I love Apple. Let’s make that clear. However, I need to ask myself, “Is Apple turning into a Lemon?”.
The past few months, I know people who have had problems with their Macs. These are not hearsay but people I really know and consider to be family and/or friends. It started out with my cousin who’s iBook has a busted logic board. Her iBook was just a few months shy of turning 2. My brother’s Macbook is suffering from several problems, from the LCD screen having faint white spots/blotches and it shutting down all of a sudden, he’s also having trouble booting it up now. In our small office, we have an iMac G5 that has a busted LCD. It has a 1pixel line going down. They call it a dead strip. It’s a few weeks shy of one year and who’s warranty is about to expire. Thank God the problem cropped up in time. That’s three in my family alone.
A friend just got back her Black Macbook. Busted logic board too.
So does this mean that Apple’s quality is taking a nose dive? Or is it still the same and that it just so happens that as Macs gain popularity and more people are buying them the incidence of these problems are going up by virtue or sheer numbers?
It was actually my dad who got me thinking about this. I was talking to him this morning about Macs and told him that he should get one to replace his VAIO. His reply to me was, “I’m worried about the Macs quality.” He pointed out that in our family alone we have three busted Macs already. He also then told me that one of his staff in the office also has an iBook with a busted LCD. So he was hesitant in buying a Mac.
I defended Apple by saying despite the breakdowns, their service here has been ok and all the parts so far under warranty have been replaced. He said that shouldn’t be the case. The machines should last at least several years.
So Apple… are you turning into a Lemon? I hope not. I hope that as you continue to product innovative and well designed products, you also come up with reliable and well-built ones.
So dear readers, care to share your thoughts on this?
Add to:
October 14th, 2006 at 10:07 am
Generally speaking, I would say that Apple still makes reliable machines. However, with the sheer amount of hardware being produced, incidence of failure is bound to rise.
I manage an office that’s full of Macs. We have a few dozen units ranging from first gen Mac minis to the latest Core 2 duo iMacs. We even have a PowerMac G5 running OS X Tiger server and I’m posting this from the latest acquisition-a bare bonee entry level MacBook.
Not one of the units has failed in any way. All of them have proven to be 100% reliable (I fear the firm won’t be keeping me long as a result).
So there. Maybe you’re just one of the unlucky ones to see so much incidents.
October 14th, 2006 at 10:48 pm
Well, that’s what I was thinking maybe the increase in people buying Macs also increase the incidence of defective models.
The Macbook I was expecting since it’s a Rev A. model. But the iMac and iBooks.. we must have been really unlucky.
October 17th, 2006 at 7:59 pm
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October 20th, 2006 at 11:29 am
[…] So, in line with my recent post I asked, are the incidence of defective Apple products a sign of declining quality or is it just because more Macs are sold, therefore the incidence of defects rise as well? With these sales figures, I’m begninning to think it’s because more and more Macs are making it to the market therefore we hear more and more incidences of defects. Maybe it’s a little of both. […]