So, in your experience, what went wrong in the Macs?

[Sunnz]

How hot does it actually get??

Sometimes I can feel the heat from the left side of the keyboard of my MacBook, it is hot but still 'typable'. It cools after a while if I put it into asleep. I got the black one so I don't see any yellow thing that happens on the white ones yet...

[pds]

I don't think the "not like it used to be" is necessarily connected to the Intel switch. It reaches back further to the time when Macs used scsi HDs and other higher quality parts.

My older Macs - 2 LC IIIs and a 6500 (one of the first IDE equipped Macs) - still run flawlessly as typing stations and e-mail stations. The toilet seat iBook was a work horse and handled everything I threw at it and never missed a beat until the repairman folded the keyboard cable wrong when upgrading the HD. :-\ In short - things lasted forever and upgrades were choices, not necessities.

White iBooks were another matter altogether. The G3 motherboard problem just plain stank. I lost one 14 incher before Apple extended the warrantee and then had to replace the board 3 times on the 12 inch I bought as a replacement. The 12 inch finally died a final time in December. Four major failures of one machine, more than all other failures on many machines going back to 1992.

We were not accustomed to problems with dead pixels on laptops, or bad battery life, or out of the box HD failures that have happened in recent years as Apple has used more "mainstream" components. I can't remember a battery recall before this one (ok - I blame it on Sony, but still....)

Upgrades were less contentious back when also. Software Update is usually good, but a few fixes needed to be fixed - notably the update to Jaguar that fried many peoples batteries (my battery life dropped from just under 2 hours to about 10 minutes) and a firewire foul-up with one of the Panther upgrades.

Still, even worse than before is better than the other options. I read somewhere that about 25% of Dell laptops fail in the first month or so.

Fortunately first impressions are lasting ones and so my first impressions hold me through the recent less stellar times. I am happy with my white Macbook, not worried about the heat (my G4 iBook was hotter) and looking forward to newer and better stuff.

[ebykm]

I'd say these days Apple is after 6months deadline, so proper QC suffers. Back in the 90's things were different, new hardware rarely came out every 6months they had plenty of time. And there weren't cheapo, poor quality components those days. Nowadays the fake industry makes anything even HDTV's

[limike28]

I have one of the earlier MacBook Pros. And it has been ok, but had some issues with the superdrive and does get pretty hot.

I don't think anything went seriously wrong with the Macs. It's more of a shakeout when they moved from PPC to Intel.

Basically, if I had had the chance I would have used the same sound advice used with cars. Never buy a car in it's first model year. There are always small kinks that need to be worked out.

[HeliAnimal]

Originally Posted by Timotheos

Im not far from either of you, Tauranga (summer) Wellington (winter)

Pacific represent!

Holy Crap.. I'm in Tauranga right now! Crazy small world! i'm going to Rotorua today. I haven't seen one Apple store in NZ.

[MrTAToad]

I have heard there have been quality control problems (a fair few mentioning it in the Mac section of ADSLGuide) - although most people tend to complain about the quality (or lack thereof) of repairs.

[Sunnz]

Originally Posted by HeliAnimal

Holy Crap.. I'm in Tauranga right now! Crazy small world! i'm going to Rotorua today. I haven't seen one Apple store in NZ.

AFAIK there are no Apple Stores in Australia... only resellers... I guess it is similar in NZ?

[Ferdinand]

I think he _also_ meant re-sellers, since real Apple Stores _only_ exist in the US, the UK and Japan, so...