A second Open Letter to Apple Computers
Your hardware is shit, Apple, and I’m not going to beat around the bush. Just a few short weeks ago I mentioned a specific problem involving my Mac Pro, a $3,000 professional workstation, and my video card overheated, which is a chronic problem with that particular card. Of course Apple, in all your wisdom, will not open up the video card segment to your customers. Instead you charge us 4 times the retail for an equivalent Windows-version of the same card, and even that is years past its prime.
And today, dear Apple, my DVD drive failed in my Macbook. Barely 5 months old, this computer is far too young to be experiencing massive hardware problems. My 4-year old iBook has no such issues. It’s great that you’re gaining market share, but the more and more you outsource, and the more and more you loosen your quality control, the higher risk you run of pissing off your base and loosing all these new customers you’ve gained.
I think my frustrations would be mitigated somewhat if you once… just once, let function come before form… If you let yourselves be ok with having a button on the side of the computer… a physical eject option for optical disks. When I had to turn on my computer just to take a disk out… it was annoying. Certainly unnecessary and clunky. But now that the drive has failed, it is simply unforgivable. Guess what Apple. You are holding your own Aperture install disk hostage. I cannot use it. Your own product is rendered useless because your own product failed.
Apple. Dear Apple.
No, let’s take this to another level.
Steve Jobs. Why are you stubborn, and ignore the wants of the masses? You keep talking about making newer and better products. Great! Make them better, not just newer! You say that form is function, but why doesn’t your product work while it looks pretty? Definitely seems like function is following form, rather than accompanying it.
I’m not going to lie; I suspect the problem here lies in your glorious cash cow that is the iPod. They’re cheap to make, sell at a high margin, aren’t particularly reliable, require little to no upkeep on your end… It’s the perfect business. Now, sell that whole division and use the money to making better Macs. Stop skimping on software debugging. Stop skimping on hardware engineering. Stop skimping on quality control.
Here, I’ll make a New Years resolution for you. For 2008:
No inherently flawed graphics cards (ahem… maybe you should stop doing business with ATI).
No cheap quality control issues on your macbooks.
Less iPod (or phone), more Mac.
Debug software first.
Cheers,
The Bitter Mac User