Apple store, Applecare, Powerbook, and a near breakup

[substitute]

I took the Powerbook to the Genius Bar at the Newport Beach Apple Store on Sunday. The S key was popping off and clearly broken. This had happened previously to the space bar and they'd just replaced the thing

Comments

[switchstatement]

wow, are powerbooks really that shoddy? i know a ton of people with ipods and zero people who have not had an ipod explode on them. does apple make fragile products all around or something?

PREACHY - there are a number of ready-for-desktop end-user linux distros that are, well, very shiny and convenient. i stuck ubuntu on my toshiba satellite and seriously everything Just Worked. you need to apt-get a few things to get proprietary codecs for divx, mp3, whatever (i hear the latest release has a point'n'click utility that even handles this for you), but other than that, no problems. wireless, suspend to disk, widescreen display... all the traditional problem areas are covered. also my toshiba is almost 3 years old, has been all over the east coast, dropped a few times, banged into walls/car doors/humans, a hell of a lot of wear and tear, and i haven't had a single problem with it. not even a dead pixel!

[substitute]

I'm very comfortable with Linux, yeah, so that isn't so much a problem. There's so much good software for Mac OS X, though.

Apple laptops aren't shoddy, but there are some problems. The power supply one is the worst. It's just a bad design and they won't own up to it. Honda replaced my entire transmission for free becaus they made a mistake, for chrissakes.

Laptops break more than desktops. If they can't handle that, they should just charge more for the service policy in the first place instead of taking the free money and then angering the customer. It's just... ca fait l'ennui.

[frobisher]

For what it's worth, my powerbook's only ever had a hard drive go bad on it, and they replaced it with no fuss.

That said, I did take it to our local mac-friendly tech place, rather than to the apple store.

I don't mean to dismiss your concerns (I've certainly had a couple of iPod related issues), but overall, I've been pretty lucky with apple stuff. Maybe they know I'm a shareholder. :-)

[substitute]

Your anecdotal experience is worth exactly as much as mine. However, mine is what I'm going to go on. I haven't broken up yet but I'm not happy.

[tuliphead]

Thank you for further cementing my decision to never have been and never to be (in the forseeable future, anyway) an Apple customer. It boggles my mind when I think of the kind of money folks drop on Apple products... and for what? Crappo customer service? Of course, not having touched an Apple since the Powermac, I'm sure I don't know squat about what I'm missing and why people trade their firstborn for Apple products... but I think I'd rather keep it that way.

[substitute]

The laptop and the OS itself are brilliant. The warranty, not so much.

[threepunchstuff]

Have you tried other Apple stores? The one in Mission Viejo mall has always been good to me, even when the issue was genuinely my fault.

I've read enough horror stories like yours to know that warranty fraud is a company-wide unspoken policy, but there does appear to be variance between stores. I would assume the Fashionist Island staff would be among the worst offenders.

[substitute]

The Fashion Island staff has included friends of mine over the years, although none of them are "Geniuses." The problem I've noticed is that it depends way too much which "Genius" you get and how that person feels about you and about what the "Genius" had for breakfast and whether the "Genius" gave out too much service today maybe. I don't like being in the absolute power of some petty geek tyrant who decides whether I've been bad or good and then whether I get service.

[threepunchstuff]

That's true. Basically the $350 enthralls you to a fickle and vengeful god. If it's any consolation, many cults have a much higher initiation fee.

[counterfeitfake]