Has Apple lost it?

Of all the laptops I’ve ever used for home and work, my 2010 MBP has lasted the best, it’s still as good as new today.

Well I would never use their shit, they have got their market share nicely tied up.

Of all the laptops I’ve ever used for home and work, my MB black has lasted the least (just for balance 😉 )
I’ve never succeeded in getting a macbook battery or an official replacement to last a year.
And as for quality issues, all of those white macbooks that turned yellow, and the first Santa Rosa MPPs that had half a screen tinted yellow (the reason I bought a MB instead), and CPUs with hardly any or 5x as much thermal compound as is normal, and iPhones that you had to hold “just right” were a figment of the press’s imagination 😉

So no they’re not losing it, but have always had quality issues just like any other lappy and phone maker. They just have a perceived better build quality just by having shiney kit with seamless shut lines.

PS the eeePC I bought around the same time as that laptop is still running, and still with original battery, and still gets used.

I’ve got iPad 1, 3 air and air 2 all still in perfect working order
iPhone 4s and 3GS (3 retired due to coffe incident)
2011 mbp used 8-10h daily
Apple TV
Airport express – absolute howling piece of shit
2011 Mba used daily
Apart from the AE I’ve either been lucky or apple aren’t losing it yet

None of the batteries have needed replacing because they’ve been looked after. I had one incident with the 4s where it started to lose charge rapidly but that was recovered easily.

iPhone 6 inbound so will be able to comment on that after a couple of years.

Well I would never use their shit, they have got their market share nicely tied up.

This is the kind of sillyness that spoils these threads. You may have made a different consumption choice but Apple products certainly aren’t “shit” by any measure.

Ooos forgot about this.

IIRC, the issue was caused by the introduction of lead-free solder, combined with NVIDIAs overheating GPUs. Many machines (from many brands) suffered from detachment of the connection under the GPU after some months/years as the temps were well on the way to melting the solder so it caused crystals to grow within it until it became brittle.

Oven reflows, heat guns and even burning cans can be used to reflow the joints with general success.

Modifying the fan curves for the cooling would help too (IDk if possible).

I have an HP laptop with the problem, the primary SATA bus has dropped out, but other than that it still works.

I think I should qualify my comments – they are based on wide, if shorter experience than some.

Currently we have in our home: –
– 1 Macbook Pro 2013
– 1 Macbook Air 2014
– 1 iPad Air Retina 2014
– 2 iPad Mini 2’s 2014
– 2 iPAD Air Retina 2’s 2014
– 1 iPhone 4s
– 1 iPhone 3GS
– 1 iPhone 5s
– 1 iPod Touch 2013
– 2 iPod Nano’s 2012
– 1 iPod Shuffle 2011

As a result, I feel pretty qualified to comment on the shortcomings of recent Apple kit, OS’s and applications.

Yes, there is a lot of choice but Apple do need to improve somewhat. We have had 3 pieces now of faulty apple kit – i.e. 3/14. That ratio at a premium price is too high.

iPad 2
iPad mini
iPad mini retina
iPod original
iPod shuffle
iPod nano
iPod nano
iPhone 3GS
iPhone 4S
iPhone 5
Mac Book Pro
Apple TV
iPhone 6
iPhone 6+

Oooh! That’s 14 too and all working grand.

I’ve owned Apple products for at least the last 10 yeas and so far to date I have never had anything fail on me, I’ve had various phones, iPads, iPods and Apple TVs, maybe I’m just lucky.

Oooh! That’s 14 too and all working grand.

My qualification post wasn’t responding to anyone’s challenge or comment Drac. Only putting my earlier post in context – i.e.. I’m not an Apple-hater taking pot shots, but instead someone who has spent significant money on their products and expects a little more reliability in terms of hardware and some better thought through OS and application changes.

To correct my last post though – actually forgot the 2 Apple TV’s as well so its 3/16 with problems. I stand by the fact that over 18% faulty of any sample in this category is too high for hardware faults.

my goodness and i thought people spent a lot on their bikes on this forum!

Modifying the fan curves for the cooling would help too (IDk if possible).

SMC Fan Control? Though I only used that on my Hack

In my relative short time using an iMac (4/5 years?) my experience of using Apple OS and software is worse not better. My iMac has in the last 12 months or so suffered from intermittent connectivity issues over wi-fi which, if the forums are anything to go by, is a common problem and coincidentally has been at its worst today. I also think Apple continue to struggle with cloud computing for reasons I neither have the time nor energy to go into.

