Anyone else notice Apple's decline in perfectionism?

[Apple!Freak]

Lately, it appears Apple is cutting corners with their products. Just from my experience alone, it appears as though Apple is using cheaper materials for the iPod such as in the iPod nano. My new iMac has some problems with it including a slightly warped body and defective latch for connecting the two pieces of the case. And my brothers video iPod has a click wheel that was installed off center.

Just seems Apple is turning into a company like Dell or something. I always thought Apple has higher prices because all of their products are produced at the highest of qualities.

Anyone else notice this "phenomenon?"

 

[TheMonarch]

Totally. Has anyone noticed how iPod cables have their ends glued on? Mine came off within a couple of weeks, IIRC, the caps used to be part of a mold or something like that.

Sample, this is pretty much how mine looks like (Its a google image)
VS
Notice how on the second pic, the "end" is part of the cable itself, not some glued-on piece of crap.

 

[SummerBreeze]

Just seems Apple is turning into a company like Dell or something. I always thought Apple has higher prices because all of their products are produced at the highest of qualities.

Argh, if they were like Dell my PowerBook would have blown up by now.

That said, even though manufacturer's defects do happen, the iPods and accessories don't seem as well made now as my 3g. The lack of a FireWire cord especially peeves me.

 

[jmufellow]

Lately, it appears Apple is cutting corners with their products. Just from my experience alone, it appears as though Apple is using cheaper materials for the iPod such as in the iPod nano. My new iMac has some problems with it including a slightly warped body and defective latch for connecting the two pieces of the case. And my brothers video iPod has a click wheel that was installed off center.

Just seems Apple is turning into a company like Dell or something. I always thought Apple has higher prices because all of their products are produced at the highest of qualities.

Anyone else notice this "phenomenon?"

Could we see a pic of the off-center click wheel if possible? Just interested...

 

[Apple!Freak]

Could we see a pic of the off-center click wheel if possible? Just interested...

Don't have a picture. My brother lives in a different state.

 

[jmufellow]

Don't have a picture. My brother lives in a different state.

Well go for a drive over to his place and get a pic! Not so hard now is it? But yeah, it doesn't surprise me about the quality decline. I'm a relatively new user to mac so I don't have experience with the older stuff, but since apple has grown a lot in the recent years, they have suddenly needed to make more hardware in a quicker amount of time, thus the decline in quality. Perhaps...

 

[muffinman]

its disgusting. it really does seem apple is declining in perfectionism. look at the ipod mini box. they used to be works of art, but now their in flimsy things that u can stock at target or walmart. and my click wheel is sort of off also. and yes cheaper materials are being used.

since apple is going to dell, some new guy should make a company that models itself after the "old" apple. it should be named "banana" or something of that sorts

 

[Lacero]

I thought the nano was really well designed and put together. The choice of polyc was unfortunate, but great overall.

The lack of accessories to go with the 30 GB iPod is especially disturbing, such as a lack of a charging adaptor.

 

[g0gie]

I'd have to agree that things are getting cheaply made, for example my BTO BRand new powerbook has a bad fan.... you'd think they would test it before shipping especially if its BTO...

 

[bankshot]

Yep. I think this is almost inevitable when a company tries to diversify and concentrate on too many things at once. Apple has bought a number of smaller software companies to acquire their products over the last several years, and of course they've added the whole iPod/iTunes business basically from scratch the last 4 years.

I've noticed a lack of attention to detail in Tiger (550 bugs fixed in 10.4.3?? ), oddities in iApps, and just plain laziness in my big pet peeve (see sig).

But who knows, maybe they're trying to run a tighter ship again. I know one person who works there as a manager at some level (I can't ever get any product details out of him, so I gave up asking... ). He was heavily involved in an outside project we have going on (completely unrelated to Apple - the OS X version of our software is not even close to alpha quality... ) with about half a dozen primary developers and a user community in the thousands. Until about 2 months ago, he communicated with us on a daily basis. Then he got assigned to some unknown new task at Apple and basically vanished from our project. Apparently that's taking about all his waking hours now, so I can only hope it's for all of our benefit. He'd be a good man to head up a quality initiative. (note that I have absolutely no idea what he's actually working on right now)

 

[Vanilla]

Totally. Has anyone noticed how iPod cables have their ends glued on? Mine came off within a couple of weeks, IIRC, the caps used to be part of a mold or something like that.

