Are Apple moving away from making good computers in favour of iPods and iPhones?

I have remarked that the newer Apple computers are not as well made as they used to be - although I've not experienced quite the same problems with the MacBook Pro as you have with your MacBook. I wonder if this is another case of Made In China - it would be dreadful if Apple let the quality slip.

Most of apple products are made in China, the most they ever got to was 'assembled' in Ireland.

Sadly like any product the occasional lemon comes along and if I were the poster I would be speaking with apple with very strong words. I sent back 2 iMacs before settling on the third because I was not happy with the screen.

Apple need to compete in a market at price points. In my experience products in the same price points from other manufacturers are no better or worse in terms of build quality, they all come out the Acer factory anyhow.

I think there is a bit of a myth surrounding how well Apple products were ever made anyhow. Back in the day the beige boxes from apple were as ugly and as shite as the next PC box. It was not until Eves came along and turned upside down the whole design ideas behind computing that an idea of quality of build came along as well. The two do not necessarily go hand it hand.

That said I have an iBook which has had two years of hard labour and is still in one solid bit. And what they can stuff into the smallest enclousre is amazing, Which is perhaps where problems stem from in terms of heat.

Anyhoo, there seems to be many millions of happy apple customers, what with another record quarter for them. So as I say phone the buggers up with every issue you have had and see what they say. By the time I got to sending back the second iMac they banged me a tonne to spend on the apple store.

quote:

Originally posted by 12frets56:
[apple] have forgotten what they should be doing which is making first class computers and software.

Unfortunately, i would guess that it's precisely due to the fact that this market isn't sufficient to sustain them, and the market too crowded with competitors, that they have decided to corner far less crowded market areas. In effect, what they 'should' be doing, is whatever sustains their business....

Ideally, they'd be able to do this and also create quality products, but their reputation seems to be built on innovation and aesthetics, not value for money, or reliability. The iPod isn't actually the most reliable piece of equipment, and the battery life and inability to replace the battery are significant issues. Nevertheless, the world markets continue to purchase them in the millions!

Such is our throwaway society.

phil

A MacBook Pro blows.

I hate it.

Let's see what happens when I upgrade to a CS3 but I am not holding my breath.

I'll be honest and say I don't get most of that haha.

Maybe they need to learn the same way Mercedes did a few years back.

They under-engineered. and the cars were poor.

they seem to back now though.

maybe apple will have to get better again to get the legend back...

Kuma

Can you translate that into English?

Submitted on a MacBook Pro, built to my company standard in the US, traveled through numerous countries, currently sitting in my flat in Glasgow, securely connected via public Broadband and a VPN tunnel to my company through a global third party provided access point, been dropped numerous times, been exposed to temperature extremes.....and never missed a beat.

So, on my sample size of one, this is the best, most reliable laptop on the planet....so, I guess it is all in the eye of the beholder.

Cheers

Jim

quote:

so, I guess it is all in the eye of the beholder.

Which apps do you run jim?

A few bugs are already reported on the Adobe Forum with a CS3 ( and they admit it there are few kinks to be figured out yet ), but I am tempted to get the first version release.

I am tired of apps crashing and slow speed. ( currently CS2 not running in native )

In my 20 years of Apple ownership, this is the worst.

A physical structure might not have been robust, but the last version of G4 Powerbook/CS2 was the best I have used so far.

Kuma your argument is flawed regarding speed and answered in your own post. Its not the fault of the macbook that CS2 does not run natively.

You cannot honestly say for native applications the macbook is slower than a G4, and if you are there is something fundamentally wrong with your product.

garyi.

A slower speed, I expect when you don't run Native apps. But I didn't expect it to run this much slower than a G4!

However, Reliability and instability I've experienced from the normal daily use so far are not acceptable.

It seems to hicup on even the most basic task. File sharing ( between ID2 & ID3 ) is another problem.

