[FanIn80]

Originally Posted by Barnes

It's not out of left field. Pre Intel switch, right around where they started using IBMs Power processors as the G5 you would have had an argument but the reliability of their machines have taken a serious nose dive. My most reliable Mac is my 10 year old B&W G3 Powermac which is still running all day, everyday since I bought it. Machines I've had since have been plagued with a number of hardware problems that have been fixed reocured and fixed again.

I am at the point now where I am questioning the premium that I pay. What exactly is it giving me? Yes they are a pleasure to work with but there is something to be said about it just working when you need it to. I love OS X and wouldn't run anything else at home and now that I can put it on pretty much any hardware, why would I buy Apple hardware? They don't last any longer and Apple has told me that they don't expect it to anyways.

If I paid for a beautifully designed sofa that was comfortable to sit on but gave me crabs every six months, I would drag it outside and light it on fire. I am at that point with Apple.

Originally Posted by BlackEleven

I'm not so sure I agree with you on this. I've recently started using a Mac, a couple of weeks ago, and I've been plagued with a myriad of crashes and hangs. And pretty serious ones too. I expected it to be much more stable based on the reputation that Mac has.

Two days ago, I had a kernel panic installing a simple OS update. A week or so ago I had an issue where the the computer became totally unresponsive -- apps wouldn't launch when I clicked them, shell command would just hang, etc -- the only way I could get around it was to reboot, but within 10-15 minutes it would return, so I had to reboot every 10-15 minutes. Seriously annoying.

As for the apps, I also couldn't use the default Mail application that comes pre-installed. It worked fine for a few minutes then inexplicably die with no error messages. I also had a spreadsheet that would crash excel upon opening it. Trying to install Office as well, got me into an infinite loop in the installer -- it would tell me that I need rosetta, click ok to install, so I did then it said there was another update in progress (there wasn't) and would bounce me back to the rosetta install menu again.

I realize this is all anecdotal evidence, but my switch to Mac has been less than seamless. I like the OS -- its nicely laid out, clean, easy to use, but the wealth of problems I've encountered are certainly souring my impression of Mac.

Out of curiosity, what are some of the problems you guys have been having?

I'm not concerned with comparing experiences, since we'll never get an accurate cross-section of Mac buyers here.