Are Apple Products Badly Engineered?

There’s a lot of brouhaha about the failure rate of Xbox 360s. In the same week, I saw three different news stories citing three different failure rates for the 360 (54.2%, 23.7% and 27.3%, if you’re interested). And everyone gives them shit because they’re, y’know, Microsoft.

Having spent the morning fixing a dying Macbook, I started thinking about what my failure rate with Apple hardware has been. And to be perfectly honest, it’s been pretty shit. In the past five years, I’ve owned (or co-owned) an iBook, two Macbooks, an iMac, a 60GB iPod, two iPod nanos and an iPod touch. Let’s see what’s happened with these.

  • Wife’s iBook ate its own display cable
    Putting a teeny-tiny display cable into a hinge that gets used all the time? Great idea.
  • Macbook case cracking
    This happened on both my own Macbook and my wife’s. If you see how the Macbook is assembled, it’s easy to see why this happens – you have to bend the entire keyboard plate slightly to get it to connect. Bending it weakens the decorative plastic ‘lip’.
  • Macbook case discoloration
    I got this on my white Macbook. Got the keyboard plate replaced, started happening again before I got rid of the Macbook
  • iMac logic board meltdown
    Brand-new iMac died within 8 hours of getting it because the logic board wasn’t connected properly, half the fans didn’t work and melted the graphics card
  • Dead headphone adaptor on 60GB iPod
    This was probably my own fault. I like to use headphones with strong cables and very little ‘give’, forcing the headphone jack to bend slightly. Still, this wasn’t exactly ‘heavy’ use. Managed to replace this via parts on eBay
  • Random lines on 60GB iPod
    No idea where this came from, but it’s like my iPod had a stroke or something. Turned it on one day and there was a strong black band going across the LCD screen. They’ve slowly started fading away now, going back to normal.
  • Dodgy connector on one iPod nano
    This both comes from and affects the Nike+. I plug in the Nike+ adaptor and it doesn’t detect a receiver. Works fine on the other iPod nano. Doesn’t affect normal connection to the computer.
  • Dodgy Nike+ on iPod touch
    My iPod touch will only randomly choose to see the Nike+ adaptor in my shoe. Usually after I do a complete reformat and restore, and even then, it only lasts for about a week.
  • Broken DVD drive in Macbook
    About a year after my wife got her Macbook, the DVD drive stopped working. It was hardly ever moved and rarely used. Still, it means that OS upgrades are a pain in the dick and I can’t run the hardware test utility any more.
  • Broken LCD backlight on Macbook
    This is what I’ve been dealing with today. After a random crash, the backlight no longer works. I can see the display on the LCD, but there’s just no backlight. I don’t even know where to begin with this
  • Update: Fraying on Macbook power chord
    Joanne’s comment reminded me about this. About a year ago, power on the Macbook was a bit flaky. We turned over the power chord and noticed that near the connector, the cable had burned almost completely through. We were lucky that we were in the house when it happened, this could have been a lot nastier than the €80 it cost to replace the chord.

So, of all the Apple hardware I’ve used in the last five years, the only thing that hasn’t given me an issue is one iPod nano (I’ve also got an Apple IIe from 1986 at home that still works fine). Which leads me to wonder if Apple products are badly engineered, or am I just extremely unlucky?

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11 thoughts on “Are Apple Products Badly Engineered?”

