Do you think apple products are reliable?

[kevinchan]

I mean, I've seen all sorts of complaints in this web site, things such as "my iBook's LCD got a lot of dead pixels once I've received it by mail", "my battery died in 10 months", "my powerbook's hinge won't work", etc.. Are successful cases more than threats?

[radioboy]

when someone has something go wrong, they're inclined to post and bitch about it online

not so much when something works as expected

to quote douglas adams

we don't notice things that work, we notice things that do. we notice computers, we dont notice pencils. we notice ebook readers, we dont notice books.

[H3lix]

people dont complain about stuff that works... only stuff they were unfortunate enough to get that dont work.

[g-n-t]

well obviously, you will most likely get a product that works. however, i guess you could say that with apple, the chances of getting one that doesnt, or stops working after a while, are higher than with other companies. not to say that pc's are perfect, but if you buy a good IBM laptop or something, you know you will have top quality.

[Vice]

I'm 50/50 my iBook broke twice and was repaired swiftly by Apple- No complaints here.

my iPod & Airport Express work fine no problems. so I'm 50/50 I have had bad products from almost all manufactures that I have bought multiple products from.

It annoys me that so many things I have bought fail within there first 6 months of use. And don't think to yourself that I chuck my stuff about or live on some mountain where every year we have a "throw something expensive" contest I am so careful with all the stuff I own I just have such bad bloody luck with purchases.

Not that I know anyone who has never received a malfunctioning product. ;)

[Ateoto]

I've had at least one mac in the house since 1990. Never had any major problems. I currently have an iPod and a G4 Laptop that have had no problems at all. I beleive they are reliable.

[Marku$]

My ibook is a month old and she is working perfectly as she was on day 1 !!

and i.... i ... i love her.

[macssuck]

well obviously, you will most likely get a product that works. however, i guess you could say that with apple, the chances of getting one that doesnt, or stops working after a while, are higher than with other companies

585694746[/snapback]

If you didn't pull that out of your butt then let's see a source.

Here's a couple to get you started:

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1626236,00.asp

Page 1:

The leading vendors?Apple in the desktop and notebook categories, Dell in desktops and servers, and IBM in notebooks?are those that keep criticism to a minimum.

PageApple: Desktops and Notebooks

In a Windows-dominated world, it's not surprising that people who choose Apple computers do so because they love them. But evangelism alone can't explain the impressive high marks Apple receives again this year. In nearly every aspect, the company scores higher than any other vendor. We prefer more open platforms, but it's hard to argue with this level of satisfaction.

And when something does go wrong, Apple rates higher in overall service than any of the major PC manufacturers

http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,105854,00.asp

This year's survey shows little--if any--improvement. Dell, for example, tumbled in service overall--especially in hold times. The  other big news: Apple rated higher than any other computer maker.

PC Worlds Reliability and Satisfaction Survey also had favorable results for apple:

http://www.pcworld.com/reviews/article/0,a...514,pg,5,00.asp

Page 3: Chart:

Apple is beaten only by Dell and Emachines for desktop reliability.

Page 4:

Among notebook PC owners, Apple and EMachines users reported the most satisfaction with reliability, while Compaq, Gateway, HP, and Sony ranked near  the bottom.

These two magazines survey approximately 72,000 people (combined) for their hardware satisfaction and reliability surveys. PC World's service survey based results on approximately 30,000 respondents. The PC World survey is one of the most read publications of it's kind and the annual survey is widely cited as definitive by other media outlets.

The industry focuses attention on Apple's every move like a child focuses sunlight on gnats. What other company can update their music player from 4-6gb and make news on 3 out of 4 major news networks later that day? By the same token when somebody names Apple in a lawsuit the world is going to know about it. The attention works both ways for Apple, fortunately (for Mac users) when you ask a statistically relevant portion of the population about the reliability of their Apple gear the results are generally positive.

[JK1150]

the Ipods are in their 4th revision and are some of the most unreliable MP3 players out there, plus the LCD problem.

[g-n-t]

im actualyl surprised emachines ranks high in quality.

anyway, i never said apples were bad, just that they werent hte best. i dunno, but both my friends that have macs have a broken key on their keyboards(apple pro desktop, powerbook), and we also have 9 year old thinkpads at school that run great(except for a little thing called windows 95)

[KeR]

im actualyl surprised emachines ranks high in quality.

anyway, i never said apples were bad, just that they werent hte best. i dunno, but both my friends that have macs have a broken key on their keyboards(apple pro desktop, powerbook), and we also have 9 year old thinkpads at school that run great(except for a little thing called windows 95)

585695140[/snapback]

^^ no Mac/Apple discussion is complete without your insightfull knowledge on the subject. Do you even own any Apple products?

