Submitted by Macintouch has done a hardware quality survey among owners of PowerMac G5s (3000 PowerMacs) regarding hardware quality, support quality, and more. The conclusion: “The Power Mac G5’s 17% first-year failure rate remains far higher than the industry average of 5%. If Apple is to maintain its premium pricing, it should provide premium reliability. As things stand, high Power Mac prices must include high warranty service costs built-in. With an overall failure rate of 23%, a quarter of which occur outside of Apple’s 1-year warranty, and an average of 1.29 repairs per affected unit implying repeat problems, Power Macs are neither cheap for Apple to service after the sale, nor cheap for buyers. Power comes at a cost.” Ok. Run Forrest, run!
I’ve noticed that, as the price has come down, the problems have gone up.
My last 3 machines have either been floor models or refurbished and I’ve had better luck than most because the problems have been repaired prior to my purchases.
As Apple is still subsidising the cost of Mac OS X with hardware profits, they can’t lower the prices to the point of other machines, but they definitely need to get the quality problems handled–now.
“but they definitely need to get the quality problems handled–now.”
and they will…. like they all ways have!
from time to time, apple has put out its share of lemons! (i have never had any from them but i have heard of the problems over the years… like the 5300 (i think) batteries exploding, and the perform series just being crappy. and the initial issue with some of the first powerbooks…)
I still think they buid the best computer hard ware on the market!
what the hell is this supposed to mean?
“Run Forrest, run!”
I think it suggests that some zealots may take offence to the suggestion that there is a high failure rate and are very expensive to maintain. Zealots come stock with pitchforks and torches.
I’d love to see a comparison between the PowerPCs and high end workstation PCs since you pay a premium for quality with both.
Wow, thats a big leap… unless ofcourse you:
1) Are a Thom mind reader
2) Are Thom
Or, you saw the movie and know why Forrest was running. Come on Kelly, you can do better than that
.
Edited 2006-07-11 18:48
Forest was running to avoid being hit by bullies.
Ya, thats relivant.
So I did catch you posting as your pseudonym. I was told that you don’t do that. Apparently not.
Now stop replying to me… you’re off topic… and you’ll be banned by the admins here (Or is banning or deleting comments only reserved for people that don’t disagree with you?)
Kelly, that wasn’t my pseudonymn, I only post under my own name. I’m not like you. Go back on topic, please.
Oh that’s just typical Tom for you… he takes a valid article/link about a real issue of interest or concern among consumers and can’t help but add his unprofessional take on it, rather like his insistence on purposely spelling out the name of OS X wrong on several articles just because he doesn’t agree with Apple (search engines be damned).
A line in the movie, Forrest Gump.
but I sure am glad I did for my dual 1.8 G5. Three memory replacements, three visits to the shop, one motherboard, one processor and $2300 later (covered by Apple Care), it now runs like a champ!
I’ve got the same make/model: stop, you’re making me nervous.
On a related note, this may be a problem with one particular supplier as opposed to a problem with the entire Powermac line. For example, we run Dell Optiplexes at the office. Two particular models (the GX260 and GX270) had particularly horrible failure rates for us. Well over 30%. Turns out that most of the parts effected (the 260 had a bad hard drive, the 270 had bad mobos) were typically from the same ‘batch’ for a particular supplier. The problematic 260 hard drives were Maxtors from Malaysia if I remember right. but not all the 260s had hard drives from Malaysia. We just happened to get a high concentration of effected units. So I’m not entirely pissed at Dell for this (they’ve been real champs about replacement parts), just at their supplier for skimping on the quality control.
This could be the same issue at hand here. I’m not defending Apple (or bashing dell for that matter), just trying to put a perspective on this. It could just be an issue of really bad QC at one particular supplier and not an indictment of the entire powermac line. Just a thought.
I agree, but I also disagree. You pay a pretty hefty premium on PowerMacs, you should get premium parts and premium QC that makes sure this kind of stuff doesn’t happen.