Sample, this is pretty much how mine looks like (Its a google image)
View attachment 33483 VS View attachment 33484
Notice how on the second pic, the "end" is part of the cable itself, not some glued-on piece of crap.

I have that exact same problem with my iPod firewire cable. It's very annoying but of course I can live with it.
Vanilla

 

[mcadam]

I haven't had any experiences to support these claims, so I'll just have to take your words for it

However, in this discussion I just think it would also be fair to mention that Apples products have also become more and more affordable the last couple of years. I t has reached a point where fx the iBooks and the mac mini cannot really be considered expensive anymore and neither can the powerbooks when you compare to similarluxury/pro laptops.

I think this must have been a rather big step for apple and it would be strange if they could've achieced this without cutting some corners saomewhere.

A

 

[geeman]

It's not just hardware - it's software too.

Tiger
(don't get me started )
Remember the security issue with automatically installing dashboard widgets?, the (IMHO) backward step in trying to find stuff by hitting "Apple-F" (Spotlight, for me, is just too slow compared to how the finder worked before). Is it me, or do apps crash WAY more under Tiger than they did under Panther?

Airport
There's an issue with the last Airport Extreme and Airport Express firmware update that limits bandwidth. I've just been upgraded by my cable operator to 10mbps cool: ) but have to connect via Ethernet cable to get the speed. Connecting via Airport (over 802.11g) gives me less than 2mbps.

Mail
You have to disable auto .Mac syncing if you want to be productive with Mail - you can wait 30 seconds or more for a message window to appear.

Compressor and Qmaster
I've had FC Studio for perhaps 3 months now - and Compressor has NEVER worked. Qmaster is similarly flaky (and has to be enabled for Compressor to work). Currently, to get Qmaster to work to have to manually restart Qmaster services by typing a *NIX command in the Terminal.

IN THE TERMINAL, PEOPLE!!!!!

Motion
There's driver problem with Motion on G5 systems that use the ATI 850XT graphics card.

These are just the ones that affect me personally. Goodness know how many other problems people are putting up with. It's no wonder that 10.4.3 is rumored to be in excess of 100Mb.

And DON'T flame me! I love the company as much as anyone here and wouldn't buy anything else in pain of death. But it hurts when the faith (and $$$$) that I've put into Cupertino's coffers is reciprocacted by hardware and software that that doesn't do what it says on the (well-designed) box...

 

[intrepkid21]

Yeah how about the way the keyboard was designed on my (and many others')1.2ghz iBook with the ribbon installed poorly under the spacebar, the right command key, and the enter key. The buttons respond poorly.

To Apple's credit, I have not seen this on the new revision iBook's, but still, the snow iBook's have been around forever and only now did they fix that?

 

[generik]

Yeah.. Apple is slowly growing up by being cheaper and cheaper in worksmanship.

 

[geeman]

and don't forget (even though it was some time ago) that abomination that was the (original) iMac mouse: "the pebble"

Form overtaking function, I think they call it. What was Johnny Ive smoking THAT day?

OK, I'm going off-topic: Even though The Pebble was an ergomonic disaster, it was actually made quite well.

 

[geese]

I dont think Apple were ever really perfect. My eMac is of waaaaaay higher quality then my old 5500. My eMac didn't creak like my old 5500, the fan doesnt sound like a hurricane. I've had maybe 2 kernal panics ever compared to the daily crashes i had with OS 8. I'm not sure Apple has ever shipped anything that was ever perfect.

The perception of quality has varied, as Apple are shipping more products out then ever before, so there are likely to be more failures.

But Apple turning into a Dell? Dont be daft. Even if Apples attention to detail is slipping a bit, its still 100x better then anything in the PC sphere.

 

[wordmunger]

My Mac is crashing less than ever, my battery lasts longer than ever, and my OS is faster than ever.

That said, I don't like the fact that the paint is wearing off some of my iBook's keys.

 

[Spock]

I started to think this when I replaced my Clamshell iBook with a 12inch Powerbook, the first thing I did when I got my Powerbook was install a AP EX card I opened the door and the Airport Wire fell off!! mind You they replaced it but still. The screen is off, the battery does not sit flush with the rest of the Powerbook and my screen is kinda grainy and the screen latch wont work and my screen bounces back up. My next Apple Laptop wll be a iBook again.

