Apple Rotting?

While in the mountains over the weekend, during a short discussion with a hiking buddy, we were talking about trips to the Apple store which got me to thinking about how many times I have recently had to carry my Mac in for something to be replaced. About six years ago when I went back to using Apple equipment, I purchased an iBook (white was the only color back then) and soon after purchased a PowerBook, then about a year later a Quad G4 PowerMac. All three of these computers never found their way back to the Apple Store – not one problem to this day. My wife still uses the PowerBook, my daughters still use the iBook, and the PowerMac was sold off at the end of a project.

 In 2005 I purchased a 15″ MacBook Pro. One of the first, but not the very first…. learned long ago to stay away from the too bleeding edge. That first MBP found it’s way back into the Apple Store four times during the two years that I owned it. First, the battery recall, then the bending on the case that covers the monitor, then the hooking system that locks the cover shut when the laptop is closed, which ended in another trip to change out the whole top and bottom aluminum casing/cover.

 I replaced that with a nice 17″ MBP with the high resolution LED screen about one year ago. I took the computer into the Apple Store about six months ago due to some bending on the bottom casing. Apple replaced the bottom (keyboard side) aluminum casing.

 Today I will be taking this into the Apple Store due to a problem with the power supply. I do not know if this is another mass recall, but I do see one trend – I am getting very poor uptime performance from a computer system. It certainly is not the nine nines performance that would be expected. All this means is that my system is down for one to three days every six months!

 There is another thing to be inferred from this experience. The quality system that monitored systems before delivery when Apple used PowerPC processors was far better than whatever quality system they put in place when adopting Intel chips. I was one of the people that got excited when Apple implemented Intel chips, despite having invested in PowerPC systems, however, I can see a clear change in quality.

 One last word…. recent trips to the Genius Bar at Apple Stores also reveal this further. In Tokyo, Japan, where there are two Apple Stores to choose from, the average wait for service is from three hours to one day! We know the number of Apple users have increased, but not quite at the rate that the so-called genius’ are being engaged by users with broken systems.

I know some fanboys are going to bash me for this one, but facts are facts. I too am a fanboy – OS X rocks, the development framework is awesome, but while the hardware is cool, it offers less than mediocre performance.