I don’t order Apples at high prices -being told they’re better in every way including hardware quality- to recieve a unit that contains the same crappy Maxtor hard drives, the same crappy Foxconn motherboard parts, the same crappy cabling and the same crappy RAM that I can get in a Dell precision that costs the same, has comparable or better performance, has a better video card, a better warranty, more RAM and more disk space, can upgrade to a better than onboard audio card among many other things for the same price as a base 2ghz PowerMac.
I’d *gladly* pay the Apple premium for real support, real QC and really good quality hardware as well as OS X…but we just don’t get this. I’m eager to see the Intel PowerMacs, just to see how comparable they really are.
There goes the Apple Quality Myth right out of window. I wonder what excuse will Mac fans come up with for this one ^^
Seriously though this is a big image dent to Apple Brand.
Oh, that’s quite easy.
1. It’s all a bloody lie.
2. Macintouch cannot be taken serioulsy.
3. Bill Gates paid for the survey
…
…
There are endless possibilities.
As the owner of a Mac Mini Core Duo, I’m telling you that this survey clearly is a bloody lie, Macintouch is a joke that simply mustn’t be taken seriously and it is pretty obvious that Bill Gates funded this survey 😛
Seriously though, I like Macs and all, and just bought a new Mini, but Apple needs to either cut their prices or else learn some quality assurance. Luckily for me, the Minis seem to have a much lower failure rate than the Powermacs.
However, with all of the heat issues with the Apple laptops, it is clear that problems will continue to plague the Intel line.
I have my own experiences with Apple Care, and they are not good to put it lightly. My Mom purchased a 20″ Intel iMac from a local Apple dealer. The Applecare wouldn’t register online because of a mess-up with the date. So she phoned Apple, gave them the numbers, they told her to fax in the receipt. She did that, and two weeks later hadn’t heard back, so she phoned again. They said, sorry fax it again. So she did….again. The receipt had the DOP circled, the prices circled and the name of the retailer circled, because that is the info they needed the receipt for. The next day, she got an email back saying the documentation was insufficient because it didn’t include a DOP, Retailer info or total price. It finally took my Mom phoning, talking to them like babies while walking them through how to find the information, insulting their intelligence (which they clearly deserved, as they obviously aren’t all that bright), threatening to take the unit back and buying a Dell instead, before they told her it would be done in a week. I’ll know in the next day or so if they actually bothered doing it.
I fear the day I have to deal with these fools if something happens to my Mini…I wish Apple would license OS X to a more competant hardware vendor, as I use their hardware for the software, not the hardware itself. And if they are going to charge way more than anyone else for extended warranties, why can’t they hire some workers to deal with their customers that can actually speak some english? I doubt a very high percent of their customers in the US and Canada request support calls in punjab (not to be racist but jesus christ Apple).
My 2 cents, take ’em or leave ’em.
dont bash apple care to much! maybe buying the mac though some one other than apple was more of a mistake! (the apple store will register the AppleCare at time of purchase!!!!)
I have had my powerbook totally replaced with a brand new one, TWO years newer! AND… do to a similar paperwork issue that you had mention… i had my apple care plan extended for and extra 30days!
apple is a large company… with lots of humans! errors happen… but i have NEVER (knock on wood) witnessest apple NOT stand behind there products!
now… there are some dumb asses at the apple store…. i brought my iPod in because it waould not boot. the Genius told me it needed a new battery! i was shocked… and when home… googled the issue… and found a fix for it my self! so… they are not perfect by any means!
but i would still recomend the extended warrenty plan on EVERY laptop …apples… or other wise!
I cannot understand why Aple sticks to Intel, when they could have pushed VIA C7 also for their minis? They consume less heat and can give lower price points. And they have pad lock security.
And I also think that dumping PASemi was a fatal mistake!!!
“I cannot understand why Aple sticks to Intel, when they could have pushed VIA C7 also for their minis? They consume less heat and can give lower price points.”
I think you mean “produce” less heat
– VIA prolly can’t supply Apple with as many chips as Intel can pump out of their fabs.
– Using the C7 would mean different socket, different chipset, again would have to be supplied by VIA.
