Back in March of 2006, I made the big jump from the PC/Windows world over to the light side of the Apple Computer world. Since that time I have never looked back. The one thing though that I always kept with me is The Mac is still a computer. Which means it will still have its problems.
I think that is the thing that bugs me sometimes about some of the people that switch to the Mac platform. For some reason they think Macs are supercomputers that don’t crash, don’t need software updates, and don’t have issues. Hello, it is still a computer, it is going to have its issues. Now sure, as Mac users we don’t have the threat of viruses as much as windows. Heck, I think the last I heard was there was 2 known viruses. There might even be more for all I know.
Now the reason I bring this up is because I was at my former workplace today, and one of the girls there was complaining about her Macbook. She has had issues with it as soon as her limited 1 year warranty was up. She refused to get AppleCare because she thinks it should have been covered for the lifetime of the computer. Well her battery stopped holding a charge after one year. She refused to buy a new one, but continued to complain. All of a sudden it was Apple’s fault. I have a Macboo and I know that its battery will die eventually. After asking her about it, she admitted that she never uses the power cable unless charging, Once it is charged, she unplugs it and starts using it off of battery. She also admitted to leaving it on and in standby mode. She says that she had to charge it 3-4 times a day. Well there’s your problem. The battery in a macbook is only going to take 1000 charge cycles before going to crap, If what she says is accurate, then she charged her macbook over 1000 times in one year. She has had the Macbook for 2 years.
Her next issue is her hard drive. Apparently this last weekend her hard drive died. She went to the apple store, and they gave her a price quote for what they will charge since she didn’t have applecare. She was of coursed outraged and refused. They also recommended buying one at a local computer store, and taught her how to replace the drive herself. She doesn’t see that as her responsibility and because of the issues she has had in the last year she thinks apple is crap and is going to buy a dell. I told her she will have the same issues, because Apple is still just a computer. I think the best part about her hard drive issue is the fact that in her mind hard drives should not fail, so there is no reason to do a backup. Yes you read right, She doesn’t believe in backing up her information.
Now I don’t back up a lot. I have an external on both my Macbook and Imac for Time machine and a second external drive on my IMac for all my itunes. I just recently started backing up my itunes onto DVD’s just incase. But I also make it practice that every year and a half I replace my external drive for Itunes to lesson the crash factor. At least I am using Time Machine. I have even used IBackup before to back up my system, and I use the MobileMe backup program for my contacts mail and other important things.
But I go back to my original gripe here. The Mac platform is still a Computer, Still software and it is bound to have its issues. This is true with any computer and always will be true. So lets give Apple a break, They’re not perfect, but they are pretty close to it.
