Apple can blow me.

[feren]

I bought my black MacBook back on June 19th, 2006 along with my black 60GB iPod. For the record, my iPod continues to treat me well. I love it. I'm sad to see it surpassed by the Classic 160GB and the Touch, but it's still a good little unit. Unfortunately, my other purchase has not been nearly so reliable. For the last eight months or so I've

Comments

[doomsey]

lesson: extended warranties on laptops are worth it.

[feren]

Only if they can diagnose and actually repair the issue.

[doomsey]

Usually, according to the contracts that becomes no-longer-your-problem after a few tries.

[yakko]

But the several weeks each try takes never stops becoming your problem. :o/

[hysd]

I've been doing Mac support for over two years now, and I know exactly what you mean. There are reasons I still buy PCs. x_x

[yakko]

My MacBook (Core 2 Duo) seems to be working fine. I really hope it lasts as long as the PowerBook it replaced did. So far, so good.

(it's a year old this month)

I was just pondering this today... a similar question: If not a Mac, what laptop would I buy? It has to be light, not cost a shit-ton of money, not be a shitty Dell Inspiron and I've lost trust in IBM since they became Lenovo...

I'm not sure I'd want an XPS M1330 because it's expensive, but that looks like the best thing not-Apple. I'd run Linux on there, though, preferring to keep Windows in a VM.

I have a coworker's MacBook Pro that's a year and a half old and has some strange behavior. It WILL. NOT. BOOT. from CD. Ever. Not internal, not external. The battery is busted and Apple refused to replace it two weeks out of warranty even though it was part of the battery recall. The damned thing has general issues booting (I think it's an EFI thing), but without a CD to boot from, I can't correct this!

[hysd]

The laptops I buy are ASUS brand. They're cheap for what you get and my last one survived 4 years of being totted around campus and still works beautifully another year on. Only reason I replaced it is because I wanted a laptop that would play World of Warcraft. c_c

[spoothbrush]

I continue to fail to get why people find Apple products superior. If you like 'em? Great! But trust me, that doesn't make you a smarter consumer in any way. It just means that you've gotten committed to something that's pretty much impossible to repair.

[yakko]

You are correct, but at least 1) the current Mac laptops aren't as impossible to repair as the old ones were, since they have a lot of PC-standard parts; 2) the playing field is level when laptops are concerned; each OEM is unique.

People find Apple products superior because they want to believe that it's somehow less Made in China than a Dell, and that gives them bragging rights. At least I knew what I was getting into before buying one. :o)

[spoothbrush]

Yeah... there's also a part of me that wants to smack certain Mac users upside the head with a big bag of pudding and say "IT DOESN'T COUNT AS ANTICONSUMERIST WHEN YOU BUY THINGS!!!"

[feren]

In theory it's a lot like buying a BMW versus a Dodge: you pay more for something you can't work on yourself, but the supposed upside is that you get a vastly superior quality of workmanship and are not subjected to the same types of nuisance issues those less pricey/snooty brands are prone to encountering.

Or that's the idea, anyway. Reality rarely works that way, especially in the land of computers.

Or maybe it's just that Apple attracts the same sort of people that give up listening to a particular local band once it exceeds 100 fans because then they're no longer "underground" enough.

[rustitobuck]

Yeah, I always get the extended warranty on laptops.

I consider Apple's design skills to be a notch above most PC brands, but all laptops are made by the same handful of OEMs, use the same suppliers for LCD panels, etc. If enough people complain, and Apple finds that the panels are unduly poorly manufactured, there'll be an out of warranty recall.

The only thing I can suggest is to give a call to Apple's corporate offices, 408-996-1010 (number burned into brain 25 years ago), and ask for customer relations, and explain the matter. Not AppleCare. Corporate customer relations.

The batteries are made by outside suppliers, and I have had at least three batteries replaced for my MacBook Pro so far. The little computer brains that Li-Ion batteries have seem to get brain damage. No battery brain to talk to means the laptop doesn't see the battery.

Bear in mind that the service lifetime of a Li-Ion battery is 12-18 months; it may just need a new battery. Maybe you can get Apple to pop for a free one.

[chebutykin]

The only thing I can suggest is to give a call to Apple's corporate offices, 408-996-1010 (number burned into brain 25 years ago), and ask for customer relations, and explain the matter. Not AppleCare. Corporate customer relations.

Ditto. Apple's customer relations and service are often exemplary. I've had them fix and/or entirely replace defective electronics even out of warranty, free of charge.