This is why I stay with Apple

Your opinion is exacty mine, down to the computer violence! I showed this to a friend of mine and I guess he didn't read the author and he asked me when I started writing for TUAW since this is exacty how I would have written it. When I told him it wasn't me he said he was scared there were two like me and would have to be on the lookout for someone else with a Mac holding a baseball bat and threatening computer violence. Good job!

Let's put aside Apple v. Windows/who is better for a moment. Regardless of which is better, I think your reason hints at a deeper problem. The fact that your number one reason for sticking with one side is a "hatred" for the other side is very telling. This means you really could not come up with a single more significant "positive" reason to like one side. I'm all for the competition, but I just wish that it was focused more on what each side is good at, instead of why the other side is a loser because of some anecdotal story 5 years ago. Sure criticism can be good and helpful, but when it gets to the point that hating one side is the #1 reason to stick to the other side, then I think the argument has lost its usefulness.

I love this, and feel exactly the same way!

Not only can I attest first-hand that HP will not make exceptions for a failed hard drive 3 days after the initial warranty expired, they were not willing to assist at all.

However, my husband's iPhone had some discoloration. Stopped by the Apple Store and they immediately replaced his phone with a brand new phone no questions asked.

Apple does have exceptional customer service!

Hey! Jason, isn't it fun that I tried to click on, "like" and got an "oh, no you don't" type msg from facebook. ?????

Loving my Apples, still, and not suffering anything like the frustration you've alluded-to. But then, I want my apples to do a limited range of things, and still wander into the Apple store for help getting it to do something I've not yet figured out. It's a little disconcerting to get an answer on the phone from AppleCare and find myself talking to somebody who's having a little trouble with English. But I'm still getting any help needed.

Mind you, three years plus on refurbished machinery - never upgraded to SnowLeopard - and can count on one hand the number of calls to Apple Care but more trips to the Apple store.

Maybe three freeze-ups in as many years. And I usually know what to do. Finally changed out the battery last time. ;-)

Ok, I'll raise my hand as one of the people who got great Apple service from start to finish.

My Late 2006 MacBook White has been having fan problems so I got it in for a repair at an authorized repair center which only cost me about $30 (out of warranty). and I got it back within a week.

And I'm living in a country without official Apple presence.

Whilst my Dell Mini 9 that had an unresponsive keyboard 6 months into my 1 year warranty was refused because my warranty is only available in the US (where I bought it) and they cannot issue a transfer. I had to pay about a hundred dollars to get it fixed and wait about 2 months for the parts.

Nothing compares to worldwide warranty that Apple offers.

Thermal shutdowns seem to be a hidden feature of at least some of the 2007 MacBook Pro models. Unless you push the machine hard, though, it's easy to miss.

I first noticed this issue in December 2009. A couple of weeks after the last depot repair (and the 2nd nVidia-related repair), the machine started to reboot at seemingly random times.[1] Over the next several months I realized, gradually, that these spontaneous reboots always happened when I was doing something that exercised the CPU or the GPU. I eventually worked out a dead-simple way to trigger it: create a large file, dump it into the trash, and then do a secure empty.[2] Watch the CPU temperature spike; in my case it reached 93-95C.

My story has a bit less drama but the same happy ending. I tried contacting Apple on the day my AppleCare expired but missed phone support by 17 minutes. The automated attendant directed to the online support resources, but I couldn't even open a case without providing a credit card. In spite of having called them the next day, Apple granted an exception and repaired the machine at no additional cost.

I agree with you, Chris. Apple is far from perfect, but they have among the best customer service of any company I've dealt with.

[1] Yes, the nVidia repair involved a logic board replacement. My working theory is that the repair depot used too much thermal paste on the CPU, thus decreasing the effectiveness of the heat sink. After this final repair I'm unable to get the CPU above 70C, even when secure-deleting large files.

[2] Here's the Terminal.app command I used, in this case to create a 2 GB file:

dd if=/dev/zero of=~/Desktop/bigfile bs=1m count=2048

Something similar happened to me, a couple of years ago or so. My mbp 17 died barely a month out of warranty. I had just lost my job and was in no mood of spending money on a new computer, didn't want make the choice between mortgage or a new mbp with severance money. Apple came through for me after they were finished the only old parts left in the computer were the memory, hd and the bottom case, the fixed things that I didnt know were broken, because the didn't pass the their quality check. Cost of repairs -- Zero.. I am not buying a computer from another company for the rest of my life.

I recognise that Apple loyalty due to better customer care. I had a Sony Vaio Pre-loaded with Vista that was my worst computer experience in 30 years. I changed to iMac and discovered the joy of a computer that just worked - no problems in three years. Recently my iPhone - out of warranty for a year - broke down and I sent it to Apple for an estimated repair. Instead. the next day Apple returned a *brand new* iPhone. Thanks Steve.

I love TUAW articles like this.