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?
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.
Mine sure don’t. I own a Macbook, an iPhone, and an iPod Classic right now, and have owned almost every generation of iPod since the second.
My Macbook has gone through two batteries since I bought it over a year ago (with less than 70 cycles they just appear to die and won’t charge anymore), which Apple has replaced in and out of warranty for free – they claim I got two bad batteries and the Macbook is fine, but I don’t know if I believe them so I’m lining up a replacement. (I cycle the batteries monthly, despite this they still die early.) It also freezes much more often than my Vista desktop, which has frozen only once or twice since the day Vista came out. (although Vista is _useless_ in more than one other area… it is more stable for me then than XP or OSX.)
My iPods used to freeze up a lot too, though not the Classic, it has been very good so far; but the older generation ones froze often and had trouble syncing eventually requiring restoring once or twice a year.
My iPhone doesn’t work with the LEAP encryption my universities wireless uses, and I had to jailbreak it to enable Japanese kana/kanji input (which is enabled by default on Japanese iPhones – so why not an option on US ones too?). And I had forgotten how useless EDGE was – when I’m not on wifi, I miss my Blackjack and it’s 3G.
I’ve owned numerous Apple notebook and desktop machines over the past 7 years as well as 3 iphones. I keep buying them because of their design, their UI, and because they work. The few times when I have had a hardware problem, I’ve experienced excellent service and fast turnaround. I don’t just buy them because their pretty, but I certainly don’t mind that they are. Even my Windows computers are Macs now, running boot camp or Parallels. Read a support forum for any computer and find all the people who are having problems. I’m not suggesting that they always work for every customer. But, I’m extremely happy with the purchases I’ve made from Apple and I’ve owned some real dogs from IBM, Toshiba, HP, Compaq in my day.
YMMV.
Taxman
WOW seems like the people on this forum have had some bad luck. While I am not taking anything away from the problems you all has experienced with your Apple hardware. I will share my own experience with Apple products.
My experience has been very positive with Apple hardware, this is coming from somebody who has (my wife and son included) owned 6 iPod’s, 4 iPhones, 1 PowerMac, 1 Powerbook, 2 Macbook Pro’s, Apple TV and 3 airport base stations. While I did have a hard drive failure in my first MacBook Pro, Apple store employee’s replaced it with a brand new unit within a few days no questions asked basically.
I am the main MAC user in the house, my wife refuses to use a MAC, only her iPOD and iPhone.
For me after I got over the “how do I do this on a MAC?”, since I only knew Windows up until 3 years ago. It has been a very positive experience for me.
Don’t get my wrong I have Vista loaded via boot camp on my MacBook Pro and it runs great. Since we are discussing things just don’t work on Apple products, I will add I experienced a Kernel Panic during the boot camp drive partition process which caused me to have to reformat my hard drive. Some people may jump and this and say “see it does not just work”. But that is the second what I would call a major issue within 3 years, that is an acceptable rate for me based on past experience.
Finally I will say for the most part all of my Apple products work extremely well and have far exceeded my expectations. For me I rarely see my systems crash, or experience some of the problems I do on a HP or Dell machine. Of the 8 computers in our home Vista runs the best on my MacBook Pro, beating out the Dell, HP, and a custom built box.
Apple products are not for everybody, but I enjoy using them.
I’d bet most of these people who are posting negative stories are just PO’d Vista and Windoze Ex-Pee users suffering from a bad case of technological penis envy. They make this stuff up to malign Apple becasue of their own unresolved anger issues and techno shortcomings.
I’ve owned a dozen Macs and two iPods and a number of Apple accessories and have never had more than the most minor problems. Windoze XP is another story, it was a nightmare….although it works great on my current Mac, it is unusable on my Windoze laptop.
Over the years, I have owned six Mac laptops (all types) and one imac. I have two ipods and one iphone. They all get used very heavily, traveled with constantly, and do not get kid glove treatment. I make my living with these machines as a consultant.
The only problem I have ever had with Apple products was that on my current Macbook Pro 15 the battery did not hold a charge properly. Apple replaced it right away and the new one has been flawless.
My oldest Mac, a creaking G3 ibook, still runs great and sees regular service. I leave it at a customer’s location so that I don’t have to bring my laptop into his office if all I want to do is check my email. I keep thinking it will die, but it hasn’t.
Now, if you want to talk about hassles, let me tell you about my Sony Vaio……
Sorry so many folks have had problems with Apple, I still find them most satisfactory.
I’ve had 10 new and used Macs pass through my house over the last sixteen years. They have been great, with one exception. A G4 tower purchased six years ago had two trips into the shop along with several phone calls for it to get some degree of reliability (all repairs were on Apple’s dime). The good news, it’s still humming; the bad news, it needs to be rebooted every few days to avoid issues when waking out of a sleep. Despite this, I’m assuming I can get another four years of life out of it. Overall, it’s a much better performer than my three-year-old Dell, which I can’t upgrade to vista, while my old Mac is humming with Leopard.
I’ll take a Mac almost anytime –I still need the Dell for bookkeeping — that is until I get an intel Mac that can run XP or whatever comes after Vista.