– It still wouldn’t affect the price of these machines. If you look at the price patterns as far back as the G3s, Apple has always had a pricing structure based on the model (entry-level, medium, high-end). A lot of people thought the switch to Intel would mean cheaper Macs. That’s not the case. The CPU is only a small factor in the overall price.
Just like statistics, somethings get blurred…
http://www.macworld.com/news/2006/07/11/satisfaction/index.php
Who’s right? We can’t really tell.
Ahh, opinions
———-Just like statistics, somethings get blurred…———-
I didn’t see any statistics in your link. It’s merely a survey based upon satisfaction. Most mac users are zealots about their product. It’d take a burnt down house to get a bad rating.
———Who’s right? We can’t really tell. ———–
Wiping the zealot aspect off the table, the fact that OS 10 is superior to windows, it’s not a hard aspect to see that most would be very very happy with their machine. Unix based(which means no crashes), tight hardware control to keep rogue drivers off of the table, and there aren’t exactly a huge supply of mac viruses.
There’s no conflict here.
“Wiping the zealot aspect off the table, the fact that OS 10 is superior to windows, it’s not a hard aspect to see that most would be very very happy with their machine. Unix based(which means no crashes), tight hardware control to keep rogue drivers off of the table, and there aren’t exactly a huge supply of mac viruses. ”
To paraphrase Will Rogers, “I have never run an OS that I couldn’t crash”. OS X and Linux included. 🙂
This story is great. It has all the elements of flame bait that make people on this site happy:
Macs are premium priced
Macs cost more solely because of reliability and not more features
Macs break more often than PCs
Thom is in his Glory today
How is those blinders fitting, a little tight? No? Good. If the Power Mac has such failure rates, doesn’t that make the points in your post true? You can deny the truth, but if those #s are correct, you can’t ignore it for long
An update from my previous comment….
The Applecare was finally registered, a month after my Mom bought the machine…not sure whether to be happy that they finally fixed it, or mad that it took a bloody month to register something she paid for!
Edited 2006-07-11 18:55
The text is pretty laconic about the logic and design behind the survey. The interpretation of the results should take into account the way the sample of the costumers where acquired. I may be wrong but it seems that the sample is not random and the way costumers describe their product is not comparable to the way the “industru standard” estimations are acquired. In short, lot of good informationd but the interpretation should be different, IMHO
First we had the wintel, now with apple do we have the Aptel, Mactel, Xtel
As someone who has had a Powermac G5 dual 2.0ghz processor system for almost 3 years now I feel qualified to comment on this article. This unit replaced a Windows XP machine.
My system has been running almost constantly since I bought it in September of 2003. I only turn it off when I am going to be gone for a few days. Most of that time both processors have been running at 100% pretty much 24×7. In all that time I have had zero problems with the G5. I have had a couple of keyboard problems, but the units have been replaced by Apple without any hassle.
One thing comes to mind, and this is not the ravings of a Mac zealot as if something comes along that better fits my need I will not hesitate to jump to it, but surveys have a tendency to be responded to by people who have an axe to grind.
Also, the results of this survey do not seem to be in line with those done by Consumer Reports which probably contain a much better cross-section of Mac users. Admittedly, CR has just one category for Desktop Computers which would include the iMac and the older G4’s as well. But if there were such widespread problems with the G5 it should skew the results enough to show up.
Take either of the mentioned surveys any way you like. People will always interpret these things to show what they want to see. Mac zealots will dismiss the survey as irrelevant and PC apologists will be screaming “I told you so”. All I can go by is my own experiences and I will say that if I had the decision to buy this system to do all over again I would make exactly the same decision.
Most of that time both processors have been running at 100% pretty much 24×7.
And what do you run on there?
I do a lot of video and audio work on my home movies and LP collection. Whatever is left over goes to BOINC. Mostly on the Climate prediction project, but the occasional packet for SETI. 🙂
The last few days I have been giving the system a well deserved rest and am just doing my thing with it.
