me to _pay_ to upgrade its firmware and then promptly failed to boot. So, I bought a competitor brand and am very happy with it.
But having major issues with four out of seven computers is, um, unexceptable.
unacceptable*
@Moe: you’re speling is acceptional.
Surely, you mean unexceptional?
Based on the minimal information provided, it’s hard to say whether it was Apple’s hardware, or ‘user error’.
I work in a neuroscience lab, with lots of Macs and Apple monitors. Everybody in the lab has a Macbook pro (one person has a Macbook). The 6 experimental rigs have G5 Power Mac towers or Mac Pros. The lab server is a Mac Pro that just came in a couple weeks ago. There’s also two G4 towers still plugging away.
We recently had two Power Mac G5s die (one power supply, one unknown motherboard issue) after 4 years of pretty intense use. We also have one 23″ cinema display that’s a few years old and has a pinkish cast.
In the year I’ve been here, we haven’t had anything die on arrival or soon after arrival.
Apple has learned from Microsoft. You don’t have to have good quality products to be successful.
That’s right… just make the product shinny and glossy enough
Really? I didn’t know that people desired shins on their computing products.
Couldn’t agree more Mike. Have nearly as many macs as you, and nearly as many problems. When my black Macbook hard disk died the repair shop said it was a known issue and 40% of that model failed within 18 months. Why couldn’t Apple warn me (eg a message via Apple Update)? Appalling if they knew I was likely to lose my data and didn’t tell me. Similarly iPhone 3G is still riddled with issues (eg that 3G fundamentally doesn’t work in UK) and I don’t find Macs any less likely to crash than XP any more.
And that was surprise to you that hard drives will die? You really earned that boy.
Didn’t you watch SATC
After the Intel switch, I got a MacBook. It’s now barely usable due to the ever increasing random shutdown issues. I’ve since got a MacBook Pro. That’s doing ok except for numerous blue screens of death on bootcamp. It obviously wasn’t designed for serious XP use.
My next computer won’t be Apple.
Oh yes - I also got a wireless keyboard. No Page Up/Down, Home/End keys. What a complete joke!!
Haven’t you take a look of the product, before purchasing it? The picture printed on the keyboard box is very clear!
Anyway…
Page UP: alt+up arrow
Page Down: alt+down arrow
Home: cmd+alt+up arrow
End: cmd+alt+down arrow
You’re a complete joke, mate. A Nature joke!
Upgrade your MacBook’s firmware.
Geez, who needs a flippin Page Up/Down, Home/End keys???? Use the freakin’ scroll bar, for crying out loud. Oh, windows… gotcha.
I am sorry to say that I cannot but second the observations made on deterriorating product quality at Apple.
Enthousiastic about Apple products since the first encounter with the Newton (…iPhone -1.0 so to speak), but not about the company specifically, I have come to see the same development.
Just one example: iCal under Leopard. Apple’s calendar software has undergone some major changes with the latest OS update. But none of them, IMHO, for the better.
I have unexplicable bugs and blunders all the way - and I am far from being alone, as I could see from visiting the Apple support forum yesterday: lost data, messed-up or impossible syncing, sudden changes in the apps behaviour, endless duplicates etc.
None of these things have occured (at least not to me) in the previous version. Apple should serioiusly consider its approach of releasing species of hardware and software into the wild life that are clearly not fit for survival in a hostile environment. After all: the sturdiness of their products is exactly one of the qualities that have made Apple’s reputation.
Didn’t have so many failures of my Macbook Pro, which is my main computer - however the mobileme issues are definitely affecting my views on Apple - even though I am not using it.
Same problems as well. One MB Pro battery lasted 1 yr. Brand new MB Pro has terrible WiFi. iPhone locks up and “ibricks” with every update. MobileMe has been a disaster. Apple is in “D-Nile” along with those stupid fanboys. Those guys make us “normal” mac users cringe. Has anyone else notice the drop off in “It Just Works” commercials? Apple, get your act together PLZ!!!
I’ve been a Mac user for over five years. I’ve had a G4 tower, a G5 tower, and now I use a Mac Pro. I’ve had a G3 Powerbook, a G4 powerbook (still going strong) and now a Macbook. I have a 2G iPod. All of these still Just Work. No repairs, no downtime.
