Are costly Apple computers more prone to failure than Windows PCs?
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One factor Apple customers usually like to boast about is the quality of the hardware they are getting in return for the premium price tag. But are people deluding themselves with the belief that Apple computers are built with higher quality components, and are a lot less prone to failure than traditional PCs?
A technology enthusiast created a post on his blog late last year stating “Every Mac I’ve owned has failed” and unsurprisingly it has slowly provoked hundreds of responses.
David Heinemeier writes in his entry posting: “My Macbook Pro 2.2 just decided to kill the display and all I get is blank on boot. Apparently, it’s a known issue relating to the 1.5/1.5.1 firmware update. When the software fixes don’t work (and they didn’t), the solution is to change the logic board. Nice.”
That’s just the latest in a line of epic Apple hardware failures. He continues: “My old G4 iMac had it’s DVD drive fail on it after two years. Three of my older laptops have had their hard drives fail (with painful data loss in one instance). One of my Macbook pros that my brother is using lost its firewire ports and its DVD drive (it’s just 2 years old). Mary’s fairly new Macbook air is making weird noises occasionally.”
Ouch. That’s a pretty impressive run of bad luck, if you want to describe it as that.
Some, as you would expect, defend Apple correctly pointing out that all computers contain components that are prone to failure - especially hard drives. And there’s little or nothing Apple can do to prevent it. Even hard drives from the most reputable manufacturers die.
But many others have shared tales of woe extending to failed displays, power ports, logic boards, memory chips, trackpads - and even bits of their computer just falling off during use.
This all suggests that paying the “Apple Tax” doesn’t buy you a computer of superior quality with a greater life-expectancy - that many Apple fan boys would like to have you believe.
Now I have owned a truckload of different computers over the course of the last 10 years. Only one of them has suffered a terminal failure, and that was mostly my fault. That was a wrecked power port on my Dell Inspiron 9300 caused by me resting the cable on my knee during early mornings in bed. It would have cost £400 to replace the motherboard, so it simply made financial sense to write the machine off and buy newer technology.
I’m only a week into taking ownership of my first computer from Apple. It’s a shiny new 17″ Macbook Pro with all the trimmings - including the extended 3 year AppleCare warranty. I know enough about the cost of laptop repairs to know extended warranties are not optional on higher-end equipment.
So what can I expect on my journey with Apple? A whole lot of problems if the comments on this particular site are to be believed.
Robby Russell commented: “I’ve managed to kill a hard drive in every Mac laptop I’ve owned over the past four years (and then some). PowerBook G4 – hard drive died. replaced… year later keyboard/trackpad stopped working. Fix: new logic board.
Since I run a company with several Mac laptops, we’ve replaced a hard drive in almost everyone of them. Some of them had displays die and others trackpad problems. I now look at Apple products with about a 2 year life span.”
Jan commented: “I bought a new Macbook after my iBook died just after 22 months in operation. Looked everywhere, didn’t find anything better in terms of ease of use (best operating system after all). Then new issues startes with the new Macbook: case broken on the spot, where the display rests on the upper case (common mistake, quote of the repair centre: It happens so often, Apple ran out of spare parts. ETA for repair: 3 weeks! For a simple plastic part!!!!), cable of the power adaptor burnt and at first they wanted me to pay for a new one. I had luck that nothing caught fire in my apt. and then this lousy customer service.”
So much for the ‘world class’ care and attention you receive when you become an Apple customer.
Macbooks were affected by the well-known Nvidia graphics card fault that caused vertical lines to form on expensive displays. For a long period, Apple refused to do anything about replacing parts in these defective graphics cards on out-of-warranty items. Once Dell established a recall program across a wide range of affected mobile units, Apple slowly started its own considered response. Eventually they bowed and offered to grant free extended warranties to customers who had one of the known defective Nvidia units in their laptops.
It’s important to note this very same GPU was used in PCs priced anywhere from 30% and 70% cheaper than various Apple models. The very idea you will get higher-quality builds, better components, and less problems by switching to Mac seems ridiculous.
Keegan, another user on the site commented: “I have bought 5 Macbooks and 1 Macbook Pros since Aug 2007. 5 of them had failed in less than 1 year, in one way or another (hdd failure, memory). The Macbook Pro had failed twice. But they are still great machines though.”
