I have also wondered about the quality assurance over at Apple as of late. My snow iBook had its video fail shortly after warranty expired because of a pinched backlit cable. From what I have read online this is far from uncommon for their portables. I ended up paying $140 to have it fixed before selling it off. I am unhappy to have spent the money fixing what sounds like a design flaw, but I also came away from the experience with a new admiration for Apple Support. In the last few years I have had painful... no, wait, make that excruciatingly painful experiences dealing with utterly inept, uncaring, unknowledgeable 'customer support' representatives form Qwest, Linksys and Dell (Linksys was by far the worst, they would actually hang up on me when I asked questions they did not know the answer to). Two weeks ago I called 1-800-APL-CARE twice and both times: * The phone tree made sense and was quick to navigate * A live person answered the call with less than a minute hold time * Both people I talked to were friendly, and with friendly I don't just mean platitudes, they were actually nice to me and understanding of my needs. * After asking for my serial number they immediately had my information including purchase history and previous calls * The people I talked to were knowledgeable, understood my questions and were able to offer me answers without having to pass me to someone else/put me in another wait queue

Now I know that two calls is a small sample size, but after recent experiences I must say that Apple has restored my fait in customer support as business of supporting customers instead of seeing how much money you can save while pissing off customers just enough to not impact sales.

I haven't dealt with Apple support directly during any of my three or four visits to authorized repair shops. One thing that does impress me about their support channel is the fact that none of the shops I've dealt with have cared about who I purchased the computer from (my first iBook was from Smalldog, in Vermont), and they handled everything efficiently. An Apple is an Apple is an Apple as far as the support channel goes.

On the flipside, my last x86 laptop was a Dell Inspiron. When something (finally) went wrong with it after a year of use, I called Dell, dealt with a real idiot for a first-line support person, got myself escalated after only a little carrying on, and had a technician in my house with a new logic board the next morning.

Apple has refused to ship logic boards, according to the guy I talked to last night, to any of their authorized repair centers, which forces the unit to be returned to Cupertino. Each time so far this has taken four or five days.

We've bene talking in my strategic management class about companies who increased output at the cost of quality. Harley-Davidson was the primary example, where showrooms would have carboard under each H-D because they just leaked that much oil. It created a pretty nasty feedback loop with H-D attempting to deal with bad produts being shipped back and returned while rolling out new units.

I wonder what sort of systematic problems are possibly creeping into Apple's production facilities as they have up-revved in the last handfull of years...

MY ibook will be just fine now, thank you very much! denial is a lovely place to live. ;)

as long as we're talking tech support stories, though, apple was very good at handling my original airport buzzing and flashing in alarming ways (i had one of the first batch which apparently would overheat); a quick call and a new airport arrived within days. and i called easystreet once and they were quite nice, too (i can't say i was confident they understood my question, but the answer worked, so i'm not complaining). i actually have worse stories about netbank and my credit card companies.

Yeah, well, Gretchin, I've never seen your alleged iBook. :-)

yes, you have, actually; it's leopoldo's! :D

because my current laptop, a bronze-keyed pismo powerbook, is a state computer, michaelmas wants her back, so i was in the market for a used computer. this is why i'm not letting ibook horror stories rattle me; now that it's -mine-, it will be fine, just -fine-, i tell you! nods furiously

Ah! Well, if it's LEOPOLDO'S...

In all fairness to Apple, once I took my older iBook in (it was of about the same generation as Leopoldo's, but slower and without the combo drive), and they fixed the problems, it stayed fixed for the next year. So I bet you'll be fine. I even mean it when I say that. :-)

I recently sold my older one to Ed, and he seems to still be digging it.