Why is everyone picking on Apple?

*sigh*. Apple.

They have it coming to them. Apple really positions themselves in marketing as the solution that just works, how their products are so superior, etc...

And as an Apple, PC, Linux, iPhone, iPod, etc... user I have to say lately the Apple products are crashing a LOT more. I dropped my 1st gen iPhone and picked up the 2nd gen, and that thing is constantly locking up on me to the point where my business clients are starting to complain (plus... AT&T sucks with reception/coverage).

When you go around claiming you are the best, and then you have a rash of problems. Well... people are going to come down hard on you. That is just the way it rolls.

Personally, I hope Apple gets more beat up, then maybe we can go back to the underdog days when Apple really tried hard. I do like Apple innovations, they are just missing the level of polish they used to have.

First off, I am a big supporter of Apple products. I am not however a blind fanboy.

My company bought one of the new Aluminum iMacs a few months after they were released (24" model) for me to use at the office. I had the machine for barely 1.5 months and it would not start up in "normal" mode. Safe worked fine. I contacted Apple Care and after the normal diagnostics, it would only boot in safe mode. They thought it was a software issue (which I would agree with, it being able to boot in safe mode), so they said reinstall OSX. I attempted, but it would fail every time. I tried a different CD (retail 10.5 disc), and still same problem. Applecare thought then maybe bad RAM (again plausible), I had a compatible known good stick of RAM and tried it in both slots, and same results (OSX would not install). The guy then proceeded and said the power supply could be bad and they would send out a tech to fix it. I had doubts that the power supply could be the cause, but I have not had lots of experience repairing iMacs, so I went along with it.

The "tech" arrives at my office, and proceeds to read a manual on how to replace the power supply for an hour in my office (not exactly Apple fault, but they should tell their subs to know what they are doing before they send them out). So after like 3 hours he gets the power supply replaced and the machine back together. Still no go, the machine would not install. At this point Applecare thought the CD-ROM drive could be bad. At this point I disagreed with them. The CD drive had nothing to do with the initial problem, so while it could be bad now (doubtfully), that would not be solving the initial problem. They then said they could send out a tech (the same guy....) to replace the motherboard/cpu/ram (IE basically the entire guts of the machine). I remind you this machine is barely 45 days old. I then asked for a new machine to be sent out and this one sent back. I had been down for almost a week at this point, and I don't want a tech that knows nothing about these machines to start replacing motherboards and such. They refused to send a new machine. I reluctantly decided to take it to an Apple Store (over 100 miles away), to have them look at it. They concluded that indeed the logic/motherboard was bad. He asked me what I wanted done. I said this machine is literally a month and half old, and I just want a new machine. He said no problem, and they will be Fed EX'ing a new machine to me within a week.

So why did I have to drive 100 miles to get the problem resolved. Apple FAIL. In the end, I learned just take it to an Apple Store if possible.

I have also had about three ipods die within a year of ownership (all were HD based). I have had my first gen ipod for almost a year now and it works great. Maybe I was too rough on the ipods, but oh well.

One last thing that really irks me about Apple is the product refreshing. Six months (or more in some cases) is entirely too long for pricing. If I recall correctly, the iMac before the Aluminum was the same product for almost a year and carried the same price the entire time. In my opinion I will not buy a computer that is almost a year old (but still "new") for the same price it was a year ago. http://mactactic.com is a nice resource, but they should refresh the specs a lot more often or the computers (ie 3 months old at most).

I still like Apple products, but the company can really tic me off at times.

Apple lets their extremely high quality bar slip a little, and suddenly the 4 riders of the apocalypse are on their way to Cupertino.

Been here before. Apple will come back. It's long-term software focus is based in quality - Snow Leopard, for example. As soon as 2.1 is out, I expect Apple to push its iPhone software division to bug-fixing mode.

Besides, Apple is well ahead of the rest of the industry in all areas. On the desktop, Mac OS is far ahead of Windows (not arguable. Look at 64-bit for example). On the web, SproutCore is making the best web applications on the planet. On mobile devices, MobileOSX is just light-years ahead of both Windows Mobile, Symbian, and BlackBerry. And they've got Cocoa to glue them all together - it's used by the desktop and mobile devices, and lots of Cocoa features are used in SproutCore.

Apple has planned well. It's planned for this rapid expansion of appeal, and it's paying off.

People are picking on Apple not only because it is at the top, but also because its what everyone else is doing. Its whats cool.Everyone who has ever had ANY product, at some point will think, I wish this did that or why doesnt it do this? or why does it do that? or should it be doing that?. Someone hit it on the head already and said that its people's expectations that are being set too high. That coupled with not really knowing what your device is capable of or how it is supposed to work will lead to lots of frustrated people out there. Lets say there are 10,000 people posting about problems with their iPhones, what percentage of total iPhone users is that? Most electronic devices have an acceptable fail rate of between 5% to 7%. Lets do the math on that. The problems with reception and signal coverage are problems with the network. The iPhone has already been cleared as far as mass hardware defects or inadequacies. Also, being very close to Apple myself, I have experience with people who use OTHER peoples' experience as their own. For example, I asked an acquaintance about their iPhone and if they used MobileMe (which works perfectly for me by the way). His response was "Nah that waste of money doesnt work." So I asked "How do you know it doesnt work? Have you or any of your friends tried it?" His response to that was "No, but I have heard of people having so many problems with it, I didnt even want to bother." This same guy also runs Vista...go figure. Anyway, as a test I had him take a picture of me and email it to me, only to then receive that email on my iPhone about 20 seconds later. I snapped a pic of the look on his face and posted it to my MobileMe web gallery.

STOP HATIN.

1.- Microsoft recognizes Apple has achieved superior user experience, and being out "Ad"-dded.

2.- Microsoft announces $300 Million advertising campaign.

3.- Apple gets pummeled in the press over problems that affect very little of their customer base (1% mobile me users, and 2% Iphone users)

I believe Microsoft's campaign is already well underway and not necessarily through conventional advertising.

Apple is doing just fine. In fact, it is doing quite well. But they are shifting focus a bit they're not releasing new "pretty" products every month. What's the big deal? People will make up drama if there isn't any, and I'll never understand it.

They deserve some of the bad press they're getting.

MobileMe release was terrible. They're trying to court enterprise users, and they flop. Big time. Luckily I don't use it with my iPhone.

iPhone 2.0 software was not close to being ready for release. 1.1.4 was quite stable. 2.0 brought the crash monster out, and it's sluggish as hell, and you have to perform some serious voodoo to get apps to work and sync consistently. "Only install apps from iTunes" is a decent fix, but pathetic. This stuff should just work. No issues.

I still love my MacBook Pro though. 18 months and no issues. The initial release of Leopard was a little bit rough for my tastes, but I waited until 10.5.1 at least.

Why is apple being picked on you ask? well we all are expecting the apple we had before with the fantastic systems but now with the faulty 3g in the iphone (yes i have experienced it cause i do own one) and the magsafe power adapters that are going to kill us. well these are problems that we need to fix and they won't be able to unless we tell them to

Apple is being picked on for good reason. Apple doesn't pay enough to attract top-flight talent. Apple never got dot Mac right. Now Apple can't get MobileMe right.

Apple's pulling a Britney.