I know if I had 5 Macbooks fail on me in a year I would not be describing them as great machines.
Martin Alderson shared his experiences with Apple machines too, and like hundreds of others on this particular site, they were far from wholly positive: “Not a great story for me either. Got an iBook G3 a few years ago when I was first dipping my toes in the OS X world which died 3 times in a row with logic board failures.
“Got an iBook G4 which hard drive failed. Then sold it and got a MacBook when they first announced the move to Intel. The hard drive in that failed and the battery doesn’t work so it’s more a Mac Mini now with a nice display, keyboard and mouse.
“Am looking at an upgrade to a Macbook Pro but really not too sure these days.”
This is just a very small sampling of hundreds of other disappointing stories about computers purchased from Apple that failed.
These comments obviously do not scientifically prove Apple machines are less reliable than products from manufacturers of Windows PCs. But they do highlight the reality that, while your Apple is undeniably more sexy than the typical Windows machine, it is probably no less likely to fail than the substantially cheaper Windows PCs from the likes of Dell, HP and Acer.
19 Comments
computerwhiz1
July 2nd, 2009
at 3:10pm
I have had a Mac Mini and a Mac Pro. So far I have not had any problems from either of them. But I do have to say that the WD hard drives that they use can be expected to fail in about three years. Some last much longer than that but three years is kinda the average point. Other than that I have never personally experienced or seen any problems with Macs in the 4 years that I have been exposed to them.
Are costly Apple computers more prone to failure than Windows PCs … | iAppleShare.com - Know everything about Apple products.
July 2nd, 2009
at 6:24pm
[...] Here is the original: Are costly Apple computers more prone to failure than Windows PCs … [...]
Chessman
July 3rd, 2009
at 4:54pm
and THIS is why i do not own a mac.
PROUD OWNER OF A PC ~~Windows 7~~
Jeff
July 3rd, 2009
at 4:56pm
Another point to consider is use. If these were busy, travelling, high-level users or average “web surfing at night” users might make a difference too.
As usual, I think it’s a “Your mileage may vary” situation.
Tommyr
July 3rd, 2009
at 4:56pm
Funny, NONE of the Macs I have owned have ever failed.
Aric
July 3rd, 2009
at 5:05pm
I own an acer aspire 4520, and my cousin a macbook. To tell ya the truth i’m a big apple fan but the pricing in our country can be called stealing money. The thing is, my acer is 2 years old and not a single sound from the harddrive, it just purs silently and sometimes good unnoticced. Different goes for the mac, i can hear loud clicks and spinnin sounds from its hdd and its only few months old.
Denis Walker
July 3rd, 2009
at 5:07pm
My sister’s iBook G4 had numerous problems. She had to replace the power supply a couple of times, but I think that’s because she wasn’t very careful with the cable. It then suffered from a known problem with a badly soldered chip. I managed to wedge it and get a bit more life out of the machine as suggested online, but eventually it died.
The RAM in my PowerPC Mac Mini failed. I used that as an opportunity to upgrade both the RAM and the hard drive and my mum still uses that machine daily. My MacBook Pro failed earlier in the year - a known problem with the Nvidia graphics which stopped the display working. The DVD drive had also stopped writing discs by that stage (I suspect too much dust in the drive - we have a long-haired dog, which doesn’t help as he brings quite a lot of dust into the house). The logic board and the optical drive were replaced under warranty.
I’m happy enough with Mac OS X that I can live with the occasional hardware problem (provided it doesn’t get too expensive). My sister, on the other hand has vowed never to buy a Mac again.
Patti
July 3rd, 2009
at 5:14pm
I’ve owned several Macs over the years and the only one that totally failed on me was the Mac Mini I had most recently. Presented as a USB failure, but turned out to be a motherboard problem. Luckily, it was still under extended warranty, so I got my money back. At work, I’ve been using Macs since 1990. Had one bad run where three similar Macs in my dept. died within three months of each other…put it down to a bad manufacturing series. Never had much trouble other than that, and usually it’s software based.
Personally, I’ve had far fewer problems of any kind with Macs than I ever had with the PCs I’ve used, and I’ve used PCs for a much shorter amount of time.
