I have owned macs since 1990. The only problems I have had are hard drives dying (non Apple part of course) and one logic board that needed replacement -- but it was a 1ghz Tibook that I bought off eBay so don't know about its treatment. Speaking of 1ghz Tibooks, I bought one that someone had literally THROWN OUT OF A THIRD STORY WINDOW.
And the logic board still worked. Granted, the video cable was cut, but that bent up logic board still went to town.
I personally snapped off the ram holders on a 400mhz Tibook with Apple on the phone once and they replaced the whole board for me!
I have had internal batteries go bad but this is only after five, six or seven years of use. Once on an LCII. Once on a Tibook, Once on a Pismo.
My old 145b PB still works. So does the LCII. The only Apple problem I have seen recently is an old Cube I bought off MR, with the famous smoking power button problem. Fix? Hook it up to an old iMac keyboard with its own power button.
I have set up friends on 233mhz iMacs - still working after nine years.
266mhz iMacs, 333 iMacs, 500mhz iBooks, 900mhz iBooks, aforementioned 145b Powerbooks, 2000 Pismos, 2001 Tibooks (three still going strong that I sold to friends) 2002 Tibook (still going strong) 2003 iMac G3 working fine, 2002 iMac G3s blazing, (never got into the G4 iMacs) 2003 PB, 2005 PB, 2005 mac mini, 2002 Cinema Display, 2005 ACDs, 2001 Powermac 733mhz, 2004, 2005 iBooks, iMac G5 --
all
working
GREAT. Again, the hard drives seem to be the weakness of most Macs. And Apple doesn't make hard drives.
Apple is still Apple. Excellent. Granted, I'm sticking PPC until 08, but there ya go.
Oh and I HAVE NEVER HAD A DEAD PIXEL on an Apple Laptop or Display. Currently I own three LCD displays -- and of the 30 or so mac and mac laptops I've owned -- never a bad pixel.
And I've had macs since 1992-93 - starting with a LC475 which had no problems whatsoever for many years. Apple desktops seem more reliable with fewer glitches. After the 475 I had mainly portables: 540c, wallstreet, lombard, pismo, titanium, aluminum, macbook and mbp 15"/17".
540c was great with no issues except hinge plastics cracked which I glued back with glue.
Powerbook G3 Wallstreet first generation 13": overheated, graphics driver was messed up for many months before Apple fixed it, the display cable was defective on many units causing the display to malfunction.
Wallstreet PDQ second generation: great computer still working perfectly at my father's house. Hinges a loose but after 8 years what can you expect?
Powerbook G3 lombard was good with no real problems except some weird graphics issues running current OS but that can't be held against it,
Powerbook G3 PISMO IS/WAs AMAZINGLY GOOD with no serious issues except a optical drive that failed prematurely on many units.
Powerbook G4 Titanium first/second generation had defective inverter on three machines all of which were replaced by Apple. it also suffered from peeling white paint
Titanium last generation: great with no serious flaws except for a lot of heat, but nothing that couldn't be managed. Hinges snapped on many of them too, but not on mine.
First generation aluminum powerbook G4 was plagued by white spots on the display and some display bezel warping, the latter of which was perfectly acceptable though not desirable.
Third (?) revision of aluminum 1.67ghz 15" simply perfect for me at least. No issues, great screen,fit/finish, power, feeling of quality.Should never have sold it!
last revision of powerboo G4 had the infamous horizontal lines and defective batteries that didn't charge and other quality control issues
Macbook Pro rev A: tremendous heat, fit and finish issues, warped display bezels, CPU whining, mooing
Macbook rev A: heat, random shutdown, mooing, discoloration, peeling
Macbook Pro rev B 15": fit and finish issues, poor displays, but otherwise a great machine. IMO, mainly let down by the display.
Macbook pro rev B 17": uneven illumination of display and 6 bit rather than 8 bit so unable to display colors the way previous powerbooks could. Otherwise a great machine if you get a good one.
My point: maybe Apple quality control hasn't gotten worse. Maybe it's always been pretty bad! The only portable mac I've had with Zero problems was the Pismo and the second-to-last generation powerbook G4 15". All others had quite apparent flaws, although they were eventually fixed by Apple.
I suppose there is always a counter story and of course these are not universal issues. However, the problems above were quite widespread among owners and caused many owners to spend their valuable time dealing with long repairs with sometimes very limited results.
Oh, and I've never had a hard drive fail until the pismo hd died after almost 6 years. I've had a few dead pixels though, but never more than one on a single display...there you go.
