Falling Out of an Apple Love Affair... A How To Guide

Yes, I've absolutely had what I've heard called an "Apple love affair" by the Microsoft fanboys on the Internet. Now, I am no major fanboy/defender of any company. They're all just big corporations who want our money. Why be in love with that? However, for the last six years I have always used and recommended Apple products to my friends, family, and anyone who will listen. Apple products represented the pinnacle of quality, fashion, stability, ease-of-use, and features. Even with the most recent Mac OS X Version 10.6 Snow LeopardApple has continued to refine their high quality, visually appealing, minimalist design operating system. Snow Leopard was also cheap (currently only $25 through that link above) and features the latest in OS refinements.

But I'm not reviewing Snow Leopard. Or indeed, anything Apple has got right. I'm ready to tell you what Apple has got wrong, and why my next computer will most likely be running Windows 7instead of Mac OS X (though I still plan to get an iPhone for the App Store). Quite simply, Apple's product quality has slipped over the years to a point of being quite disgraceful. It's not even the bugs themselves that are at issue - it's the secrecy and denial surrounding them. Apple once offered a genuinely premium experience. Now they use secrecy to simply hide the problems - delaying or preventing fixes for the affected users. The only issue I had with my original iBook G4 was a bad battery - which was replaced by a recall, no problem. My first MacBook developed cracks in the wrist rest area - a sign of poor material choice but I was able to get them replaced - twice. There was no issue. It also had kernel panics when using DVD played, fixed with a software upgrade to the OS - they were very secretive about this too but it affected only one program. Now, as for my new MacBook Pro 13" - that's another story...

The build quality physically on the new machine is amazing. I dropped the thing about 3 feet and all it has to show for it is some cosmetic damage (a dented corner, a hinge that isn't as smooth, and a couple other tiny dents). Now, before you use this (like Apple would) as evidence for why it doesn't work properly - note that the issues I have are well documented by others and that I first experienced them long before dropping the machine. I noticed them when I put in a 500GB Hitachi 5K500.B hard drive on my firmware 1.7 machine (yes, that's a link to just some of the numerous people who've had problems). The machine would beachball (Mac users will know this word) and stop doing anything for about 30 seconds at a time. A PRAM reset would fix the issue - for 2-3 days. With zero official acknowledgement, Apple provided a way for their STORES - but not their users or authorized service providers to keep with the air of secrecy I mentioned above - to downgrade to firmware 1.6. So, after making the 644 mile journey to the nearest Apple store in Salt Lake City, UT (it was made clear to me on several phone calls to different people that there was no other choice); I got my firmware downgraded to 1.6. Only to learn that even it doesn't fix the problem. It lessens it. The machine still gets 30 second slowdowns if it's PRAM hasn't been reset for a few days, they just aren't as common and don't totally kill the computer while they happen (iTunes now keeps playing in the background, etc). Dropping to firmware 1.6 underclocks a defective SATA bus (changes it to 1.5gbps from 3.0gbps), it does NOT fix the underlying problem that Apple won't acknowledge the existance of. The fact a PRAM reset fixes it for a few days tells me that it's not a hardware problem (or not purely hardware, maybe a combination), it's a software issue. One that no acknowledgement of means no real fix for. Additionally, the computer will occasionally randomly go to sleep on me, especially when running off battery.

Of course, Apple is now no use to me - the dent and damage mean the computer is "physically damaged and of course you're going to have problems" in the words of a Mac "genius (the one who did the firmware downgrade for me)." Not that it matters, they haven't been much use to anyone else with the same well-documented issues.

Now, you may think my story is all done, my tale is all told. I'm just another poor unfortunate soul who made the mistake of believing that Apple stuck to the SATA standard and that a SATA drive could work on it's SATA connector (though people have even had problems with some Apple-shipped drives so there goes that argument, I know the fanboys will inevitably still make it). But no, no indeed - my tale does not end there. For today is the day that I decided Windows 7 will have a place in my future. Who knows, maybe even a Nokia X6 instead of the iPhone I've been dreaming of.

What happened today you ask? Well simple, I decided to try a clean install of Snow Leopard in hopes that it'd fix whatever was wrong, the ailment making my computer so sick. Afterall, I had not clean installed since after the great firmware downgrade to 1.6. I had no such luck, for there was a major 30-second slowdown in my first 10 minutes of the new install; but I ran into problems when I tried to restore from my handy Time Machine backup. Everything was there on the drive, just as I'd thought. It all seemed good but oh was I wrong when I first opened my iTunes. It seemed to be all there but - uh-oh, one song had a little exclamation point. I found that I had lost a song I had purchased. I checked my drive, I checked my Time Machine drive. The folder for the song was still there, but the song was missing - Time Machine failed me.

But it's only a song, it's only 99 cents, right? I hope so, I hope I don't find anything else missing. I'm going to try writing to Apple in hopes that I get a re-download (though I doubt it) [UPDATE - See below they had NO PROBLEM reissuing the download]. But what if it wasn't - what if it isn't? What if it had been a research paper I'd spent a month on? My financial records diligently kept on computer? What if it had been so much more than a 99 cent song?

I know you may think that Windows doesn't have anything like Time Machine, so how dare I complain? A backup program that inexplicably misses a file that should be backed up is worse than no backup program at all. For you come to rely on it, and it lets you down. This is not a game-breaker. But it is the straw that is breaking this camel's (sheep's?) back...

UPDATE - I must say I am extremely impressed with the Apple iTunes Store support person I talked to by web chat who had no problem giving me a credit to redownload Someday - the song that went missing. No big deal, and I'm glad - but my point remains. What if it wasn't just a song? What if it was something big? If anyone has any questions I will leave the Time Machine drive used untouched for a few days so you can ask questions about the Time Machine backup used.