Do your Apple products “just work”?
We use a fair bit of Apple products and with the exception of a few Genius Bar trips have been pretty happy with how well they work. That’s not always the case as Xavier of notebooks.com will tell you as he’s run into a whole bunch of Apple hardware that doesn’t "just work". Xavier has experienced failures with two iMacs, a MacBook Pro battery and three iPhones. Now I don’t know about you but that’s a fair dinkum of bad luck with Apple products. Xavier is trying to determine if he’s just snakebit or if others are finding problems with new Apple hardware. How about it, are you happy with your stuff from Cupertino?
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The whole Apple products “just work” is the hugest myth/hype. I’ve never purchased a Mac product in my life, but finally gave in and purchased a macpro notebook and a wifi station.
I’ve had so many issues with the Mac OS (no viable task manager, networking nightmare, dockbar horrible invention, have to pay extra for full screen video, etc etc), and it’s many shortcomings that I ended up installing Vista on my Macpro and am happy once again. As for the wifi station I lost the install CD and Apple wanted $20 to send me a new one.
So for me they didn’t “just work”.
When I first got a Mac, it was a Lombard Powerbook, and I put OS X Jaguar on it. It didn’t ‘just work’: the wifi card I put in had to use third party drivers that caused the laptop to kernel panic if I removed the card while the laptop was booted. Being a 400mhz G3, it wasn’t very good at running OS X, and the CD drive was failing. Granted, it was well-used when I got it.
My PowerMac G5 wouldn’t boot within a week of purchase. Granted, I’d installed a metric buttload of OS ‘enhancements’, that enhanced it to the point of not running. That was easily fixed.
My iMac, however, works great. Each release of OS X has made me happier. I don’t have a laptop and don’t rely on WIFI for a connection – it seems like a lot of Apple hardware problems are related to laptops – so maybe that’s why I’m having luck?
I also love my iPhone. Works great. iPod Nano also works great, no problems except that the ‘clock’ on it is broken. Well, it was when I last checked, maybe an update fixed it. I don’t use the clock so I don’t really care.
I do agree that ‘just works’ is a bit of marketing. Is Apple going to say “it may just work, or you may have a problem, like you may have with anything you buy”? No, that’s crazy talk. A lot of people who bought the same model car I have ran into all kinds of problems (gas filler tube too narrow, air conditioner misconfigured somehow, defective catalytic converters that result in unusual amounts of ‘rotten egg smell’), but I haven’t run into any of them and I really like my car. Toyota made their Scion brand into a hip, easy-to-buy car, and didn’t include anything saying there may be service bulletins or defective parts, because that’s basically to be assumed with any complicated piece of technology.
Yay, I made a car analogy! It’s just like Slashdot! :)
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As an Aussie, I have to stop you americans right now on this point. “Fair Dinkum” does not share the meaning with what you are trying to convey.
Fair dinkum is a traditional Australian phrase that either refers to the sense of fair play, or of something reliable or genuine.
i have an iphone and let me tell you IT DOES NOT JUST WORK. every couple of days it would crash and i have to spend hours fixing it cause it wont start up again. Piece of SHIT.
Overall, I am very happy with my Apple stuff. In my clutches, I have an iMac (aluminum), iPhone and MacBook Pro. The MacBook Pro did have some bad luck as when I bought it from the Apple store and about two days later, the power supply popped and stopped working. At the genius bar, they did not stock the new 85w power adapters yet so they game me another new MacBook Pro. Well…after a whole day of cursing at that one as it would never fully boot (even tried reinstalling OS X), I returned it and they game me yet another one. This one however has been serving me without incident. I don’t miss all the WinOS crashes and resource issues I have with the other PC’s and tablets I have.
I’ve owned both “platforms” for a number of years:
Apple: SE/30, PB 540, G3 Desktop, 1400, 3400, Kanga, Lombard, Titanium, Little Al and a Mac Mini, ipod, ipod Touch
PC: NEC 9600, Gateway Profiles (2), Dell, Samsung Q1, Fujitsu 4110 and p1510D, OQO, and a few others.
I’ve have found that overall, because of its “closed” system that Macs give me less problems, less hardware conflicts, and greater protection from malware and viruses. However, I plan to ALWAYS have 2 dis-similar systems operating, to minimize down-time from future issues.
The biggest “problem” most people have is the EXPECTATION that everything will “work” the same (copying files, videos, etc.). As to why they have that expectation, I just chock it up to flights of fancy.
I had to return one of the iPhones that I purchased because it would randomly flash the dead battery symbol. Then after sticking it on the charger it would say that the battery was charged. So it essentially couldn’t be used when off of the cradle, and this happened out-of-the-box before any customizations. I tried restoring the firmware but it didn’t help. They exchanged it without any questions.
“fair dinkum”- I never claimed I was bilingual (Aussie at least). :)
my iPod touch was my first mac purchase. It does ‘just work’, but only in the ways Apple allows for it to work. I’d just like to thank the jailbreak developers for making the touch ‘just work’ in the way I want my iPod touch to work :)
With their current line, Apple ran out of chances, from me.
I had to send my last Macbook in for service 6 times in the first seven months of ownership, for various hardware failures.
At this point, the only Mac in my house is an old G3 iBook. I haven’t sworn off Macs, but I don’t trust the current line. It will be awhile before Apple gets my money, for a computer anyway.