Comments on: Apple hardware

by: Phil

Thu, 12 Feb 2009 16:25:21 +0000

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 !

by: memsom

Thu, 12 Feb 2009 11:28:31 +0000

Those macbooks that cost $1000-1600 are the same as PC laptops that cost $500-700

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.

by: btmorex

Thu, 12 Feb 2009 07:26:15 +0000

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.

by: Sultan

Wed, 11 Feb 2009 03:55:36 +0000

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.

by: Eugenia

Tue, 10 Feb 2009 19:53:10 +0000

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.

by: Kragil

Tue, 10 Feb 2009 19:51:03 +0000

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!

by: Administrator

Tue, 10 Feb 2009 17:17:51 +0000

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?

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.

by: Soulbender

Tue, 10 Feb 2009 14:07:31 +0000

I’m just too used to osnews quoting.

by: Soulbender

Tue, 10 Feb 2009 14:06:51 +0000

[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?

by: Adam S

Tue, 10 Feb 2009 13:21:46 +0000

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?