 

[Apple!Freak]

Glad to see other people are noticing this too.

 

[mfacey]

I'm not sure whether apple is drooping off... My current powerbook is waaaaaaay better than the old titanium as far as build quality goes. Is it perfect. Nope. But its a lot better than any other company has to offer.

I don't think its fair to assume that apple should deliver flawless/perfect products. Sure they could do it but they would have to jack up prices to extremes. Compare it to the car industry: A lexus is a great car and rarely goes wrong, but if you want perfection you're going to have to fork out at least 2x the price and buy a Rolls.

I'm happy for now. I don't think Steve will accept sub-par/dell-like quality.

 

[xyouxfailmiex]

WOW!!!! im sorry but most of you sound pretty bitter towards a company that i assume you are loyal to...now yes apple has hadsome issues with the nanos and of course your gonna have a scratch here something is gonna fall apart there these items are MASS PRODUCED it happens not every little thing will be caught...but on the positive side apple will replace anything like that on the spot (in my experience) i had a mighty mouse that was less than two weeks old that the track ball stopped working ...no questions asked they handed me a new mouse...i had an ipod mini crap out on me took it back ..the next day was given a new ipod mini, bought the 60 gig ipod 2 weeks before the new video ipod came out...called told them i wanted the new one they took back my two week ipod didnt charge me a restocking fee and put me on the list for the video ipod which i recieved yesterday(which looks like its built waaaaaay better than the nano to me

regardless apple backs its products and they dont seem to crap out on you like most windows based machines...not to mention apple is leaps and bounds beyond dell or any other cpu manufacturer i can think of

i just think its silly i think apple is doing a great job

 

[devilot]

WOW!!!! im sorry but most of you sound pretty bitter towards a company that i assume you are loyal to...now yes apple has hadsome issues with the nanos and of course your gonna have a scratch here something is gonna fall apart there these items are MASS PRODUCED it happens not every little thing will be caught...but on the positive side apple will replace anything like that on the spot (in my experience)

You are right, I do feel a little bitter. I'm glad all of your products were replaced w/out issue (even though none of them cost $500+)...

I had over 4 dead pixels on my 12" PB-- did Apple help me at all? No.

My 2day old iMac G5 was declared DOA by an Apple rep over the phone; was I able to get a replacement machine? Not if I wanted to forego the CD that was stuck in the drive (why can't a big corporation swallow it up and give me a simple $10 Apple store credit or something, an extra sheet of those Apple stickers, I dunno!).

My iBook works just fine and dandy-- but parts of the plastic squeak (when I click the 'mouse' the surrounding plastic squeaks). I have yet to bring it in because I fear being 'declined' again.

So yes, I am a little bitter because part of my decision to 'switch' was the reassurance from everyone that Apple as a company has top-notch customer service and would attend to faulty products.

 

[Blue Velvet]

http://www.g4noise.com

Apple have never been perfect -- pretty good, sublime at times, but certainly not flawless... I see nothing new here.

 

[xyouxfailmiex]

You are right, I do feel a little bitter. I'm glad all of your products were replaced w/out issue (even though none of them cost $500+)...

I had over 4 dead pixels on my 12" PB-- did Apple help me at all? No.

My 2day old iMac G5 was declared DOA by an Apple rep over the phone; was I able to get a replacement machine? Not if I wanted to forego the CD that was stuck in the drive (why can't a big corporation swallow it up and give me a simple $10 Apple store credit or something, an extra sheet of those Apple stickers, I dunno!).

My iBook works just fine and dandy-- but parts of the plastic squeak (when I click the 'mouse' the surrounding plastic squeaks). I have yet to bring it in because I fear being 'declined' again.

So yes, I am a little bitter because part of my decision to 'switch' was the reassurance from everyone that Apple as a company has top-notch customer service and would attend to faulty products.

i didnt list my ibook, or imac because havent had a single problem yet.....im just saying apple seems to take care of me, my own personal experience with the company....and im sure they arent going to pay for a cd that got lodged in your cpu...thats not really of any fault of theres....i would only expect them to be responsible for there products....taking a 10 dollar hit isnt too bad....