It works for most people, but with the heavy use with a large files manipulation and production coupled with multiple open applications, it falls down badly compared to the G4 ( and yes. I only care about speific applications I use and need )

Hell, the Macbook pro even trips on using a bluetooth wireless mouse. From what i was told, it has been a known problem.
(I use it when not using for work, but I don't use it for my work as it keeps freezing the HD)

Unfortunately, when I wanted to purchase a secondary laptop, G4 wasn't available any longer and I am stuck with this turkey, atm.

I got this puter checked by a pro, and told me no reason to take it back. Apparently, this is how it is.

I'm sure it was a business decision to move to an Intel based chip, but so far the transition isn't painless.
And that the Adobe is slow to release the software. ( apparently, the Apple didn't consult with the Adobe after they spend a considerable time and expense to develop the CS2 )

Graphic arts industry is a pretty good chunk of their business, but it seems they no longer care.

And I am not the only one who's having the similar problems within the field I am in.

So, it may be a Godsend for some, but it's a royal pain in the arse for me as the mac is still considered to be an industry standard hardware.

I never thought I would ever say this, but:

'Macbook Pro sucks'!

Apple hardware has always been "better than average" in terms of design & build quality. The problem is mostly that the average has dropped in line with price expectations, and Apple's build and component quality has in many cases followed suit. Apple's components are now much more in line with mainstream PCs, so they can make greater economies of scale, with fewer proprietary interfaces:

RIP the following:
Apple Desktop Bus, for connecting mice & keyboards, allowing the keyboard Power-on key to work;
Apple Display Connector, for connecting monitors and combining AC mains, USB and DVI into a single plug & cable;
LocalTalk, ad-hoc networking using the printer port on every Mac and potentially the spare wires in a telephone system as network cable... the list of laterally thought-out (but expensive)innovations goes on and on.

With laptops, the physical design makes a big contribution to the service life of the product, since it affects how hot the internals get. If you want to know if a laptop has been well designed (or even "designed" at all, in the sense that some thought has been put into it), just turn it over and look at the bottom panel. It's remarkable how many manufacturers think it's OK to but grotty, moulded ventilation panels on the underside of something is supposed to rest on the user's lap.

Gary, you're wrong about (most of) the beige boxes. Before Jonathan Ive, much of Apple's industrial design was carried out by FrogDesign, IIRC a German design group with an amazing track record, who pioneered the "stainless steel & leather" prototypes which led to today's laptops. Their desktop designs used easily-opened (no bolts) "platinum" ABS cases which could mostly be locked, and were very distinctive in their time. Apple also fitted a standard Ethernet interface on desktops before anyone else, and continued to use vastly superior SCSI hard disks while other manufacturers persisted with the cheaper IDE standard, meaning that other SCSI peripherals (such as scanners and external disks) were easy to attach and didn't require expansion cards since the SCSI bus was already on the motherboard. They only abandoned this once the combination of FireWire and USB became practical, which in itself is interesting because Firewire ("iLink", "IEEE1394") is an Apple invention, and USB was an Intel standard which was available for at least 12 months before anyone saw a need to use it in a computer. The original iMac (1998) made USB mainstream, just like, in its way, the original fanless (and therefore virtually silent) Mac Plus increased people's expectations in 1984.

iPods & so-on are just peripherals, just like printers, scanners, digital cameras (QuickTake) and CD players (PowerCD) were when Apple used to make those. The volume and target market are different, but the principle is the same. There were lemons then, and there are lemons now. Thankfully, they're rare, and usually sorted quickly.

In December 2003 I bought a G4 14" iBook. The logic board died after just 2 years. Apple were not interested. They will only admit to logic board problems on machines with serial numbers lower than mine. But the problem still exists. Four of my friends iBooks have since died of the same causes. One of them bought a Macbook which died after 8 months, while I'm typing this on a MacBook Pro which is currently so hot I'm worried about my sperm count. The other two friends are thinking about buying PC's instead.

