gdgt

Wow! At least you can walk away knowing that your Apple Care 'investment' was worth it. And it sounds like your Apple rep didn't make too much a fuss - I know some can be wishy washy and take a long time to get an issue like that resolved. I always struggle on whether to buy this coverage for my Apple products, but after hearing your experience, it's a sound investment.

Yeah there was no fuss to get any of the parts replaced which was nice and the AppleCare was definitely worth it. I would just hope that in the future, I wouldn't have to worry about terrible quality. Maybe the unibody models are a better bet, though I'm still leaning towards the HP Envy 14 for my next machine.

This is one of my pet peeves, and thus - it means another extended diatribe.

The story is fairly typical unfortunately, but for many consumers it's not actually that big a deal. You see many stories of the grateful on Apple fan-boards when Apple replaces their machines for a new unit. The duty cycle of consumers means that many develop issues around the 2-3 year range, so if yours is a fairly frequent lemon, it means you get the latest and greatest after a couple of years. Repairs and the way they're approached are geared for people who don't actually want to mess around with their systems. On the whole, provided the downtime doesn't bother you, Apple warranty could even be said to be a pretty pleasant experience.

Contrast that with e.g. Dell consumer-hardware talk - there may be fewer stories of repairs or replacements as a percentage, but the vast majority of these are of hugely onerous experiences which leads to 'never Dell again' anger because customer communications is not being handled effectively, and the support package is often not right for the user: If you give an uninformed user a choice, they're invariably going to make the wrong one and then blame *you* for it - and Dell's selling method leads to maximum failure based on that premise.

I can see why Apple's structured, simplified repair and replacement policy gets them a good consumer name - because in most of these cases, the machine's cost is far higher in value than the user's time, which in a student's case (or in most present-day professional tech blogger's cases) is essentially close to zero value - and many people actually enjoy going to the Apple Store.

So in effect, to most the machine has far more perceived importance than what you may be doing with it. However for those where that is definitely not the case, it's a serious issue. I've also had umpteen machines replaced in the 0.5 ~ 2 year age range. e.g. Of the three 17-inch unibodies I own for my own use, only one is the original, first-gen machine. And when you actually expect your machines to 'just work' in the way that pro-use HP/Dell/Lenovo/etc's actually do for the most part, the downtime and the administration involved in arranging multiple repairs makes the whole thing a nightmare no matter how pleasantly each case may be handled - not to mention the fact that all of the Apple 'Pro' machines are, from a mission-critical aspect, essentially warmed-over home computers in terms of practically available warranty and product engineering.

So essentially you also have to carry your own spares if you want equivalent continuity to the actually 'Pro' Windows machines, which makes Apples much more expensive to own, despite these days being cheaper per unit than most of the Windows machines we've bought. Several cabinets full of pristine Apple boxes may be impressive to the geek but it's an operational investment we didn't have to make to the same extent with any other company. As things stand however I don't have a hardware choice if I have to run OS X in a commercially stable manner.

True, if your needs are so light that any old machine would actually be fine for you, and in fact if you may not even notice signal defects, you may never have a problem apparent to you - my GF, mother and many other tech-illiterates in my social orbit who have been computer (especially Mac, but certainly not solely so) users for many years usually have no hardware issues unless it's clearly some sort of manufacturing defect.

But as far as I'm concerned - and I suspect heavier gdgt users may also fall somewhat into this category - when playing in my league they have almost no quality control, a fundamental lack of a true grasp of product engineering and IMO it's only the visual desirability, marketing closely allied with product development and aftercare which coalesces into the legendary 'RDF', as well as a huge increase in the tech equivalent of celeb-rag reportage by the aforementioned tech bloggers that continues to give them a relatively unjustified name for quality.

Apple get many things absolutely right in the buying experience. But the product under the skin is something else. With very rare exceptions I have yet to deal with trashier hardware from an actual productivity point of view.

Interesting take on the subject. I definitely agree with most of what was said. After 4 years of architecture school and about to head into 3 more for my masters degree, having a computer that works all the time is a necessity. I use it heavily for about 6 to 8 hours a day, and 24 hours a day towards the end of a project. My friends using cheaper/older HP's and Dell's haven't had many issues, yet me with my supposedly superior hardware, have had an issue every 6 months or less.

I want this machine to last me through 3 years of grad school but I just don't see it making the cut at this rate. Heres to hoping, though.