Just to put the otherside of the coin.
I wonder if third parties could develop a competing product for Mobileme. That could be a great business opportunity. Does Apple allow push email access via their iPhone SDKs or is it a closely guarded secret?
“But having major issues with four out of seven computers is, um, unexceptable.”
Did you mean “unacceptable”, maybe?
heh, i dunno why Apple fails to gets to Airport straight. My MBP will ALWAYS drop wireless connection after a few minutes at home if its running on battery, no problems when plugged in though. Same goes for my G4 iBook, which sometimes just wont conntect to wireless on occasion.
Left Apple in 1996 after a string of hardware problems with two PowerBook 5300 machines and no decent tech support in Asia. Came back in 2003 with the first PowerBook 17″. That machine is still running strong. So is the MacBook I bought for my wife eight months later (with the in-laws) the PowerMac G5 I bought a year later, the MacBook Pro 17 and MacBook Pro 15 I bought in 2006, the MacBook Pro 17 and MacBook Air I bought this year, and half a dozen iPods.
Apple isn’t perfect, but I will not trust my business to anyone else. And having tried to work with both Google and MobileMe, I can say that the Cloud isn’t ready for prime time. Apple’s mistake was overhyping and overcharging for it.
“And having tried to work with both Google and MobileMe, I can say that the Cloud isn’t ready for prime time. Apple’s mistake was overhyping and overcharging for it.”
At least MobileMe is running less-critical apps (apart from Mail). Google downtime seems like it’d be more painful to heavy users of the Google Apps.
I own 4 Macs. I’m discovering that Mac’s like the hot chick in high school that has traded on her looks her whole life and now has to settle into a marriage and can’t quite handle the commitment thing. After my mac mini got so slow the kids won’t use it… the mac g5 has twice blown the hard drive… the iPod synching confuses me so much I’m back to radio listening… I still love my Mac through sickness and (ewww- what’s that?) health.
Indeed. People love their Macs, even when they break.
Is this normal behaviour?
I think this article is what happens when someone opens their eyes and owns up to the fact that they’ve been ignoring the failings. It hurts.
That’s really interesting. I’ve been working on this same Dell lap top for 3 years now and it’s hardly ever been shut down. The Dell in my wifes office has been on since 2001. I’ve been listening to all the ranting and raving of the MAC’s for some time now and just knew that i needed one but i’m doubting that now. If you were to go back to a PC, what would you consider?
I use XP at work and Mac at home.
since I’m a writer and mostly work with Word and Google Docs, I find my iMac and iBook absolutely a dream to work with.
XP gets the job done, but is like the less attractive, slightly slower sister to Mac.
in this case, one sibling got the looks *and* the brains, in my opinion.
and I’m not a fanboy, just a user of both systems.
Why don´t you use MS Exchange? I have the same requirements like you with my mobile phone, notebook, desktops and direct internet access and using the exchange services of sherweb.com. Is there a chance to use this with your apple computers? I love beeing independent
MacPro 8-core, PowerBook G4 12″, 24″ Core2Duo iMac, 17″ CoreDua iMac, iPhone, iPod touch 16Go, Airport extreme Basestation, MobileMe (yes, even MobileMe), AppleTV.
-> never had any hardware problem or big software issue.
-> MobileMe was slow and buggy at the beggining, but since day 4 or 5, everything’s fine, no data loss, syncs OK through all devices I use.
Can I really post comments back from mofuse to techcrunch?
We’ve been switching our office slowly over to Mac’s over the last year or so and are definitely happy with the overall results - the majority of the issues are between the windown boxes and the Linux servers and the Macs who occasionally get into some type of digital disagreements.
The Mobile Me switch has been aweful - why they did all this at once is a mystery to me.
My macbook died so many times last yr I had to bring it to the apple care stors 3 times. Finally worked properly in the 4th time .. and that’s after all my data was lost and they changed the hard drive completely.
Apple + Batteries = world of FAIL
It’s hip to be square.