I wonder whether it’s sensible to compare the 17% PowerMac G5 first-year failure rate with this 5%. The 5% refers to the industry average first-year failure rate for desktops. Note that the average for notebooks is 15% (in the last couple of years).
I think that most people who buy a PowerMac G5, buy it for either heavily using its computing power, as a workstation for software development for OSX or either for using it as a server, maybe a development server. Typically, those use cases are much more demanding on the hardware than the ‘average’ desktop usage. I wonder how much this has an effect on the failure rate. It seems obvious that a machine that is running 24×7 with high loads is gonna have problems sooner than a machine which is only used a couple of hours a day for light weight stuff.
It would be interesting to compare with the workstation models from Dell or another brand to get an idea how high the average first-year failure rate is in that market segment.
Aside from that, I do believe that the quality of Apple hardware is lower these days than it has once been.
Apple:
New duel 2.5 G5 with $249 Apple extended warranty.
Hard drive fails within two weeks. Call Apple tech support, am told I MUST go to a apple store for verification the hard drive is dead. This is a 45 minuet drive, get to store am told I must enter the Q and wait my turn, this takes three hours, then another hour for tech to run diagnostic, yep hard drive is dead, am told I can leave it there and they will get to it in about two weeks. Took G5 home with me, and bought new hard drive on the way home. Replaced it myself. Not impressed with Apple at all.
IBM Thinkpad T30:
Hard drive fails in about 9 months, call IBM tech support, verify over the phone hard drive is dead in about 10 minutes, new hard drive arrives next day before 10:AM vie UPS. IBM ROCKS!
I just wanted to add that when I had problems with my Powerbook G4 (including compusa destroying it) and was told to go to a Mac Store, I would always politely tell the rep on the phone that it was a long trip and I’d prefer having it sent to the Depot directly. They have accommodated me every time. Keep in mind the closest apple store to me was 45 minutes as well up until recently.
Over night delivery of packing materials.
Over night shipment to the depot.
Laptop repaired usually in one day and over-nighted back to me.
I wonder if I’m the only one who has had this experience…
I love Apple’s support. Most of the people you talk to speak excellent English and most seem to know the product more than other computer manufacturer tech support seems too.
I’ve gotten my iPod replaced twice due to failed hard drives (damn Toshiba crap). They overnighted the box to me – I dropped it off at the package store that same day. Two days later I had a brand new iPod on my door step – both times they failed. I knew how to run the onboard diagnostics which the representative said would be the same thing they would do to verify if it was dead and so pretty much there were no questions asked.
Another time, I was having a problem with my external display sometimes changing colors. The guy I spoke to said that he’d send me another dongle to see if that fixes it and if not don’t worry about sending it back. Well, it ended up not being the dongle but the cable on my monitor. Easy, no hassles.
Not to mention I’ve had my Powerbook G4 Rev. D for almost a year and a half with absolutely no issues at all. The computer is used a lot and daily. I am definitely impressed with it. I owned four Toshiba right before I bought this – 4 because first they got my order wrong and kept messing it up, the second because they gave up trying to send me the right parts, and third because the replacement was a lemon and I sent it in literally once a month, and the fourth because the replacement for the second one was DOA. Not very good if you ask me.
I am certainly happy with the build quality of the last line of PPC Apple’s. Our iSight G5 has also been an excellent machine with absolutely no issues and is it QUIET. Even while playing Battlefield 1942 and Medal of Honor the fans are virtually silent.
I’ve always been happy with the service and support I’ve gotten at my local Apple Store, both in and out of warrantee.
I was also happy with service before my city got an Apple Store.
You have to love the mac zealots… “Since it didn’t happen to my Mac which is a different model it is a lie”. I don’t understand why people have such an issue accepting the possibiliy that a single computer model from a manufacturer who normally produces great computers has an above average failure rate.
The survey seems to reflect what I see on a regular basis. I work on a university campus that has around 50% Macs… including labs… and I would say the survey’s failure rate is slightly lower then what we have encountered on PowerMac G5s (20-25% though this is over lifetime). Mostly Logicboard failures, a couple of CPUs (Some times when the logic board fails it seems to kill the CPU) and RAM failure, and about an average rate of other component failures. (Though the ram is often 3rd party stuff Installed when we purchase by the apple reseller, which makes warrenties fun).