[g-n-t]

Do you even own any Apple products?

585695146[/snapback]

no. are you crazy? :p

but yes i agree, i do get a little carried away sometimes. ;)

[AcdShdw]

some people are more ruff with their items and dont realize it verses others

[rbeasley07]

Only had one apple product, an ipod

it failed 3 months after purchase. The LCD failed, then a week or so later the whole thing stopped working. It was supposed to take 2 days to get a replacement but took 2-3 weeks, but atleast i got a new one i guess.

[macssuck]

the Ipods are in their 4th revision and are some of the most unreliable MP3 players out there, plus the LCD problem.

585695121[/snapback]

If you're going to make a blanket statement then have the data to back it up. If you're giving your opinion, then make that clear otherwise: put up or shut up.

http://www.pcworld.com/reviews/article/0,a...14,pg,12,00.asp

However, Creative and Sony received slightly better results than Apple  in a couple of measures. Owners of Creative and Sony music players reported  fewer problems that would affect their ability to use the device: 8 percent of  Sony owners and 12 percent of Creative owners--versus 16 percent of Apple owners--indicated such a problem. (The overall mean on this measure was 14  percent.) Still, Apple kept its customers happier about overall  reliability.

"Some of the most unreliable MP3 players out there" isn't true, Apple scored squarely in the middle of the pack for serious problems, and highest in overall reliability. Not a glowing review, but not a total embarrassment either.

anyway, i never said apples were bad, just that they werent hte best.

You can try and weasel out all you want, but you were wrong.

You said " however, i guess you could say that with apple, the chances of getting one that doesnt, or stops working after a while, are higher than with other companies." Turns out, that the opposite was true: If you buy an Apple machine you have a better chance of flawless operation than with most other companies equipment.

You also said: "but if you buy a good IBM laptop or something, you know you will have top quality.", turns out that Apple handily beats IBM for "reliability" in the PC World survey for both Desktop machines and Notebooks. See page 5 and then the footnote that said there was not enough responses to rate apple for overall satisfaction for notebooks.

The PC Mag Satisfaction survey didn't have that problem:

Apple Computer

Once again, the company turns in a top-notch performance. Apple has enough responses to qualify for the desktop and notebook categories, and it receives the best "overall rating" score in both: 8.8 in desktops, significantly better than the industry average of 7.8, and 9.0 for notebooks, also significantly better than the 8.0 average. These scores qualify as excellent on our 1-to-10 scale, earning the company Readers' Choice awards for both categories.

IBM

In desktops and notebooks, IBM users give the company unrivaled tech support and repairs ratings. On the other hand, while readers give very good marks for reliability to IBM notebooks and decent marks to its servers, they're so disappointed with the reliability of its desktop PCs that IBM's "overall rating" score for desktops is worse than that of any other vendor in our survey.

Note in the "about scoring section" that excellent > very good > good.

i dunno, but both my friends that have macs have a broken key on their keyboards(apple pro desktop, powerbook), and we also have 9 year old thinkpads at school that run great(except for a little thing called windows 95)

An unverified sample size of 3: somebody call the President! We've got a revelation here.

Starting to sound like I was right about you pulling your first statement out of your butt.

[Vice]

"Some of the most unreliable MP3 players out there" isn't true, Apple scored squarely in the middle of the pack for serious problems, and highest in overall reliability. Not a glowing review, but not a total embarrassment either.

You can try and weasel out all you want, but you were wrong.

585695201[/snapback]

That's funny you quoted and replied to PC World there not even someone in this thread. :D

Anyway when you consider Apple has what 70 - 80% of the personal music player market, there middle defect rate is actually very good compared with Sony's or whoever

Lets say for argument sake:

1 out of 10 Sonys are damaged.

5 out of 100 iPods are broken.

In the volume Apple are selling them you should expect to find more defects the more you sell the more problems you will find its basic business.

[Mac-It-Up]

good stuff i would say. i've had my pb for 1.5 years now and no problems really, the latch sometimes doesn't deploy, but thats rare. sure as hell like it better than my sony notebook

[g-n-t]

well i mentioned the thinkpad, ive never used an IBM desktop so i cant comment.

i dont have "statistics," jsut stating my experience.

macs look nice, but they arent built for reliability. all that stuff takes a back seat to design. apple makes products that are more or less reliable, however, if that is your main concern, then you are better off with a compnay that puts the most emphasis on using quality parts. again, not that apple uses LOW quality parts, just that they arent the best of the best.

judging a products quality on an opinion poll isnt the best idea either. if these polls actually reflected the real world, then john kerry would be our president right now.

