What Happened to Apple Computers?

I can still remember about four and half years ago when I opened the box for my Apple iBook G4. There it was, all fourteen inches of pure white plastic and well-designed components. I took that computer through the final two years of high school, my final year at college, and every imaginable destination in between. In fact, I still use that same computer, and all of the roughly 400 articles I have published on this site were typed on it. Even after all of that, I can honestly say that I have never had a single problem with my computer. I have been through countless cars, two different colleges, several relationships, and many cell phones, but I still have the same iBook. It is without a doubt the finest and smoothest running piece of technology that I can ever imagine.

After that lengthy introduction, you would likely expect me to yell and carry on about how and why you need to buy a Mac. But I'm not.

In fact, the entire point of this article is to tell you the opposite, so to speak. In the four plus years since I've owned mine, Apple has turned from an innovate and alternative company into something that mocks itself on a daily basis.

Before getting into build quality, customer service, performance and a host of other important issues, let me point out one perfect example of what is wrong with the company: Apple.com

Once, upon a long time ago, one could go to Apple.com and find countless "tech tips", interesting articles about how to perform different functions on the machines, direct contact information for customer service, links for MacWorld, and any number of other useful and interesting features. Go on the website today, and the very first thing you see is an advertisement for their new laptop. Or, at least you'll think it's an advertisement. But it's not! That large advertisement is the entire Apple homepage, from which you can click the links to either buy the new 13 or 15 inch laptops. After about fifteen minutes of searching, you might be able to find some actual content, or you might just once again be directed to the online store, once again urging you to buy the new laptops. However, if you are able to find some content, you'll likely stumble upon what Apple calls "Hot News" which usually consists of more flagrant advertisements or a droolingly positive review.

For a perfect example, the article "MacBooks: The notebook for all platforms" is billed as one of the "hot news" items. Actually read the article, and you'll find roughly three grammatical errors, two massive run-on sentences, and enough positive praise for the new Mac's that you'll want to run out and buy one right away.

I'm surprised that Apple will put any all praiseful articles on it's website. It's kind of sad, and it kind of makes you wonder why they even need to do it in the first place. The company survived for many, many years with hardly any advertising, and the excellent word of mouth quality regarding their products was enough to get them comfortable sales numbers.

Since when did Apple start doing this? The entire idea that attracted myself, and many others, to the company in the first place was the stand that it took against excessive advertising, the word of mouth praise, and the simple and effective information they provided online. So, from those origins, we now have a company homepage which links to advertisements disguised as "news". The fact that Apple's homepage has just become one massive advertisement is nothing less than disgusting.

Let's move on to some other major issues. Even with the endless glowing praise, I'm really inclined to wonder if any of these people have used a Mac lately. A good friend recently (couple of weeks ago) bought a brand new 15 inch Macbook Pro. He let me play around on the roughly $2500 computer, and what did I find? Honestly, it worked great. When it actually worked. In my ten minutes of playing with the thing, I managed to make it freeze twice, had two applications fail to open and subsequently fail to quit, and watched with horror as the new trackpad lifted right out of the "rigid unibody" when light pressure was applied.

The thing I have in front of me, with only 1.42 GHz (the new Pro has 2.53) has never frozen, not once. Applications rarely ever fail to open, and even after all this time, not a single key has come loose. Another friend with a brand new Pro (this one the 17 inch widescreen) had two keyboard keys pop off the moment she took it out of the box.

You really have to wonder if Apple is doing quality control anymore. Yes, I am well aware that the more units a company sells the more problems they are going to have. However, this is expected to happen with $500 Dell computers. Most people, when buying a piece of technology costing over $2,000, expect it to look, feel and perform like a piece of technology costing over $2,000.

I encourage anyone who believes that their new Macbook or Pro book is built well to take a chance and check out one of the older G4 (or G3 for that matter) models. The solid feeling, the durable case, the unsurpassed reliability, all of these which are plentiful in almost any G4 are nowhere to be found in the new models.

You can compare clock speeds all you want, and, of course, they will tell you how much faster the new models are than the G4's, at least in terms of processing speed. But, if my new computer is sitting broken on my desk, it really doesn't matter how fast it can run Photoshop. My own independent testing (setting my G4 next to a new Pro and opening every single application at once on both of them) really fails to impress me. Yes, the new Pro opens them faster, but it also sounds like a diesel truck while it's trying to do this. The G4 does not.

I'm not going to argue in any way that the new Macbooks, and especially the Pro's, aren't great performers in terms of raw clock tests and seeing how many Photoshop windows can be open at once. What I am going to argue is that the new machines are built without nearly the same build quality, have about half the reliability, and lack features that would have appealed to their intended audience. Two perfect examples: Where is my firewire connection and where is my matte screen? These two features are cited as the number one reasons why serious professionals and artists are shying away from the new Macs in favor of the older, more proven models. In their quest to sell as many units as possible, Apple has alienated their core audience, pushed their faithful customers away, and built a product that simply is not as good as their older units.

There are much more efficient and reliable machines out there for the ridiculous cost of an Apple. Even comparable Windows machines built with the same components (since Apples are built with Intel chips and Chinese components anyway) are offered up at a fraction of the cost.

Simply put, do yourself a favor; really consider and do some research before buying an Apple. The quality name associated with the company really has nothing to do with their products today, and they have made so many questionable decisions with regards to build quality and the choice of components used that it is truly scary. Theses are expensive laptops, and before going out and blindly buying one, take the time to do some research.

The question, "what has happened to Apple?" is one that I find myself asking whenever I see one of the clever ads on television, or watch classmates struggling to make their brand new computers work. Apple is a shadow of the company it once was, and the day my iBook finally dies, the first thing I'm going to do is go out and buy another (refurbished) iBook G4.