Apple hardware
February 10, 2009Let’s talk Apple. My problems with Apple - aside from it being a rather dictatorial and anti-consumer company - lie mostly in the lousy hardware it has the guts to market as “high end”, complete with matching price tags. Software-wise, I have a lot of respect for Apple. Mac OS X is a very sexy, well-designed, and stable operating system, with tons of features that make using my computers a lot easier. However, I am forced into buying their crap hardware in order to run their software - which sucks balls.
Here’s my track record with Apple hardware. Read it and weep.
- iMac G4 700Mhz 15″. Died after a few years due to massive logic board failure.
- iBook G4 1Ghz 12.1″. Case became cracked and started falling apart within a few months. Was only used at home.
- PowerBook G4 1.25Ghz 15″. Hard drive exploded for no reason, and suffered from the infamous upper memory bank failure that Apple refuses to fix.
- PowerMac G4 dual 450Mhz. Resuming from sleep leaves one processor inactive, and usually leads to kernel panics.
- PowerMac G4 Cube 450Mhz. Power button doesn’t work, case cracked.
- The only Mac that hasn’t died on me yet is my iMac G3.
Apple zealots claim that you’re not only paying for design and brand, but also for quality; Apple is a premium brand, much like some car and high-end audio brands. I’m sorry, but looking back upon my own Apple product track record, how on earth can I take those zealots seriously? My non-Apple machines NEVER die on me. Te only thing that ever died was a 40GB drive after servicing me for 8 years.
It’s bogus. Apple isn’t a premium company, and never has been either. Premium means buying speakers that last for 35 years. Premium means servicing your products for decades, and fixing any issue that pops up beyond the user’s control, without question. Apple doesn’t do that. You have to drag them kicking and screaming into the limelight with class action lawsuits before those fcuks up in Cupertino will instate a replacement program for anything.
Apple hardware is junk. Pretty junk, yes, but I much rather pay 1/6th of the price of a Mac Pro, and have the same performance, with higher quality, but with a less attractive case and no Apple logo. Cupertino’s hardware division can suck a big fat cockcicle.
Thom, I have the exact opposite experience. I have quite a few Macs, the following lists the one I still own today:
Mac Classic (toaster style)
Powermac 6100
Powermac 9500MP
Powermac G3 desktop (Gossamer)
Powerbook G3 (Wallstreet 2)
Macbook
All of these serve me well. All of them work well and none have had major issues (touch wood.) On the other hand, I’ve had PC’s die on me left right and centre. I’ve had a string of Seagate drives fail. I’ve seen machines that work “just fine” one day go caca over night. Most of my Macs are second user systems (except the Macbook) and most of my PC’s were new. I think it just depends on the user and luck.
Comment by memsom — February 10, 2009 @ 1:06 pm
I can’t argue that Macs are more expensive, but the fact is that you are using a very small sample size for your data. My company has hundreds of PCs, and we regularly see hardware failures. Conversely, I’ve never had a hardware problem with a mac (except for having used bad 3rd party RAM, which caused kernel panics). Furthermore, most of my Mac-bearing friends have had the same experience. On the PC side, even in people’s homes, I see hard drives fail regularly, motherboards failing, and bad RAM.
While I agree that Macs are generally too expensive for the hardware you get, I can’t agree with your conclusion. Just bad luck, maybe?
Comment by Adam S — February 10, 2009 @ 1:21 pm
[q]My company has hundreds of PCs, and we regularly see hardware failures. Conversely, I’ve never had a hardware problem with a mac (except for having used bad 3rd party RAM, which caused kernel panics)[/q]
Unless you also have a sample size of hundreds of Mac’s this is just as pointless a comparison.
[q]Furthermore, most of my Mac-bearing friends have had the same experience. On the PC side, even in people’s homes, I see hard drives fail regularly, motherboards failing, and bad RAM.[/q]
To put this into perspective, we have 700+ Dell PC’s (Optiplex 320, not exactly high-end) and in one year we’ve had around 10 of these fail. These workstations are running 24/7 365 days per year.
Maybe you’ve just had bad luck with PC’s?
Comment by Soulbender — February 10, 2009 @ 2:06 pm
I’m just too used to osnews quoting.