However, my Intel 23" iMac is running flat out in the studio and is stable and glitch free so far, so I'm not losing faith yet!

Maybe Apple has been headhunting Linn Directors

We are also seeing a delay in their Leopard OS 10.5 operating system (until October), some believe that they do not wish to steal the limelight from the iPhone.

However there are other goodies in the rumour pipeline. Core2Duo Mac Minis, brighter (and more natural) backlit LCDs, a redesigned iMac (although I love the current design), a lightweight MacBook (using Flash memory instead of a hard drive) and possibly some WiFi-enabled iPods.

Andrew

quote:

I'm sure it was a business decision to move to an Intel based chip, but so far the transition isn't painless.
And that the Adobe is slow to release the software. ( apparently, the Apple didn't consult with the Adobe after they spend a considerable time and expense to develop the CS2 )

We've talked about this, but the blame rests squarely with the developers–those that have put significant effort into making their apps MacIntel compatible (and, previously, OS X compatible) are reaping the rewards (Digidesign being one of them)–but it is market driven by end users (sorry, kuma, but graphics people are laggards when it comes to machine refresh cycles).

Apple's largest pro customer base no longer consists of print professionals, but video post-production auteurs–they even drive the bus when it comes to audio applications, for that matter.

quote:

(sorry, kuma, but graphics people are laggards when it comes to machine refresh cycles).

Yeah.
I just got the word from my IT guy that 'don't upgrade to the CS3'

I think I'm gonna do what you did: go back to the G4.

For graphics? Perhaps. For everything else? Intel it is, no looking back.

Well I have used photoshop CS3 on my intel and it was flawless and clearly faster than under rosetta and clearly faster than on my iBook.

Try using InDesign and Illustrator along with a Photoshop.

Already many heavy users are reporting slow CS3 performance on a MacBook Pro.

David,

Obviously, I am not very much interested in *everything else* as it is irrelevant to my livelihood.

I think again you are getting cunfused with a third party software release and the mac book.

No doubt you personally are having issues with CS3. Its impressive you got hold of it so quickly. However it can in fairness be considered a 1.0 release. Its just out as universal and you expect it to be flawless. And because its not, this is the fault of apple going to intel.

Most odd.

If you have a lemon of a computer, thats bad luck and you should have apple about it every day of the week.

If you are experiencing poor performance with CS3 perhaps you should not have purchased it a day after its release.

garyi,

A hardware is NOTHING without a proper software implementation.

Currently, the MacBook Pro is useful to me as tits on a bull.

I was desperate enough to consider upgrading as running a CS2 on a Macbook Pro has been buggy.

Kuma

This is like blaming Naim for poorly recorded CD's.....or am I missing something?

Jim

quote:

Originally posted by Exiled Highlander:
Kuma

This is like blaming Naim for poorly recorded CD's.....or am I missing something?

Yes.
It's only a hifi.

Besdies, Naim stuff still works well even on poorly recorded CDs.

It's also worth examining if (despite running CS3) any of your plug-ins (especially XTensions) or printer drivers (especially third-party RIP software) are running under Rosetta–this has a pernicious effect on resources that cannot be identified without a quick peak at the Activity Monitor (all processes, sorted by kind).

In spite of all this, I must say I stopped looking back once Acrobat Pro went Universal–my change to a iMac G5 desktop was for space and screen size / color gamut, not speed or compatibility (2.1 GHz still slower than MacBook Pro for anything Universal).

Believe me David,

If you have to work with the file I have to work with and perform tasks I am asked to do on the MacBook Pro, you won't be a happy camper.

<sigh>
Back to the salt mine...

Kuma

If you are running files that are that big then many would suggest you need a faster system designed fot that kind of work. Apple make a nice 8 core Mac Pro for that very purpose.

Maybe you can go down to your local dealer and do a demo before bringing it home.

It's only Hi Fi as you say.

Cheers

Jim