Well, I guess my Apple accolades were a bit too congratulatory — it turns out that the problem that beseiged by iBook is not only widespread, but more or less ignored by Apple. There are dozens of other people that have posted descriptions of the exact same problem I experienced, and there’s even a thread on Apple’s support site full of people who are on their third and fourth logic boards. Most of them seem to have had to shell out the same few hundred I did in order to get their iBook fixed. And in that context, the service doesn’t seem quite as awesome. In the world of medicine, this many affected people would cause a drug to be pulled off the market, a new procedure to get scrapped, or a medical trial to get closed by the FDA. In the world of computer hardware, though, it just causes people to have to spend more money to fix products that are defective from the get-go.
Dec 22, 2003 | Q
It is increasingly clear that Apple, no matter what they do, can’t seem to get their hardware production quality control anywhere near the image that many of us have. Maybe it is because of the rampup for volume that we saw in 2003? Can we tell if the problem is in the design or in the production?
Yours is at least the 2nd if not 3rd generation of iBooks. It is truly stunning that they have such a integral problem in a product that is already mature, for the most part.
Another good example are the white spots on the LCDs of the new 15” Aluminum Powerbooks. One would assume that with the experience of building the 12” and 17” Powerbooks, that the 15”er would be the best-designed model of the 3. Seems not to be the case.
We ought not to cut Apple any more slack than they deserve.
• Posted by: gen kanai on Dec 27, 2003, 9:18 AMApple Users Threaten to Sue Over IBook, IPod
• Posted by: Laura on Jan 2, 2004, 11:58 AMhttp://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=581&e=2&u=/nm/20031231/tc_nm/tech_apple_dc
FYI — in case you hadn’t heard about this yet:
“Apple Computer Inc. said on Wednesday that it launched a three-year, worldwide repair program for certain of its iBook notebook computers that can have problems with their internal or external display monitors. “We have determined that a small number of iBooks introduced in 2002 have a display problem caused by a component failure on the logic board,” said Phil Schiller, head of worldwide product marketing for Apple in a statement emailed to Reuters. Apple declined to comment on the exact number of iBooks affected. Cupertino, California-based Apple said it will repair these components for free and offer a full refund for customers who have already paid for the repair. Apple will pay for shipping costs, the company said.”
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=581&e=5&u=/nm/20040129/tc_nm/tech_apple_repair_dc
• Posted by: Laura on Jan 29, 2004, 2:49 PM