Another wow here! I run a network of 60 Macs, most less than three years old. I have had some issues with the older ones. But the new ones have zero issues. And any issues I have had are fixed free at the Apple Store. I also suggest to anyone who buys an Apple laptop to get AppleCare. It will save you from having to pay if it does arise.
All the naysayers can say all they want. But have you been to the Apple Store lately? It’s like Grand Central Station on any day of the week. They must be doing something right.
My great-great-great-great grandfather bought an Apple Tablet and has passed it down the line. Apart from having to make new chisels for it it works great
Personally, I’ve never bought an Apple product because I’ve never found one that does what I want it to do. Until then I’ll keep buying useful products.
My iPod Touch works just like it is supposed to.
@PF- I agree, more and more people are buying Macs, especially at the retail and Apple’s doing a lot of things ‘right’. That’s why I’ve bought 4 iPods, a Mac Book Pro, a pair of iPhones and an iMac in the past 15 months. I’ve owned about a dozen macs, most of which have been fine.
A lot of people have given up on PCs because of poor experiences or because of Vista horror stories. It also seems Apple’s running more TV and billboard ads than the rest of the PC manufacturers combined, most of which reflect some kind of Apple bliss.
I’m by no means a naysayer, I just think it’s important that people realize Apple hardware is not perfect by a long shot. If you listen to Apple salespeople at Apple stores you’ll here things like ‘never crashes, no blue screen,etc.’
Unfortunately, there are bad Apples.
My Macbook Pro just works. Best laptop ever! My wife’s iMac had a problem power supply and the local Apple store swapped it out in half an hour. I was amazed by how painless the service experience was.
I keep thinking of going back to Windows to get a tinier form factor, but the “just works” thing would probably convince me to put up with a lot of design compromises if Apple put out a Q1U-sized tablet.
I keep on hearing that Apple products “just work.” I am a huge fan of Apple, and have bought quite a few of their products – 2 computers, 2 displays, and an iPod. They all had problems except the iPod. I keep on hearing that my experience is statistically unusual. I don’t know. Not ll the problems were show-stoppers, but I am now on my second Macbook Pro, which has already had serious hardware issues requiring repair under warranty. The was replaced, it was so bad. Overall, it’s the Mac OS and overall vision and strategy that keeps me in Apple’s camp. Mass-produced hardware, though brilliantly designed, will always have a percentage of failures.
Millions of iphones, tens of millions of Macs, hundreds of millions of ipods, and here is a list of a few dozen whiners.
Seems to me that 99.999% of Macs do “just work” and a small number of whiners attract the instant karma they deserve.
Other than the yellowish TFT bottom and 2mm gap under the right side of the closed screen, my MBP LED works.
I tend to think people just overlook the issues. A coworker had 2 bad imacs and took them back. Heck I both my girlfriend and I had bad ram in our new dells. We replaced it and still thought our machines were great.
I think people just tend to overlook issues with devices they really like.
I own 2 macbooks and have had at least 4 ipods over the years. Apple is no better than the other PC mfgs. In fact my experience with HP and Fujitsu has been better than my apple experience. They make cool stuff and have a nice cult that worships them blindly- but they are no diffent than the rest.
After 25 years in the computer industry, supporting PCs, Macs, and their predecessors… yeah, Macs pretty much “just work.” While there are occasional problems, even bad Macs (Power Macintosh 5200, anyone?) those few don’t invalidate the statement, as the Wintel guys would have you think.
In fact, more often than not (and confirmed by comments above) the problems are caused by former Wintel users who can’t accept that OS X is NOT Windows!
I had several problems with my first mac, a macbook that was 1st gen. I have a later gen one now and it’s rock solid.
I have mixed feeling about their service, it’s obvious their machines are well crafted, but when there is a problem, it’s not acknowledged as one until it’s approved from on high. And obviously, a large part of the Apple mystique is that the style isn’t as embarrassing on a marketing angle as most pc manufacturers or Microsoft.
It also doesn’t hurt that Mac OSX is several levels better than anything Windows puts out.
I grew up on Apple products and then switched to PC (Windows/Linux) 13 years ago. Two months ago I finally started an attempt to switch back. Everyone around me was using Apple laptops, and I started wondering what was going on. I have had so many headaches learning of things work in the OS X world. I’ve come to the conclusion that Apple “just works” in one way, and by golly that’s the right way and any other way you want to do it is just wrong. I’ve had to cave several times to reboot into XP to get things done. All in all I’m right on the middle of the fence, not sure if I’m happy about the switch, but not overly upset by it. It’s another computer, it has problems that seemingly all machines/OSes have. It’s just a matter of what you’re willing to put up with and what works for you.
Powerbook g4 15″: Kept overheating and freezing
Powerbook g4 12″:- Perfect to this day!
ibook 14″: wouldnt detect hard drive
2 x Imac 20″ generation 1: Noisy fans
1g ipod nano, shitty scratched screen.
My Powerbook G4 12″ Just Worked for a good chunk of time. OS upgrades were smooth as silk, apps ran fine, it was overall just a very nice piece of hardware/software.