A high failure rate is not a huge problem for us either, as we are well set up to be able to handle reimaging computers, the problem is Apple Australia’s service is terrible. We are required to completely isolate the faulty component, often having to run extensive and unnessasary tests before the call centre operator will dispatch a service techie.
As others have said Dells have had problems too, The GX270s had major issues with motherboard capacitors… but unlike apple, dell is willing to admit there is a problem, as as soon as we tell them we have a machine with a bad mobo we have a techie out then next day.
An interesting thing to consider is an computer lab situation (20 – 50 computers), a 5% first year failure rate means that at least 1 computer will go within the first year…. Once you admit that your lab computers are going to periodically break, then all that matters is getting fast service to bring them back online.
It will be interesting what happens now with the intel macs, as they are going to have logic boards based off the same reference designs that most othe PC makers are using. This should help bring the failure rate back in line with the rest of the industry.
All in all I think there is no real issue with buying a power mac g5… just get the applecare with it because you may need it. However I would be expecting now most people are waiting for the intel powered replacement.
I’ve got a dual 1.8 and one day found that all the firewire ports were dead. And I’m out of warranty. And a logic board is upwards of $700. And PCI-X Firewire cards are insanely expensive.
From the intel switch on, I’m sticking to the “cheap” hardware.
The Power Mac G5’s 17% first-year failure rate remains far higher than the industry average of 5%.”
I knew a university who had an exact 17% failure rate of G5s. They were calling Apple support out every other day of the week, and they were far worse than the Dell support they had. It was never certain when an Apple engineer would come out, it was never explained what problems there were and Apple simply dragged their feet as if somehow people should be thankful for having a piece of snazzy and cool electronics on their premises. Apple used to be big in education, but establishments just can’t put up with that kind of attitude.
Mac fans can argue all they want, as usual, but that 17% failure figure is pretty much as dead on accurate as it can be.
“The G5 still fails to power up on cold days. I must heat the front of the machine with a hair drier to get it to boot if the office temperature falls below about 20 C. If it is too cold, the fans rev up, but nothing else happens….My colleagues in the lab think it is hilarious.”
I can vouch for this authenticity. In a cold computer lab in winter this has been known to happen on a regular basis. It’s quite frankly, incredibly bizarre. I’ve had PCs that have taken a bit of warming up after a cold night, usually DVD drives and such, but we’re talking really cold sub-zero nights here. Anything below 10 a G5 really doesn’t seem to like.
The quality of Apple’s power supplies has also been getting steadily worse. We all know about cheap Chinese knock-off power supplies that have 400 watts written on the side but are nowhere near giving 400 watts of power, and then they grind to a hault. Apple seem to be using them.
I’m sure the next one is again one selfmade out of quality components.
http://www.zdnet.com.au/blogs/techandthecity/soa/Poisoned_Apple_/0,…
http://www.zdnet.com.au/reviews/hardware/notebooks/soa/Some_MacBook…
http://www.stainedbook.info/
http://cnet.com.au/laptops/laptops/0,39035649,40063900,00.htm
http://arstechnica.com/journals/apple.ars/2006/6/16/4357
http://www.macfixit.com
People are much more likely to report in a bad experience than a good experience, even Mac-heads. So if you do a “raise your Hands” survey, you have to compensate that number (i don’t know what excatly was the ratio, but it is a researched psychological topic).
Of course it is better to just take an unbiased data source.
I don’t believe the fault rate with Macs is that high. Quite some time i worked as a technician for a *real cheap* computer manufactor, you know the kind of pcs sold in the supermarket (no i will not name the brand) and even we didn’t have close that fault rate. And that was hardware as cheap as you can get. Those numbers just cannot be correct.
If the Sample isn’t RANDOM then
the results are BULLSHIT.
Self selection, by users with problems will skew the stats.
Statistics 101
That’s DELL’s that do that.