Comment by Soulbender — February 10, 2009 @ 2:07 pm
Could very well be, this is of course a completely subjective conclusion, based on my own experiences. I’ve just been bitten too many times to spend so much money on a computer just for the brand and the looks.
Sure, Mac OS X is nice, but in the end, I’m happy with whatever OS I’m shoved in front of. It’s all pixels and icons anyway.
Comment by Administrator — February 10, 2009 @ 5:17 pm
I have to agree!
I just today bought a black Eee PC 901 for 249 €. It has a hyperthreaded Atom, Bluetooh, b/g/n WLAN, Card Reader, small SSD, 3 USB ports, 6cell battery, non-glossy display and 2 years warranty.
So compared to the white Macbook (black back in the day did cost extra) it only lacks the DVD(Combo) Drive and the firewire port, but adds a card reader (very important for me).
It even came with sucky XP, Works etc. (which I won’t need. Linux FTW)
What do you get from Apple for 249€? .. well mostly nothing .. biggest thing you get is a iPod classic with 120 GB for 239€..
TOTALLY PATHETIC!
Comment by Kragil — February 10, 2009 @ 7:51 pm
The Cube’s power button was a design decision failure rather than becoming bad after a while. When I had your Cube here, it was not cracked btw.
As for the rest of our Macs:
Powerbook 2003 — still going strong.
PowerMac G4 2003 — still going strong, although one of its hard drives seems to be failing lately (we haven’t investigated further though).
Macbook Pro 2007 (JBQ’s laptop) — a hard drive died and he had to replace it.
Then again, we have 4 iPods, and 1 iPhone. From these, only the hard drive-based 40GB 4th Gen iPod died, it could be replaced and go strong again. The rest of these devices work fine.
So except hard drives, that do have limited life by design, everything else works for us.
The problems we have with Apple are mostly software rather than hardware.
Comment by Eugenia — February 10, 2009 @ 7:53 pm
You’ve had an unusually unlucky experience with Apple hardware. I’ve had over 300 machine years experience with macs (at school plus a few at home, ~100 comps x 3 years) and I’ve only seen 3 significant failiures. That’s fairly good compared to my average of PCs; the macs I’ve dealt with seem to be nearly twice as reliable as the PCs. Sure you’ve gotten strangely unlucky but a small sample of anecdotal evidence is not convincing to me. However, yes, there have indeed been a few problematic models over the years; mainly the “revolutionary” ones (cube, early intel macbooks etc.).
P.S. I love those common $500 8-core Xeon workstaions that you’re talking about.
Comment by Sultan — February 11, 2009 @ 3:55 am
Apple hardware is crappy in the same sense that all PC hardware is crappy (unless you’re willing to pay exorbitant prices). My issue is that Apple markets their hardware as premium and charges a premium price. Those macbooks that cost $1000-1600 are the same as PC laptops that cost $500-700. Even worse, macbooks are probably the most price competitive product Apple sells. The situation is horrid when you start comparing mini’s, imacs, and mac pros.
Comment by btmorex — February 12, 2009 @ 7:26 am
Well, no they’re not. This is the common misconception. The hardware is custom - it it weren’t we’d have a BIOS and probably use standard PC video ports etc. Mac hardware “just works”, and until you have experienced this, there’s no comparison. On paper it might seem the same, but the reality is that it’s not.
Comment by memsom — February 12, 2009 @ 11:28 am
Touch wood I haven’t had an Apple hardware problem yet. I’ve owned a PowerMac G4 450MHz, a 1.25GHz G4 eMac, a 2GHz CoreDuo iMac, and last (and the greatest) a 2.8GHz Mac Pro “octo-core”. As a side note it’s worth going to Dell’s site and comparing the cost of an 8-core Dell Precision to an 8-core Mac Pro. I don’t really know what components Dell are using (beyond the obvious) but they are massively more expensive than Apple.
Rightly or wrongly I’ve never believed that there was something magical about Apple hardware, but the Mac Pro I’m using is certainly far more reliable than my Vista 64 box. Oh, buggy wireless connections and BSOD how I miss thee - NOT !
Comment by Phil — February 12, 2009 @ 4:25 pm