Moreover they seem to be masters of introducing “improved” software to solve a set of real problems (credit due there), but introduce a whole new set of problems you didn’t have before. For example iCloud Photo Library was my dream solution of being able to have a single photo library that is shared and editable across multiple devices and not reliant on an internet connection, at least on my main iMac. The downside to this is that there is no way of forcing certain photos/albums to be “available offline” on my iPhone. It seems Apple only design software for an infrastructure that doesn’t yet exist and may never do i.e. fast internet access everywhere.

To correct my last post though – actually forgot the 2 Apple TV’s as well so its 3/16 with problems. I stand by the fact that over 18% faulty of any sample in this category is too high for hardware faults.

Where as I have a 0% so really such small numbers prove nothing.

Fair comment on iCloud. I find it really annoying they have the temerity to dictate how to use their service. Why can’t it just be like drop box but better? Why would they not want to do that….

Stability wise, OS X is slightly less stable than W7 IME.

Apple do a lot right but they could do so much better.

I stand by the fact that over 18% faulty of any sample in this category is too high for hardware faults.

Where as I have a 0% so really such small numbers prove nothing.

Where as I have a 100% (or N * 100% if you count faulty replacement batteries too) but that proves nothing either. Other than the fact that just like any other IT manufacturer they’re not immune to hardware or software or indeed firmware issues (my batteries were not fixed by the battery firmware fix that they put out around the time my first battery failed).

Stability wise, OS X is slightly less stable than W7 IME

Only kernel level panic / blue screen / bomb logo that I’ve had in the last 10 years has been OSX. Still that’s a total of 1 occurrence. Or is it infinitely more crashes than Windows 7, 8.1 and more Linuxes than I could reliably name.

Of the five Apple things I’ve had over the past 10 years one of them failed in the first week, the others were still going strong after 4 years… My biggest peeve with Apple is the software and how you can’t do what you want without jumping through hoops.

But show me any computer manufacturer and I can show you someone I personally know who’s had a bad experience and has walked off swearing they’d never buy anything from that maker again.

.
Where as I have a 0% so really such small numbers prove nothing.

You do realise from an analytical perspective that is balls don’t you?

The most interesting stat in this would be the net promoter score

“How likely is it that you would recommend Apple to a friend or colleague?”

I’m less likely to recommend Apple than I was even a year ago and I know I’m not alone. Is that a trend that is growing or are the detractors an inconsequential stat amongst the growing army of new Apple users?

Analytic perspective, Net Promoter. This shit just got real.

^^ Exactly Stilltortoise! This isn’t a piece of research where strictly how representative it is or where statistical significance is crucial. It’s about how my experience affects others. How do I use my experience to influence people I know and how/if this changes their buying decisions. It’s a lot more subtle and subjectively influenced.

Drac – Moderator
Analytic perspective, Net Promoter. This shit just got real.
POSTED 2 MINUTES AGO # REPORT-POST

🙂

Just want to check if I can say “shit” too without it hitting a filter or if it’s a Mod Superpower!

Yep, I can!

Can’t report my own post for “offensive language” though! Dang!

sample size 1, etc.

itunes on ipod about 10 years ago, clunky but usable, ish.

replaced with some third party lightweight library software which was more than up to the job of moving stuff between PC & ipod but without any bells, whistles, or the shopfront

itunes on win8 laptop 6 months ago, with iphone

large software, took yonks to install, hasn’t recognised music library properly, no idea why, full of shopfront, unimpressive, result is, wife never uses iphone for music, despite wanting to.

vs

same laptop, with the preinstalled windows media circus, htd desire, s4, random memory sticks, all recognised straight away, syncing no problem, shopfront quite avoidable, in regular use to move music around between my android phone and the laptop

= I’m not over impressed with the iphone4, or itunes.

The reason the net promoter score is falling is probably a fashion cycle.

We reached peak beard last year.

This year: peak Apple?

Ah, that’s interesting and kind of good to hear.

Well, kind of. I seem to remember reading that the fix didn’t really fix it. It was something like a massive blob of heat sink paste squirted in the right place. Some folk complained the problem was still there even after having their machine ‘repaired’, I believe.

Some reading here with a link about halfway down the page to that bloody great thread with 800+ pages on the trials and tribulations of Macbook users…

http://www.macworld.co.uk/news/mac/widespread-2011-macbook-pro-failures-petition-lawsuit-repair-programme-3497935/

Have those of you who have perfectly functioning ipad 2’s got the latset software installed? If so, how are they working? Mine is bordering unusable.

It’s slower than it use to be but works fine.

My Dad has an iPad original that is struggling with some apps no longer supported for that model.