It’s DELL that’s been driving the CHEAP SHIT LAPTOP parade.
If they can find a way to make it cheaper they promise they will.
I used to do support for Apple computers, in addition to Windows and Linux, when the offices where I worked had Macs. One of the people in the office who had a Mac was having problems with Mail.app, had important data in there, and it wouldn’t open anymore, so I figured I would call Apple support and see if they could help me out diagnosing and fixing the issue, much like Dell usually does. First thing Apple support asks after you wait over an hour on hold is “Do you have AppleCare?”, and he didn’t, so I said “no” and they told me I needed AppleCare before they could start assisting me. Owning Apple hardware, unlike with Dell, is not enough for support. So, the owner of the Mac agreed to pay for AppleCare, so I told them that, he gave me his credit card and we were going to charge it, however, when they asked for his address, and I said Florida, they said they cannot sell AppleCare in the state of Florida. So I asked how people are supposed to get support in Florida, and they literally told me that they require an out of state address in order to get support in the state of Florida. So, since he just needed to get it working, we found someone in the office with an out of state address, used his credit card, and the owner of the Mac reimbursed him the money so he got AppleCare. Now when the AppleCare order was finished, they just disconnected me when they told me to hold when I started to explain the problem. I called back, and they were complaining that the AppleCare wasn’t in there system yet. They finally found that the order was processed and began diagnosing the issue again, and they wanted me to delete the data directory for Mail.app. I told them I wasn’t going to do that as there was important data in there and they told me if I did not delete all data related to Mail,app, Apple would be unable to continue to support me.
I told the main man in the company I could not handle Apple computers any longer and proposed we switched them over to Linux so I could continue to support them. Before this, I only heard good things about Apple, but they lost me as a customer as well as every single person in the office, as it directly resulted in them losing a very large business deal. The office is now running Ubuntu Linux on some machines, some dual booted with Windows, and some just Windows. (Windows is kept where perfect Office compatibility is needed, all other machines are on Ubuntu Linux, OOo is the biggest problem).
I’m not to shocked. I have been less then pleased with my dual 1.8.
By far the least solid computer I have ever owned.
When new, it would constantly kernel panic, set fans to full blast, apple managed to fix this over time. Can’t remember if it was firmware or OS.
Still hangs a good deal.
PCI bus is just damn slow. Expansion cards run horribly slow, venders mention it as an issue with PCI (not PCI-X) PMG5s.
Flakey USB. It used to cut out and not work, now it works all the time, but is massively slow since Tiger.
Blown up Powersupply. I don’t mean it died, it blew up, big loud Kaboom in the middle of the night. This made me glad I had apple care, since it would have been a very expensive fix.
Crappy Maxtor HD. Loud, noisy, slow.
On top of this. The moron designer who thought designing the handles on this heavy computer to be just like Knives needs to be beat with big thick sticks for hours on end.
No matter what you say about the quality of Power Mac G5 i can easily say its better than the Intel Macs that are running right now. Since they have switched quality has gone steadily worse. I’ve returned almost two Mac Book Pro’s, but never had an issue with my PowerBook G4, Power Mac G4 or PowerMac G5.
“I’ve returned almost two Mac Book Pro’s” How is that done? did you cut the Mac Book in 10ths, and only returned 9 pieces? Did you use a dremel tool to do that?
I would like to see a similar survey conducted for the new Intel Macs. All I seem to hear are quality issues concerning the new Mac Book Pro and Mac Book lines. It has put me right off switching until Apple does something about their products.
Again another crapy article linked in OSNews. You dont get better Thom!!!!!!
The survey conducted by macintouch is all but representative of anything.
How many powermacs do you think Apple has sold until totady? I tell you thousands and thousands, so no way that their sample of 3000 powermacs are representative of the quality of those machines. 3000 machines is far too low compared to the number of G5 sold, this is ridiculusly meaningless.
So this statement is completely wrong,
“But the Power Mac G5’s 17% first-year failure rate remains far higher than the industry average of 5% (see Gartner’s recent report on PC hardware reliability, linked below).”