  1. Robin says:
    I’ve had 60GB ipod, ipod mini, 16GB ipod touch, macbook G4 13″ and two mac minis over the years. Only problem I ever had with any of them was that my current mac mini won’t boot up while I have a firewire 800 external drive connected, I’m clueless when it comes to the mac POST/BIOS setup though, I wish there was some kinda debug for it other than holding down alt/option – and bootcamp is fucked and doesn’t reboot half the time. I guess my main complaints are in how the boot process works, would be great if you could get rid of that mac shit and just install a proper BIOS and grub.
  2. Joanne says:
    The only Apple product i’ve had a problem with is my black macbook. Case cracking (which the Apple store repaired for free, same day, despite it being out of warranty), and i’m onto my THIRD power cord – they have all frayed and on one, the plastic casing actually melted. I’d give Apple another chance and my next computer will be a MBP.
  3. mackers says:
    Judging from the number of laptops I’ve been asked to “take a look at”, I wouldn’t say the failure rate for macs is significantly higher than any other consumer-level laptop manufacturer. I think that having such a strong brand image works against them in this case; people end up associating breakages with the brand in the same way they would associate usability, etc. (I’m writing this on a 6 year old powerbook, going well except for some dead pixels.)
  4. johnke says:
    @Robin – there’s a whole bunch of debug options, check the boot key commands: http://www.jacsoft.co.nz/Tech_Notes/Mac_Keys.shtml @Joanne – Thanks for reminding me! Completely forgot that our power chord melted too @Mackers – Yeah, I hear what you’re saying. I guess that’s what I was trying to get at with the post, highlighting the inconsistency across the alleged failure rates of the Xbox 360. It’s all relative.
  5. seamus says:
    Broken LCD backlight on Macbook This is what I’ve been dealing with today. After a random crash, the backlight no longer works. I can see the display on the LCD, but there’s just no backlight. I don’t even know where to begin with this.
    Check! I *thought* I had this but it turns out to be some dodgy cable behind the screen that I haven’t bothered to look at yet. I have a spare working LCD Inverter gathering dust if you want to try it out?
    Update: Fraying on Macbook power chord Joanne’s comment reminded me about this. About a year ago, power on the Macbook was a bit flaky. We turned over the power chord and noticed that near the connector, the cable had burned almost completely through. We were lucky that we were in the house when it happened, this could have been a lot nastier than the €80 it cost to replace the chord.
    Check! Almost scared the life outta me as the thing went up in *fire* as my 6 month year old newphew was about to grab it.
  7. Richard Taylor says:
    Comes, goes. My last iMacs (2) were returned/repaired five times (3 for one, 2 for the other including a new motherboard) during the first two weeks of ownership. My last two iBooks were tanks. Nothing hurt them. No case cracking, nothing. The MacBook that replaced them seems more flimsy to hold, but certainly has worked well over this past year. The current iMacs, 24″ models, seem rugged as can be. I just sold the older two iMacs, the models we received that finally worked without any problems, for more than one third their original cost three years later. They worked flawlessly. Comes, goes.
  8. PWatanabe says:
    Have 10 Macs since the 1st 128K Mac, Plus helped on at least 50 others. The only problem I’ve encountered was the Sony 20MB fiasco, the hard drive would jam after a year and only if you turned off the Mac. This was Sony’s fault with bad HD bearing lubricant. Also have 3 iPods, and the oldest is a 3rd generation 30Gb, which is still working like a champ. There are lemons and there are people with a gravitational attraction to lemonade. I suggest you are one of these people.
  9. Joe Anonymous says:
    Let’s drop the anecdotal stuff and deal with facts. Every single survey that I’ve ever seen (PC Mag, Consumer Reports, Business Week, etc) shows Apple products to lead the pack in reliability and customer satisfaction. Poorly engineered apps don’t do that.
  10. Martin Pilkington says:
    I think it depends on the product and how you use it. Over the past 10 years my family has owned an iMac G3, 3 iMac Core Duos, 2 iMac Core 2 Duos, 3 MacBook Pros, 2 PowerBooks, 1 MacBook, 3 iPhones and 7 iPods. We’ve had the following problems: iMac G3: None iMac Core Duos: One had dodgy optical drive and dodgy iSight, both fixed under warranty, one had the screen die outside of warranty and need replacing (was previous a display unit), 3rd one works fine iMac Core 2 Duos: None MacBook Pros: Two are the latest gen and only a few months old but no problems, previous one had a dodgy battery that needed replacing PowerBooks: Titanium Powerbook had all sorts of issues but eventually got replaced with a new Powerbook (actually happened outside of warranty). Other Powerbook had some issues but was replaced with a MBP MacBook: Cracked top replaced under warranty and a few dead batteries, partly my fault to not looking after them too well, but again replaced under warranty iPhones: Dust under the screen of one, fixed at the Apple Store, other 2 fine iPods: None, they all died natural deaths, except the one my brother put through the washing machine. So 22 products in 10 years, 7 having issues, 2 being replaced for free, 4 being repaired under warranty. Not exactly a bad record.
  11. Steve Knobs says:
    I have a seven year old iWilly which is still going strong in spite of frequent jostling, badly fitting socks and buildup of richard cheese

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