I can painfully relate. One of my computers was called the Crapple (dual inherited from cripple and crap).
I've owned four Apple computers (ibook G3, ibook G4, imac G5, macbook), and despite skipping first revisions and treating my computers very well, every single one of them has had several minor defects and all my notebooks have broken completely within a 3 year time frame.
In my personal experience, Apple is a hardware bimbo - pretty but useless. I only come back for OS X, which is the nicest desktop 'nix. I wish apple were still apple computers, not apple media.
I'm waiting for the next mb/mbp's, but if anyone has tips for alternatives, I'd love to hear them.
Anecdotal evidence is very important when it concerns you - if you get cancer or your parachute happens to be the one that fails, the larger statistic is really not all that relevant, unless you're in a competition for "I got screwed in the most unlikely way in the world".
Secondly, even without a larger statistic, applying combinatorics, Markov chains, Bayesian inference can yield interesting insights, even if just for nerdy fun.
Lastly, by using "I can [...] relate" and "In my personal experience" I clearly signaled that I was merely making a personal statement. Cheers.
FWIW, I've got a pretty large sample of anecdotal evidence that agrees. I had 3 cofounders with MBPs, all purchased within a couple months. Only one has run with no problems. The other 3 (one bought a backup) have been in and out of the Apple store forever, though a lot of the problem was that the "geniuses" just weren't fixing them properly.
And I know a lot of other startups that run primarily on Macs, and it's not an uncommon occurrence at all. In fact, it's so prevalent that a lot of them keep a spare handy just in case.
Again, not a statistically relevant sample, but enough to convince me they're pretty flimsy in the hardware department.
It's a lot more than 3. I mentioned other startups I know, and if I did a survey I could probably collect data on a couple hundred. Also it would be 4 just among my 3 cofounders, since one was bought as a replacement and then began having problems itself.
Nonetheless, there is very likely to be a substantial failure rate for anyone to observe of 3 out of 4 Macbooks having problems. While you can't get an accurate mean failure rate from that small of a sample, you could pin down ranges for a given certainty. I'm too lazy to figure out how to do the math to get a range for say, 75% certainty, but I guarantee it's high by industry standards.
Also, you could simply Google around. Mac fans everywhere seem to consider their notebooks highly unreliable. Again, anecdotes, and probably a weighted sample too. But from Apple's perspective, it might as well be data since people will perceive it as such.
An incredibly weighted sample. That's like searching for commentary on any default Linux distro. Negativity rises to the top, because it's more urgent and more entertaining.
Again: I'm running my MBP from college, and I'd say that probably half my floor runs Mac. I've been dubbed the techie, unfortunately, and I've been asked no questions regarding Mac bugs yet. The biggest problems people've been having is with using Word 2008 to print: apparently, it messes up the margins.
And, of course, from personal experience: the only error my Mac has had was when I attempted to install Windows XP. And that was admittedly disastrous, but my computer was entirely backed-up and the Geniuses got it fixed off-the-clock - pretty top-notch customer service. When I installed Vista it happened smoothly.
Again: my evidence is as anecdotal as yours. But I'm not using my evidence to say that Apple is perfect and does no wrong. I'm just pointing out that for every "brick" story somebody has, there are a dozen "Maclove" stories that people just aren't provoked to tell.
Very true. But, if you assumed Macs failed 10% of the time, and that to be a high rate for notebooks overall, a sample of a ten of which none failed would happen ~35% of the time.
A sample of which 3 out of 4 failed would be much more rare. Thus you can glean more information from a sample of 3/4 failures than a sample of 10 with no failures.
I don't remember my combinations well enough to figure out the exact numbers, so I may be a bit off, but you see what I'm saying.
And it's not. Because from the data I've looked at, 10% is a vastly high number. You can't make numbers up and call them statistically relevant. And you can't disregard the fact that 3 out of 4 could just as easily be the statistical anomaly.
However, the other comment I've made still stands. Can we all drop it? Nobody cares, nobody will prove anything either way. I like the MacBook Pro, love it, think it's the best machine I've ever used. You, Matt, don't. Neither of our opinions matter to the other person, and this entire thread was started pointlessly and seemingly with intent to inflame. Let's drop it and go argue our operating system of choice somewhere that invites actual DISCUSSION.
No, I'm not saying that. I'm simply saying a small sample of failures (assuming failures are significantly less likely than non) gives you more information than a large sample of non.
Statistics take into account any valid ways of getting more information. And they also take into account what we know about how to avoid making crap up. You need to either claim to have a statistically relevant amount of information, or to know nothing about overall failure rates of apple laptops.
That's what I came here to post. Seeing as within my college I've observed no laptop breakdowns, I think that Apple's still doing a pretty damn good job with quality control within my frame of reference. Meanwhile, a friend's HP notebook has broken down twice in the last year.
Not saying that my point of view is any more accurate than yours, but... you can't use a single frame of reference and decide that it's the most accurate. Gruber wrote about this a little while ago: after TechCrunch wrote that Apple had slipped from a 96% customer satisfaction rate to something in the 80s. His point was that yes, Apple had slipped, but it was still by far at the absolute top of the chain.
I asked my question kind of expecting the answer, but here's my two cents anyway: I really don't think that your original comment, or this entire chain of comments, really added to the thread at all. I've noticed a thread of people who'll enter any Apple thread just to bash Apple, and I think it's slightly annoying. I don't think I've seen anything on the Linux side going the other way, though I've seen people doing it to Windows articles and that's an annoyance too. Considering how high quality HN is usually, can't we decide to give it a rest and only add things to threads when they're relevant?