Personally I can do without the relentless pursuit of thinness. I like my thick MacBook pro with plenty of ports and a DVD drive. Anyway my Apple experience is generally positive. I even seem to find iTunes acceptable, it stores and plays tunes and videos.

I love the super light and thin new Macbook and don’t miss ports and DVD drive, but I guess I’m target market for it. Tablets didn’t give me what I wanted and the “hybrid” Surface Pros and the like seemed a bit of a convoluted solution to the problem. A light, slim and high resolution laptop is just the ticket 🙂

iTunes isn’t great but I’ve never found it to be the horror that (many) others have. I quite like the new iTunes with Apple Music, despite one or two minor annoyances.

It’s just the stuff that WAS good and now isn’t that makes me question the “It just works” mantra

I don’t think Apple really ‘had it’ in my mind.

Nothing they’ve done has really struck me a revolutionary*, more evolutionary. The only thing that has come close is the App Store idea (basically a one-stop online computer programme shop) as it did create a new market and support the premise of a smart phone. Even the IPod was basically a designer getting
all creative with the MP3 players around at the time and a small hard drive being made available.

I should add my only experience off Apple products is owning an IPod Nano (the square one) which had terrible sound quality and had to be replaced under warranty after the battery leaked, plus having the odd play n a friend’s MacBook Pro which seemed very nice but felt very cold and restrictive to use (OSx).

* I’m taking about since ~’00 on as it’s when the current ‘fanboi’ hype seemed to kick in.

They’ve been a bit iffy for years – I remember getting a 2nd gen iMac, brand new (400mhz! DVD drive! Wowsers!). As soon as I installed a scanner and a printer, it kept on dying. Turned out that OS8.6 on the special edition IMacs was catastrophically broken when it came to drivers, had to do loads of faffing with the extensions manager to get it even slightly stable. I’ve had more crashes on that machine than all of the other PCs I’ve ever used combined!

My 4th gen iPod kept skipping tracks partway through – this was a common issue that Apple denied existed.

My iPads have been pretty good, although my iPad Air is a bit rubbish for browsing as Safari is so bad with memory, and it went through a particularly bad patch around iOS 7 where not only was Safari crashing constantly, but the screen would register phantom touches on the keyboard, which made typing interesting.

Apple do some lovely stuff, but their main skill is in marketing!

Apple have done some good stuff, but was pee’d off by the way the failed to handle the ibook G4 logic board failures ( GPU chip was BGA where the solder dried after a while and cracked). Although the fact that OS X is effectively a highly polished UNIX closely integrated to the hardware always outweighed the issues I had and I ended up buying a macbook pro in 2008 which is still going strong.

Sadly, they appear to now be focused more on aiming for the rich consumer rather than the time-pressed professional these days, so my next laptop may be a lenovo or similar running some version of Linux.

Even the IPod was basically a designer getting all creative with the MP3 players around at the time and a small hard drive being made available

I remember the first Mp3 players. They were big, heavy and with little infrastructure to actually get music on them. Apple “solved” that problem and made Mp3 players a genuine alternative to portable CD/tape players. Whilst this may not be seen as revolutionary, I don’t think you can deny the impact it had. Launching products with a supporting infrastructure is what Apple do well…mostly.

little infrastructure to actually get music on them.

What? Just cut and paste in Windows Explorer. Apple ‘solved’ this problem with itunes.

So far from the truth. Many better MP3 players around at the time such as the Creative Zen and the Rio had been around a while before Apple thought about portable players.
As for the interface don’t make us laugh. iTunes is the worst software ever designed by Apple in their bid to control your music, sorry not your music anymore as Apple only licence it you. Music match software provided with most players was better, drag and drop was still an option on the other players and it all just worked but Apple wanted to control it all.
Ironically I still have a Creative Zen Touch in the garage that is still working and outlasting any other Apple player by a long margin.

I’m going to wimp out and use the “in my experience” prefix, but in my experience Mp3 players like the Creative Nomad were big, heavy and even less portable than a “portable” CD player. My mate who had one was geeky enough to enjoy spending his time searching for (usually pirated) music on Napster/Limewire and happy enough dragging, dropping, renaming etc etc. I’m quite sure he and countless others didn’t find it difficult but I find it hard to see how that is easier than what Apple and iTunes brought to the party.

iTunes isn’t brill software but I always found it easier to manage my music on my iPod using that than I ever did using Creative’s software and my little Zen Stone. Horses for courses.

Anyway, this is an Apple-knocking thread, not an Apple love-in 😆

drag and drop was still an option on the other players

Just like iTunes then?