reliability?

I'm quite dissatisfied with their consumer products recently. I always held the notion that their stuff is well-built in an attractive package, now I'm not quite sure about the well-built part...

I have a 60GB iPod video, and a 4gb iPod mini, the iPod video died on me after about a year. The tale of the mini is even sadder: I got it about a month after it came out cuz it's very slick looking and sometimes I just want something even smaller. Well, I lightly used it for about 2 weeks -- then for the longest time I just put it aside while finding the 60gb to be more useful. Just last month I decided to put some use to it, charged it up, it booted for all but 10 seconds, and the screen promptly went blank... No amount of coaxing was able to bring it back to life.

So there ya have it -- 2 expensive toys, both dead, and of course, both dead after the warranty has expired. Nicely done. heh At least w/ the 60gb I got a few good months out of it. The mini? pfft, I probably used it less than 10 times TOTAL. I have used ibook and powerbook before, but not as exclusive machines or for any duration of time. So far I'm really beginning to wonder about their QC... I know quite a few ppl complained about the MacBook Pro being too hot, and Apple just recently "quietly" fixed that issue instead of doing a public recall.

http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=1584

I was looking forward to maybe getting a MB Pro or an MB, but maybe I'll just wait for the osx hacks to be more mature...

cheers,

yass

 

I wouldn't say they have weeded out all of the problems- those equipped with an x1600 GPU are still running too hot even after being brought down in performance to run cooler-rumor is they are tweaking the card even more (reducing performance) to bring heat down. That aluminum case is a heat nightmare.

 

yass, did you try resetting your ipods? A similar thing happened with my friends mini, he went to use it after charging/synching, and it wouldn't work. Once he found out how to properly reset it, it has been working fine.

 

Ditto on that. I was prepared to send my iPod in for repair. I reset the device and its been working fine ever since.

 

Same here.

 

did any of u see a message on your ipod saying "Disk Mode"
one time i charged my iPod Nano and opened and saw this
i reset the ipod and it worked fine but where did that come from

 

I never have.

 

the ipod mini problem could very well be a "charge dissipated past certain threshold issue" for the lithium ion battery. if you had used your mini and forgot to charge it and left it for long enough, the charge on the battery could have lowered below the threshold and thus, stopped working.
li-ions batteries should be left at 40-90% charge if they're going to be left idle for more than 3 months.
they dissipate at about ~1% per day, so if you had left it idle for long enough, it had nothing to do with the quality of the product, but you simply mishandled it.

 

It was left fully charged when I last used it. I have the habit of plugging it in the charger when I wasn't using it (such is an advantage of Li-ion batteries, to exhibit no memory effect and maximum charge held is a function of the age of the battery and not how many charge cycles).

Sorry I meant to say the ipod Nano and not the mini in the original post. I don't think I mishandled it, as this is not the first, nor the only piece of electronics I own that has Li-ion batteries in it. At any rate I wasn't the only one with issues regarding the Nano, a lot of my friends that has it also experienced problems anywhere from constant lockups to going dead. If the battery completely discharged in 2 months when it was fully charged to begin with, the fault lies in the battery. The way Apple designed their iPods also made battery replacement a much bigger hassle than it needs to be.

While the exterior is definitely attractive (the sole reason why I bought the Nano), I have never found their electronics to be of any better quality than anyone else. They are all manufactured somewhere in China/Taiwan, in some non-discript factories, alongside many many other brand's products. The internals are all the same, only exception is a nicer exterior.

By comparison, my oldest HD-mp3 player is an iRiver H320 that I bought almost 3 years ago. I pretty much stopped using it when got my iPods, but after both of them ****ped out on me, I started using it again. I still use it daily.

cheers,

yass

 

Thanks for the info here guys - I guess it would be wisest to buy the extended warranty - is it a good idea to buy it right away at the same time as your MBP purchase or hold off? TIA