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Has Apple Quality Control Bitten The Dust?
by Remy Davison
How durable is your Mac? Have you had a DOA Mac out-of-the-box? What's been your
experience? Do you have any horror stories? Are newer Macs less reliable, less solid
than their predecessors?
Now look at that SE/30 or Quadra still chugging away in the corner. Those things
are built like bricks. And the PowerBook 100 Series, particularly models other than
the 100, seem like they're hewn from a single chunk of plastic.
But in the last few years, we've become accustomed to more faults in Apple products
than we're used to. Product flaws; component failure; inexplicable hardware death.
Now I know users can point at the rugged exterior of the latest iBook and rightly
claim that it is the toughest consumer notebook on the market. But the case plastics
are only one aspect of the total package. From day one, 2001 iBooks began losing
key caps. 1999 iBooks suffered from occasional keyboard cracks or breakages. My personal
experience is of four key cap breakages on my own Lombard. That has not occurred
on our one-year-older Wallstreet. My previous 'Book, a PowerBook 5300, did not suffer
any problems except for the infamous power connector on the logic board failure.
True, this was a major issue with 5300s (still repaired free of charge by Apple),
but it was the only thing that went wrong with mine.
Clearly, portables, rather than desktops, are likely to experience the lion's share
of quality problems, as their inherent fragility and mobility lends them to rougher
treatment. Charles Moore published an interesting article on 'tough-books' at MacOpinion
recently, where he looked at the various 'ruggedized' laptops available on the market.
Charles also cites a number of International Data Corporation (IDC) statistics, which
suggest that LCDs and hard drives are the two most common component failures.
But, as anyone who's owned a PowerBook or iBook since 1995 knows, hard drives and
LCDs are probably the least of your worries. If those two components failed at all,
it was probably a known issue and/or covered under warranty during the first 12 months
of use.
Is it Jobs' Fault Apple Quality Has Gone Down?Z
No. The rot had set in long before Jobs' arrival at the helm in 1997. The PowerBook
5300/190 fiasco is one example. The LiION battery charging circuits were faulty (probably
Sony's fault, but why wasn't this spotted before it shipped?). The case plastics
broke and logic boards died. The RAM specification was altered minutely at five minutes
to midnight, resulting in some vendors' RAM working with either the 5300 or the 190,
but not both. The PowerBook 500 series (1994) may have represented a high-tide mark
for Apple design, but quality was not one of its features. The infuriating regularity
with which lower screen bezels on 500s broke off continues to drive owners to distraction.
One might also point an accusing finger at the cheap and unreliable switches and
power supplies of the entire pizza box LC series. The Apple 1705 and 1710 monitor
series also had a number of issues, forcing Apple to repair them for nix. The Power
Mac/Performa 53xx/62xx series had ROM issues which necessitated a free swap at Apple's
expense. You can blame Amelio, Spindler and Sculley for these sloppy messes and/or
cost-cutting measures.
However, there have been some serious quality control issues with a number of Jobs-era
Macs. The broken hinge problem with the Wallstreet series of G3 PowerBooks is probably
the one that's received the most prominence, although the Cube's 'cracks' and the
random behavior of the on/off switch got a pretty fair slice of media, a lot of it
not from the Mac publishing side of things. This, along with the Cube's high price
tag, spelt Ice for the Cube in 12 months.
The Wallstreet, one of the biggest-selling PowerBooks of recent years, has not only
suffered from broken-hinge syndrome, but also poor soldering on the power connector,
which can part company with the motherboard. Ironically, this also detaches the sound
card. The 13.3" displays, due to poor routing of a display cable, meant the
Wallstreet 13.3s lost their video, forcing another free fix courtesy of Apple. Now
the Wallstreet, because there's a very large user sample out there, may not be atypical.
But when these problems appear to surface with alarming regularity, it's fair to
say that these are problems endemic to the series, and not isolated incidents of
a few lemons or clumsy owners.
The 8GB drives in the Wallstreets were also prone to failure, although IBM can take
much of the responsibility for that. Then again, Apple bears ultimately responsibility
for choosing its suppliers. The PowerBook G3 series (1998-2000) as a whole has also
seen problems with power supplies, with an adapter recall in 2001.