The articles refers to the Gartner’s report about pc reliability, but how can they compare their numbers with Gartner mumbers if they dont know how many pcs Gartner used in their report (the cnet article does not mention it)? This is almost sure much higher than 3000 pcs, in order that Gartner can get a meaningless number of failure rate. I simply can not imagine Gartner using 3000 pcs for their survey when there are millions of pcs sold out there.
It is impossible to compare without being sure that both use the same number of computers. And you can be sure that the powermac failure rate would decrease if they would have used a bigger sample of powermacs.
This is just crap and foolish, their survey don’t say anything, it just makes appear the author of this article totally foolish, i guess he should really study some statistics.
And also this tell us something very different,
http://www.macworld.com/news/2006/07/11/satisfaction/index.php
It is of course a self selection survey, and Hakime must be right to say the comparison with Gartner’s survey is dubious for that reason.
However, why it is worth posting a link to it, and why it and other Mac sites are worth reading, is to see clearly the huge gap between the public image and the public arguments of the advocates, and what is said in more private forums among ourselves.
In public, we have the highest possible quality components all designed to work together seamlessly with the world’s greatest OS, offering a degreee of integration the world cannot otherwise experience, selling at a very reasonable price, and supported by the world’s greatest service department.
Among ourselves, its a very different story. We have overheating, noise, mainboard blowups, bits of hardware that don’t work satisfactorily, bugs in the OS, problems getting support, and the stuff costs too much.
The only place the two stories coincide is the satisfaction numbers. Whatever the problems, when asked how we feel, we are well satisfied.
Oh Leon Festinger, where are you when we really need you?
Well I’m glad I have a mini, which has a below industry average failure rate of 3% (or 40% less than PC’s if you want to make it sound more impressive) according to another Macintouch survey :-).
That said I take these voluntary (self selected write-in) surveys with a pinch of salt since there’s no way to check if you end up with a representative sample, even when they come out in my favour.
It doesn’t help that the results are inconsistent between Macintouch surveys either. The 2Gh dual G5 failure rate jumps from 13% in an earlier survey to 32% in this one. That’s way beyond any reasonable error margin for a professional survey.
Finally the 5% failure rate for PC’s is in the first year while this survey spans the the first four years.
Edit: we also seem to have moved on from the “OMG Mac virusses”-FUD to the “OMG Mac hardware sucks”-FUD lately (not Osnews specifically but Mac news in general)
Edited 2006-07-12 08:10
“In public, we have the highest possible quality components all designed to work together seamlessly with the world’s greatest OS, offering a degreee of integration the world cannot otherwise experience, selling at a very reasonable price, and supported by the world’s greatest service department.
Among ourselves, its a very different story. We have overheating, noise, mainboard blowups, bits of hardware that don’t work satisfactorily, bugs in the OS, problems getting support, and the stuff costs too much. ”
Why a very different story, i mean, many people do experience “high quality quality components all designed to work together seamlessly with the world’s greatest OS”. I do, i own a powermac G4 for more than 4 years now, OS X runs great on it, the integration is great, the experience is great, the computer is working 24/7, i dont experience any problem.
And anyway do you expect any compagny telling in public that yes we have some bugs in our OS, yes we have some hardware problems that can affetc users, why would anyone expect Apple to do this?
And having bugs, problems. etc does not make the public statement wrong, the real idea is that a great product does not mean that it should be perfect or safe to any issues…….
– Dell Recalls Laptop Power Cords
http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,118106,00.asp
– Dell’s exploding computer
http://news.com.com/Dells+exploding+computer+and+other+image+proble…
– HP recalls notebook batteries
http://news.com.com/HP+recalls+notebook+batteries/2100-1041_3-60633…
– Dell recalls 35,000 notebook batteries
http://news.com.com/Dell+recalls+35%2C000+notebook+batteries/21…
– PCs plagued by bad capacitors
http://news.com.com/PCs+plagued+by+bad+capacitors/2100-1041_3-59426…
– Sony Recalls, Repairs Some VAIOs
http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,111527,00.asp
– Sony won’t recall Transmeta notebooks despite problems
http://news.com.com/Sony+wont+recall+Transmeta+notebooks+despite+pr…
And I only took the first links but yeah it seems that PC work so much than mac and have a so good support …
And desktops?
