No one's going to pay you while your computer is in the shop, just like no one pays you when you have to take a day off from work to have your brakes in the car replaced or a fender repaired.
While you may have read one or two other posts about ethernet port problems which may or may not have been the exact same model of computer you have, and which may or may not be the exact problem you're having, that's still only a handful of computers... hell, let's say 100 computers... out of millions of MacBook Pros. That's 100/1,000,000. That equals 1/100th of 1% of computers with that problem. Companies would KILL for that low of a failure rate.
Yes, you paid a lot of money for a computer. Yes, the computer you have is of "quality." Yes, the ethernet port died. That surely sucks, especially in the middle of an important meeting.
I understand your anger and frustration -- I really do. But making a blanket statement that Apple does not produce ANY quality products just because your ethernet port died on a relatively new computer and you read a handful of other reports about similar things is blowing the situation way out of proportion.
Apple will fix your problem. If you talk to them via telephone, they'll usually even send you a box with pre-paid return postage so you can ship your computer to them, have them fix it, and then ship it back to you. Yes, you have to be without your computer for a few days and must "fend for yourself" during that time, with absolutely no compensation from anyone. It happens, and that's why people plan for these kinds of things.
If you want a cheap PC with Ubuntu, by all means, no one's stopping you or trying to talk you out of it here. If that proves to be the better computer for you, why should anyone argue with that?
None of this was meant to be offensive -- you have a simple problem that happened at an inopportune time and is EASILY fixed by a simple call to Apple... hardly any reason to lambast Apple's product line as a whole, hardly any reason to let a hunk of silicon and metal affect you so deeply and emotionally (it's a computer -- not a pet, not a family member, not a loved one, not food on your plate nor a roof over your head), and hardly any reason to expect someone to "pay up" for your lost time if you, yourself, don't take precautions to have some kind of backup plan in place.