Titanium G4s have not been immune from quality problems either; while the recent
revision builds suggest that manufacturing tolerances have been tightened up considerably,
that didn't stop early-adopters of the first iteration from jamming pieces of cardboard
in their DVD-ROM drives and battery bays to stop precious discs from getting jammed/scratched/destroyed
or loose batteries from falling onto the floor. We'll have to reserve judgement on
whether the TiBook is indeed a durable design in the medium-to-long term.
By contrast, older PowerBooks, such as the 1400 and 3400/Kanga, have been largely
trouble-free. No, I'm not claiming they're perfect - far from it. But considering
the number of 1400s out there, there're remarkably few reports of major problems.
Most would involve CD-ROM drives which users damaged themselves. I still find it
interesting that the original Kanga G3 PowerBook has had very few reported cases
of hardware failure. Although that may be because there're so few of them around.
The IBM-Japan-built PowerBook 2400 has also acquired a reputation for reliability
and durability.
It's possible that Lombards and Pismos are still too new to identify real problems
with the models, but some Wallstreet hangovers, such as power connector on the motherboard,
have resurfaced in the case of some users. The Pismo 'pink screen' LCD problem has
also arisen, although Apple is repairing this. Some Fujitsu hard drives in Pismos
have also been reported as unreliable.
Has Quality gone down because of outsourcing?
No. Most notebooks these days are made in Taiwan. Apple, HP and many others contract
firms to produce specific models. However, manufacturers merely follow design guidelines.
If they're not up to snuff in the build-quality department, the competition is such
that they'd be unlikely to keep the contract for too long.
Because Macs are no longer made in the United States?
No. The PowerBook 5300 was made in the United States. 'Nuff said.
Its sibling, the 190, was generally a Singapore build, but these suffered many of
the same problems as the 5300. The issues here were at the design level, rather than
in terms of quality control at the point of manufacture. Components were sourced
from a variety of manufacturers and locales.
Well Whose Fault Is It Then?
Yours. You wanted thin and light? Well, you got thin and light. Components. Do
you know how much a thick slice of pure Titanium costs? Do you care?
As computers become thinner and lighter - due principally to consumer demand - space-age
materials and various manufacturing/production/design trade-offs have to be made.
Take the slimming down of the Wallstreet which evolved into Lombard and Pismo. To
remove 2 pounds, the case plastics became thinner, the LCD more fragile, and the
flexible translucent keyboard replaced the excellent (but heavier) charcoal one on
the Wallstreet. Nice polished chrome on the CD ROM drive was replaced by a dull alloy.
A CardBus slot was removed. Oh, and, of course, it had to be cheaper.
Remember: this is what you wanted.
Quality Matters
There's a reason Apple's always had a reputation for being the "BMW"
or the "Rolls-Royce" of computers: quality. Not just the quality experience
a user gets from the Mac OS user interface, but the rock-solid dependability of the
hardware.
No, Apple and the Mac did not always have a cast-iron reputation for reliability:
witness the Twiggy drives, the Apple IIIs, the poor power supply in the early builds
of the Mac Plus. But from around 1987, Macs were enormously solid and could run 24/7
for years without any hardware issues. The number of Macs that are 10 or 15 years
old, which are still used daily, demonstrates the total commitment to quality Jean-Louis
Gassee, Apple's former CTO, had. It was also an era when Apple cared little about
the retail price of the product and what the R&D cost was of building in such
longevity. Look at the Mac Portable: that was built like a brick and could probably
withstand decades of abuse (and I'm not even going to mention the durability of the
Apple IIs and IIgs).
Ultimately, however, this quality commitment hurt Apple. Why would you replace a
Mac that worked perfectly well? When schools had entire labs of LCs or Performas
that ran perfectly well, if slowly, why replace them when all they needed was routine
software maintenance?
By contrast, PCs, which were always sold with an 'upgradeable' tag, rarely received
upgrades in schools or business. It was cheaper to upgrade after the machines were
fully amortized after around 3 years. Consumers, unless geekily inclined, also rarely
upgrade their PC's internals. Apart from which, even name-brand PCs are so full of
components of dubious quality that there's a good chance something will break within
3 years, if not sooner.
We're all familiar with built-in obsolescence. But the computer industry does that
all by itself, with machines becoming ever faster and better-equipped within weeks.
For Macs, it's more like months, but the revisions still fly out the door regularly.