[macssuck]

That's funny you quoted and replied to PC World there not even someone in this thread

PC World and PC Mag are two of the most read business and technology periodicals. I tread the BBcode quote tag as I would treat the HTML blockquote tag: I used it to mark out a direct quotation.

well i mentioned the thinkpad, ive never used an IBM desktop so i cant comment.

Apple beat IBM for notebook reliability too.

macs look nice, but they arent built for reliability.

That's not what the results found.

if that is your main concern, then you are better off with a compnay that puts the most emphasis on using quality parts. again

Who are you talking about? EMachines? They're the only people scoring higher than Apple for reliability.

judging a products quality on an opinion poll isnt the best idea either.

The reliability survey isn't an opinion poll. The questions (which you can read yourself) are factual:

"I own a computer(s) by company:______ model:______"

"Computer was purchased in year: ______"

"I use this computer at:______"

"I had a problem with my computer <yes/no>"

"Problem was related to hardware: <yes/no>"

etc.

The results were given in percentages for DOA systems, component failures, hardware issues, etc. No opinion there.

Customer satisfaction is by definition an opinion so that part of the survey must be based on opinions of customers.

Tell me, if asking a customer to quantify their experience with a product is a bad way to gather information about real-world reliability then what is a GOOD way?

[chmsant]

Apple has ranked extremely high with consumer reports as well in both desktop and portables categories when it comes to reliablity and repairs. On top of that they have been ranked #1 in customer support 5 years running. Now that says something, especially coming from CR, a very well known, and well respected consumer mag.

[g-n-t]

Tell me, if asking a customer to quantify their experience with a product is a bad way to gather information about real-world reliability then what is a GOOD way?

585695362[/snapback]

a good way would be to have intelligent people stress test the products and take them apart and analyze how they are built and what that could mean for reliability. do you have a link to a review like that, cause id be interested.

[macssuck]

a good way would be to have intelligent people stress test the products and take them apart and analyze how they are built and what that could mean for reliability. do you have a link to a review like that, cause id be interested.

585695398[/snapback]

No, but I don't think that would offer anything over a pair of surveys with 70,000 responses from users of those products. I'd guess that most publishers think that way too so I doubt you'd find one in a respectable magazine, industry newsletter or journal. If you disagree then you find something more authoritative to support your position - I'm not going to do your job for you.

If you think such a report is valuable and you think that it is likely to exist then you find it. I've provided authoritative sources that debunk your claims that apple hardware is markedly less reliable than other company.. What you think and post in this thread tends to have little basis in reality (thus far) so I'm not going to go looking for some document you think might exist to dispute information you made up, especially after having already found another source to dispute those claims.

[g-n-t]

No, but I don't think that would offer anything over a pair of surveys with 70,000 responses from users of those products. I'd guess that most publishers think that way too so I doubt you'd find one in a respectable magazine, industry newsletter or journal. If you disagree then you find something more authoritative to support your position - I'm not going to do your job for you.

If you think such a report is valuable and you think that it is likely to exist then you find it.  I've provided authoritative sources that debunk your claims that apple hardware is markedly less reliable than other company.. What you think and post in this thread tends to have little basis in reality (thus far) so I'm not going to go looking for some document you think might exist to dispute information you made up, especially after having already found another source to dispute those claims.

585695755[/snapback]

its not my job and i really dont care. :huh: i think it would be valuable, however i dont think one exists.

anyway, why do you even bother? what do you get out of defending apple with your long posts and googling for good reviews of apples products? i thought i had too much free time...

this isnt a personal insult or anything, dont take it the wrong way, but im just sitting here thinking about why the hell we are arguing over something this stupid.

[Vice]

PC World and PC Mag are two of the most read business and technology periodicals.  I tread the BBcode quote tag as I would treat the HTML blockquote tag: I used it to mark out a direct quotation.

585695362[/snapback]

lol I never said you didn't use the correct tabs I said it was funny that you shot down a source of information that you mentioned in the first place. I don't have an analogy for this so use your imagination :rofl:

[macman87]

Well all the Apple products I have owned so far have not yet had any problems. I had an iPod once and slammed a whole heap of books onto it and the Clickwheel had problems, but Apple fixed it for free. People say the iPod has a tonne of problems, but they never consider how many iPods are sold instead of other branded MP3 players.

I must say thou, for some people, Apple products are a nightmare. I have known someone who has needed 5 logic board replacements for their iBook. It seems like bad luck :p