That website you wrote about…you have to take into consideration that people are MUCH more likely to write with problems than with success stories. I’ll bet that for every person who wrote negative comments on that site, there were ten other people who’ve never experienced major problems who never bothered to write in.
All computers will fail eventually, that’s obvious. Personally, I’d much rather trust my precious data to a Mac than a PC.
Kawazoe Masahiro
July 3rd, 2009
at 5:16pm
I have a friend who’s now using a Mac that I used to use when I was 10 years younger and that I got used from one of my uncle that used it for scientific calculations. This Macintosh Plus has more mileage than ANY other Mac I’ve ever known and it still working perfectly. The only little thing that doesn’t work is the more-than-old-and-now-unfindable battery that keep the time set on that computer even on power failure. None of my new or old Macintosh or every other Apple product ever failed on me. My Mac Pro run like a charm and endure much pain. I cannot tell for my MacBook Pro since it has less than one month of age but it show no sign of epic fail. My old iPod is still working, painfully and awfully scratched but working, just as my iPhone.
On the other side, every laptop I’ve ever had before (and there’s more 4) had an average life of 6 months before dying on me in the worst possible time. I even had to fix one of them while on class so that I could take notes. Desktop computers generally kept up twice that but still didn’t worked that much longer.
My point: There is no better hardware that the one that works. If you can’t kill a computer then it might be the right one for you. Strangely enough, it seams to be Apple computers that fit for more people.
cl191
July 3rd, 2009
at 5:32pm
I have a Macbook Pro and a Mac Mini, both of their DVD drives are dead in 2 years or so. On top of that, my Macbook Pro had the faulty 8600gt and now the fan is making clicking noise. My Macbook Pro is out of warranty (I didn’t get apple care), so I will be replacing the fan myself which will cost me about $50, but that’s still better than the hundreds that they will charge me at the apple store.
To be fair, my PC side of things aren’t so perfect either. I had to send my 2 months old P6T deluxe mobo in my custom built desktop back to ASUS. My Toshiba Satellite laptop had fan problems, a dead DVD drive and dead soundcard after about 2-3 years. Then of cause I have my share of dead HDDs over the course of history, including one that failed within 24hrs from the store.
Burnie
July 3rd, 2009
at 5:51pm
Well, for me it’s simple. I’ve owned two laptops, one of them a macbook. The macbook has lasted longer, with only one repair ever, cracks in the plastic casing, and that was free. I’m wanting an aluminum one now, cuz ya know, I doubt they get the cracks…
Ben Hanson
July 3rd, 2009
at 6:06pm
I have to admit that most of Apple’s computers are rubbish, based on ports and cheap hardware, although Hard Drives are dying in all computers and its not until SSD becomes cheap that thats gonna stop in my eyes, even for PCs. Personally the only reason I get a Mac is for Mac OSX, its a choice to make, great OS or great computer, big choice.
Martyn McFarquhar
July 3rd, 2009
at 6:08pm
Bear in mind that even though you will find plenty of people who have had problems with their Macs they will still be in the minority, people who have had no problems have no reason to run on the internet and post it.
Electronics are always prone to failure, but bear in mind that there are now over 75 million active OS X users world-wide now, even if you find 1,000 people complaining of faults online that’s still a statistically negligible amount compared to the overall number.
This kind of information always needs to be taken in context.