I love my new $650. 17in. widescreen Compaq notebook running native Vista. Flawless.
sorry but anything that is “running native Vista” is NOT flawless. The only people who say that are people who’ve never tried a Mac product. or any other operating system for that matter.
Nothing is flawless, but Vista works very well for tens of millions of people, including most of the ones who run it on Macs.
Both Vista SP1 and Ubuntu are currently more stable than Leopard, even though yet another Leopard bug-fix version appears every couple of months. Sorry.
Any problems I’ve ever had with my Macbook Pro have corrected themselves through software updates. Tempting as it is to postpone those 100 mb patch downloads, DON’T! I’ll bet 80% of you having problems just close down that update box and forget about it. Not to come across as a fanboy … I would suggest the same to a Windows user.
I have an iPhone 2G, a MacBook Pro, a Mac Mini that I use with the MobileMe feature and all connected with a Time Capsule, the only problems I have is that the Mac Mini connects intermittently to the wifi to the time capsule. Now I have to redo my Biz Card with the new address that changed from @mac.com to @me.com.
I bought a iMac to my parents and they never had an issue and never been so happy since they switched. My previous computer was a Powerbook G4 that as a motherboard issue, since it was repaired it had no problems at all…
Mobile me sometimes makes some mess especially with the calendar and contacts. Then it makes a mess with the synchronization of the files on the remote disk.
Anyway I will never leave apple… they know how to solve issues… they make my life easier…
15″ Powerbook, 17″ MBP, 24″ Al iMac, an Air, iPhone 2G, AirPort Extremes, Apple TVs, and even an XServe, all with no repairs or service needed and all still going strong.
No issues with .Mac/MobileMe other than the outages. That said, I am having 3G issues with the new iPhone, but believe Apple will take care of it… eventually.
Apple does need to take time to consolidate their systems and software. You can only run so far, so fast, before you need to stop and take a breather.
“That was 1982. I was a Windows user for the next 20 years”
I don’t believe you. Windows first appeared in 1983, but nobody used it seriously until version 3.0 came out in 1990.
You need to lighten up…
Mike,
I switched back to Apple last year after my Dell laptop died. I was excited to finally get back to the Mac environment. But like you I had problems — cracking in the case of my MacBook. As it turns out the problem is widely reported. Given Apple’s reputation for quality and excellence, the actual experience was a big disappointment. I blogged about it a while ago here: http://www.webtransplant.com/2.....-appl.html
Kind regards,
Evan
Mike,
Same experience for me. 2 of 4 macbooks/macbookpros were broken in some way within half a year from purchase. Alarming.
Another failure on their side and I’m getting a hackintosh, because I care much more about OS than hardware.
One good thing about PC’s. They work. Always. And if they stop working, you usually know why. Then they’re easy to open up and fix yourself, impossible with a Mac
No offense, but that doesn’t sound like any PC I’ve ever used.
“I love that damn phone, and it will take a lot more than lost apps and dropped calls to get it out of my hands.
But I.. ”
WTF is it with Apple users, they must say that they “love..” But..
Seriously. Just say it - looks good, best intentions, total crap in reality.
Love is blind. Michael has a broken heart.
You wouldn’t understand, because nobody “loves” Microsoft products.
It has a lot more to do with looks. When you use Apple products, you “love” the fact that you are using technology that Microsoft is the process of trying to copy from. It’s like stealing a product from the future. Microsoft doesn’t innovate. So, it’s very though to try to love a copycat that is always 5 years behind Apple.
You know what I love? Watching fanboys cry about Microsoft in a thread about how crappy Apple products are.
My compaq, ibm and HP laptops i had, crashed too. My macbook not yet. Let’s face it, all of them are consumer products with a percentage of failure. All the companies i mentioned are good, quality companies, but sometimes machines fail. Backup everything.
Even a Mercedes S600 or a Ferrari could fail.
Michael, statistics are playing games with you. You just have bad luck…
*Even* a Mercedes or Ferrari? Consumer Reports says Mercedes is the most troubleprone brand they rate; and don’t you have to rebuild the engines of Ferraris–finicky at any time–every 10k or 20k miles?
These are not encouraging examples!