Google is your friend.
Anyway if you had clicked on the “PCs plagued by bad capacitors ” link you would have seen:
“Last week, Dell announced it was going to take a $300 million financial charge on its earnings to cover costs associated with the replacement of motherboards with faulty capacitors in some of its Optiplex workstations.”
Ok dell,that’s old news 🙂
For the Dell laptop power cords, I had an affected one that actually did overheat, which is exactly what the case was for. Dell was very responsive about the issue, deliving a new one overnight with absolutely 0 questions asked, not even wanting the old one back. If I remember right, some Apple computers also had the power cords recalled for the same issues at the same time, as did Microsoft and other companies as well:
http://news.com.com/Apple+recalls+power+adapters/2100-1040_3-269555…
Also, the bad capacitors that plagued PCs, one of the main manufacturers that had these problems was Apple.
As for the Sony not recalling certain notebooks even though there was problems with it, Apple also did the same exact thing when all of the Logic Boards for many iBooks were defective, and everyone was breaking down, but Apple didn’t bother to recall it, and wouldn’t replace them for people. From my experience, Sony, Dell, HP, etc. all are much easier to get defective parts replaced. Apple, when they know about the issue, they still act like they’ve never heard of it before! Also its wasn’t necessary for Sony to recall it as it didn’t affect everyone and it posed absolutely no safety risk at all, it was just necessary for them to replace notebooks of users who were experiencing the problem and called in for it.
Yes, PCs have their share of problems as does everything, however Apple has the PCs share of problems as well as their own! Thats why the Apple stats are a higher amount of problems then PCs.
The aim of my post wasn’t to say that Apple is better. It was just to say Apple is not worst.
dosent most companies switch desktop every three years becus of the high service cost’s after thre years.
if this survey covers four years i would say it is kind of irrelevant.
I believe this story, I’ve seen lots of G5’s go down myself, including my own (although not in the first year).
The PowerMac G5 is a ridiculously complicated machine – It’s still amazing we as people can make something so elaborate and still only have 15% of them fail.
They home services is awful, but the support for business is excelant. I used to work for a company and we got in a Dell with bad memory, checked the warrenty online and saw it was still there, so we decided to call Dell and have them pay for it instead of us (small it outsourcing company). Tech support picked up on the first ring (vs hours for home support), sent a guy out the next day, who not only replaced the ram but noticed a capaciter was slightly bulging and went ahead and replaced the motherboard in the computer as well even though it wasn’t broken yet (and may never have broken). Thats service.
My PowerMac G5 is working fine now (except for the audible chirping problem which can be fixed by turning off CPU NAP), but I had several reliability problems within the first few months of getting it and had to have almost everything replaced. My other Macs have been far more problem-free. Granted, I got my G5 in October 2003 so it was a first-generation product. Looking at the survey charts, it looks like the older G5 models were indeed more troublesome.
Apple’s first-generation models in a new product line always have weird issues that crop up. Waiting for Rev. B or C is desirable if you don’t want to increase your likelihood of having to deal with tech support.
Well, I have owned 9 macs and out of all of them, I did have one iMac (the first gen (rev a) iMac G5) that was a PITA. Bluetooth kept failing (just disappeared) and the solution from Apple was to open up the case and press the reset button on the mid plane. We also tried updates, and went through a month of crap before they finally just sent me a new midplane. It’s been fine since! My wife still uses it.
We got it, I installed the OS, moved over all the files from my old Mac… and it crapped out within a day. Fan blew like a turboprop, kernel panic, and the suggestions the Apple tech gave me were well-intentioned but did not resolve it. I had to return it and because of the shortages I waited another 2 weeks for a replacement (which I opted for rather than a repair).
The second one they shipped has been (knock wood) trouble free through the years.
This is my third Mac since 1991 and the other two performed without incident for several years.