tjbackstage
July 3rd, 2009
at 6:55pm
Great topic!! I honestly must say that I agree with this. Both Macs that I have owned (blueberry iMac G3 & a newer unibody MacBook) have had MANY problems. When I had an iMac G3 (it was about 6-7 years old at the time), the DVD drive and the Airport card stopped functioning properly, but that didn’t surprise me because of its age. However, when my MacBook was only 6 months old, Apple had to replace every part in it (except for the case, display, and power supply). I still love the Mac OS and prefer it (along with the entire experience of “owning a Mac”) over how I used to live in “the Windows world”. I’ve owned PLENTY of computers, both Window machines and Macs (even 2 that ran Linux!), and overall, I have come to one final conclusion: Computers will fail at one point or another, but you get what you pay for. I honestly believe that what is holding Apple back is the crappy hard drives and optical disc drives that they put into their products. I’ve seen hard drives and optical disc drives perform and live much better in most of my Windows machines. Most of the hardware is the same between all of these machines, but the manufacturers get to choose what they put into their products. Unfortunately, Apple puts in crappy optical disc and hard disc drives, and they horridly overprice them. When I had my really crappy SuperDrive replaced in my newer MacBook under AppleCare, the replacement price would have been about $350. That’s pathetic when put into consideration that this extremely crappy drive is probably not worth more than $50-$100. But that’s Apple’s choice, and people do decide to buy their products. However, I’ve seen the same thing on the opposition’s side as well. I’ve seen some REALLY CRAPPY optical disc drives get put into desktop machines running Windows, I’ve had some really noisy hard drives spinning at low speeds, I’ve had power supplies fail, most batteries that I’ve had batteries go bad after a year (my 9-month-old MacBook still has full battery life, and I use the battery much more than I ever did on these other machines running Windows), and almost all of the trackpads in the notebooks I’ve had that run Windows stopped working in about 6-18 months (opposed to the trackpad on my 9-month-old MacBook which I absolutely love, and it’s fully functional).
All in all, I leave with this: You get what you pay for, and you should really look at what exact parts a manufacturer puts into their product(s) before buying it and complaining, regardless of who the manufacturer is.
Alan Zisman
July 3rd, 2009
at 9:21pm
Let’s see if I can remember my Macs over the past decade: 1999- iMac G3 266 MHz– still running; no issues. Upgraded RAM and hard drive
2001- iBook G3 500 MHz– still running, no issues. Upgraded RAM
2003- iBook G4-800 MHz– needed 3 hard drive replacements (under warranty); last one was the keeper- it’s still running.
2005- iMac G5– no issues, still running fine
2007- iMac (Intel Core 2 duo)– no issues, still running fine
2008- Powerbook G4 12″ (second hand)- upgraded RAM, running fine
2008- MacBook (aluminum)- upgraded hard drive, running fine
So 7 Macs- one with a bunch of problems, the rest pretty trouble-free. Seems an OK average to me!
Eduardo Piovani Dias
July 4th, 2009
at 3:24am
Well, it takes some weight out of my chest to hear the obvious truth; this is China-made hardware, not a bit better that any DIY Asus-motherboard based home-assembled unit. IT IS OVERPRICED. A LOT. I have never had an optical unit failed so early in my life, and the price for the repair is PREPOSTEROUS. I did it myself, and do not regret a bit. Thought of opening my own apple-repair shop, but perhaps not. The price for a “certification” is preposterous also….
Thanks God, I am not alone in this.
Christophergray
July 4th, 2009
at 5:47am
I work for a company that has around 100 Mac Pros and Power Mac G5s managed in an enterprise environment. So far we’ve had to replace the display adapter in about 10 our Mac Pros, and the power supply in about 18-20 of our Power Macs and about 15-20 failed hard disks. Based solely upon my experience, I can say that the failure rate among Apple hardware is not any better than that of Dell, our current PC vendor.
Unhappy Mac Owner
July 15th, 2009
at 9:33am
I had a Performa 6400 - The Hard Drive and CD Drive failed.
Then I had a iMac G3 Blueberry - Overheated a bit, plug case melted a bit. Still works but the CRT is starting to go. Overall a good machine.
Then Imac G5 17″ ALS… Where do I start?
PSU Busted, Leaky Caps, DVD-ROM Busted, constant overheating, Bluetooth fell off. All happened after 2 years. Bad Apple. Very Bad.
I can safely say I will NEVER buy another Mac ever again.
If I need OSX I will just find a way of booting it into a Windows or Linux PC. Because at the moment the only incentive to own an Apple is the OS.
I reckon Apple know this, remember when 3rd party companies used to do Mac clones, back in the good ol’ days?
mac fan
September 1st, 2009
at 11:01am
Hm. We currently own 4 Macs and 3 PCs. One of the macs - a G4 my third-grader recently inherited, is older than he is. Still runs great, as do the other three (2 Mac Minis and a Mac Pro).
In the time we have owned these Macs, we have gone through no less than 5 additional PCs, each of which was far younger than that old G4 when they died.
I’d take a mac over a pc any day.