My big problem with it was a year later, when the battery started flaking out, and Apple claimed that it counts as normal wear and tear, treating the battery as a disposable resource. 50% capacity loss in twelve months? I don’t think so.
Suffice it to say, Apple won the battle, but I bought a NewerTech battery for a little less cash, and a little more capacity, so I’m not sure if they can chalk that up in the Win column.
two apple ipods (both video) a 30 gig and and an 80 gig, dead due to hard drive failure….both out of warrantee.
THANKS APPLE!!
He (Xavier) could be another case of “magneto man”
http://www.engadget.com/2008/03/02/12-year-old-magneto-man-breaks-every-computer-he-touches/
I’ve had disk drive failures on all but one of the six Macs that I’ve owned in the past 10 years. However, all but one of the failures were after 2 to 4 years of use. The exception was the MacBook that’s my current main machine that had a drive failure after 6 months.
My household has a 3G iMac G5, 2 Apple TV’s, 2 iPhones, iPod Video, iPod Nano, Airport Extreme, 2 Airport Express’. The Apple experience has been unbelievable. In my case everything “just works”. In the 3 years I have had the iMac, I have had 2 logic board issues with capacitors. Each time I took it into the Apple Store they replaced the $900 logic board out of warranty and no Apple Care at no charge. What company does that?
A capacitor that fails will fail in any piece of hardware.
Obviously at work, it is a Windows world and I hate it everyday. It use to be great when everything ran on SCO Unix but alas we migrated our software over to Windows in ‘98. I really am tired of my Dell laptop not being able to shutdown gracefully or find wireless networks without a reboot.
I went Apple because I was tired of being the “IT guy.” I have better things to do. Some say that fixing a PC is therapy. My therapy is being able to spend a weekend with my wife not hosing around with my digital world.
All I can say is that my experience with Apple has been “Seamless Integration Bliss” and unbelievable customer support. In my eyes, that is what “just works” means.
A history of my experience with Apple hardware:
Apple 512k (aka Fat Mac) — 100% reliable
Apple Mac Plus — ditto
Mac Portable — Died after 4 yrs of solid use
Apple OMP (Newton) — 100%
Apple Newton 120 — 100%
Outbound (Mac clone) — See 512k & Plus above
PowerBook Duo 280c — again, 100%
iMac (gen 1) — again, 100%
iBook G4, 14″ — screen issue (subject to Apple recall); came back from Apple repaired but with hard drive wiped – ouch!
PowerBook — dead after one month, Apple replaced
iBook G4, 14″ — bought used, 100% (but what are those cracks on the front corners?
Various iPods — 512k shuffle (as much memory as my first Mac!), 30gb gen 5.5, iPod Touch; all do just work
Software is up and down. Over the years, some mild OS problems, all routinely resolved; zero viruses.
Have also owned some highly reliable PC compatible hardware. But the OS always gives me fits. It requires a lot of attention, upgrades and diligence against viruses.
I think a lot of computer hardware is pretty solid, regardless of manufacturer. What sets Apple apart is the reliability of the OS. It seems I am always fiddling with DOS/Windows, trying to resolve conflicts/upgrading/networking/de-virusing.
Feel free to flame me all you want people…
In my experience people that say “Apple sucks” are those people that don’t know how to use them.
When first time Apple users come into contact with OS X, they expect there to be a start menu, a taskbar, all that fun stuff. When there isn’t, they panic. When they panic is when they start putting Apple down.
People need to do some reading. They need to know that most Windows software will not work on OS X. (Unless you have an Intel Mac with the right software.) They need to know that things will be different.
Personally, I love Apple. Apple has never let me down.
With Apple, you pay for quality and you should expect to.
I bought an original iphone for $500 bucks. I then find out u had to get the data plan which I didn’t want because of the price. Brought the phone home. Thing was slower than molassass. I felt like I was just robbed. I took it back but lost the restocking fee. Apple blows.
My wife and I have owned Macs since 1989 when she brought home an Apple II for the summer (she teaches 1st grade ) and our 3 year old was playing games on it. My wife told him if he wanted to change games to call her. Once as she checked on him he was playing something different and she asked how he got there and he said you click here and here just like you did.
My point is that was system 6 and it just worked. We have Apples since ( we have had more than 65 Macs as we maintain a Mac lab in her classroom ) not to say we have not had issues, we have, but have found that Apple has service that is top notch. I have an iBook G3,1 PowerBook G4 1.67, 1 MacBook Pro, 11 eMacs, 2 iMac Flat panels, plus 5 iPods of various types and 1 Power Mac 533 tower (dead) at this time.
We have had Windows machines and found that if it weren’t for the OS they would be great machines.
Does Apple make mistakes? Yes. It is like all things manmade, it has flaws. I personally think that Apple does it’s best to make computing as pleasurable as possible to as many as possible, it’s just good business practice. All you people that bash Apple need to look at whether or not satisfaction was achieved.
I have had to learn how to service Apples because most of our machines were used and to keep them running at their best.
True Apple doesn’t tell you some things as most people would be scared right off, the same as with Windows.
For me and mine we will use Apple.