[X4U] Apple QC slipping?

[Michael Winter]

On Dec 12, 2008, at 9:49 AM, zapcat wrote:

> a friend of mine and I were comparing notes the other day and we  
> concluded that apple's quality control seems to be slipping.
>
> neither of us expects any company to be perfect right out of the  
> box, but we think that Apple's quality is not at the level we're  
> accustomed to. Both of us have been Mac OS users in professional  
> environments for 15+ years, so...that's going back to the days when  
> the IIci was the killer Mac, and System 7 was cutting edge.

They're following the some old trend as everything else...

I still remember the most expensive personal computer I ever bought  
for work -a Mac IIfx. It was $7000 around 1989(?). It was still  
running as a print server until about 5 years ago. It still ran, we  
just got to the point where it served no practical use. The Macs today  
are much cheaper and mass produced at a much, much greater rate using  
many more standardized parts that simply don't hold up as well. For  
example, I don't think I ever had to replace a bad SCSI hard drive  
(only replaced because I needed a bigger one). I've had to replace a  
lot of ATA drives that have gone bad. I still have an old 13" Apple  
brand monitor that still works (not that I'd want to use it), while  
I've had more recent CRT and LED displays that died.

Computers these days are built as cheaply as can reasonably be done,  
and it shows. Though I think Apple is still better than its  
competitors in that regard, that applies to them as well. I don't  
expect a $2000 computer to have the quality I expect in a $10,000  
computer.

-Mike