I'm not enough of a conspiracy theorist to believe Jobs & Co. hold product meetings
figuring out how long a model should last before something critical breaks and the
owner is forced into buying a new Mac. But if you wanted support for such a theory,
look no further than the cost of repairs on Apple hardware. Rather than replace the
TiBook hinges when you ran over the damn thing, you'd be better off trawling through
ebay for a used Ti 500. And you'd still have enough left over for a slap-up
binge at your favorite burger outlet.
The Price of Compatibility
Since Jobs' return, Apple have slashed prices and made Macs extremely competitive
with PCs. Macs now use standard RAM in their portables (not proprietary RAM cards).
Superior SCSI controllers and drives, used exclusively in both Mac portables and
desktops until around 1994, were abandoned in favor of the cheaper but inferior IDE
standard (which, admittedly, has improved markedly). LocalTalk and serial ports -
both vastly superior to the PC parallel-port standard - have been replaced by...er...a
PC standard: Intel's USB 1.1, with which Mac users have had endless trouble, although
at least some of the problems are software-related.
Monitors on consumer desktop Macs have declined in quality as well. Yes, Apple did
try cost-cutting with the 12" RGB monitor, commonly bundled with LCs, and there
were low-cost VGA displays as well in the early-to-mid 1990s. But instead of the
razor-sharp Trinitrons that usually came with Quadras or LC575s, Apple moved all-in-one
Performas and, later, iMacs, to shadow-mask displays. True, Apple's LCD external
displays are amongst the best available, but you can't plug them into iMacs, can
you?
Apple also stopped building printers a few years ago. Some of them were among the
best on the market (in 1989-90, the LaserWriter IINTX was generally considered the
best desktop laser printer in the world. And it cost the earth too). Most Mac printers
had PostScript, while QuickDraw on cheaper models, combined with Adobe Type Manager
or TrueType fonts, could still produce better output than PCs. Now Mac users are
reduced to using disposable inkjet printers, while most low/mid-range laser printers
will feature a USB port (not the ethernet Mac users have been used to on their printers
since 1992) and an emulated version of PostScript Level 2, because the manufacturers
(Lexmark, HP) can't be bothered shelling out folding green to Adobe for a PS license.
"What's the difference?", they're saying. "How is Joe Consumer going
to know?"
Think Mac desktops are immune? Think again. Horror stories of Bondi iMacs with
either DOA logic boards or CRTs or both rippled around the Mac web in 1998, although
fortunately this wasn't widespread enough to stop them from becoming multi-million
sellers.
Meanwhile, on the Dark Side...
Dell makes shoddy goods. Compaq (who should've known better) tried to compete in
the Shoddy Goods Department and look what happened to them. Dell knows that its 2-3
year warranty makes them look good when anything (invariably) goes wrong. People
then feel that Dell gave them a superior buying experience, superb customer service
and care and, three years later, they'll probably buy another Dell. So Dell gets
away with cruddy components and often so-so build quality.
Apple doesn't. They offer a 12-month warranty, knowing that the laws of probability
tell them that the MTBF (Mean Time Between Failure) on their components means that
only a relatively small proportion of their computers are likely to be affected because
a worker went out to lunch. But hardware problems after 12 months means customers
get angry. Very angry. Angry enough to buy a Dell and never come back to Apple, because
Dell assure them that they'll come 'round to their place, pick up their Wintel slab,
and fix it for them in record time.
Not so Apple. In fact, depending on the country, Apple won't even let its authorized
techs do field repairs on iBook and PowerBook, forcing owners to send the 'Books
to a central service center. This can mean days of down time. The cost and complexity
of the Titanium's hinges mean complete entire case replacement. Granted, the Titanium
looks great, but as a piece of design, that's insane (not insanely-great).
I may sound like I'm whinging and hankering after the good old days. But honestly,
I'm not. To make an analogy with the car industry in 1980s and early 1990s, it was
clear that both Toyota and Honda thoroughly understood Total Quality Management and
the Big Three did not. Honda and Toyota won. Until the Big Three woke up and realized
that customers would no longer tolerate a boot full of water, panel gaps you could
see daylight through and fake wood that peeled off before your astonished eyes. Ford,
GM and Chrysler got their act together and now manufacturers largely compete on price
and features.
Why is this Important?
Quality is important to Apple as the company seeks to differentiate itself from its
Wintel competitors in a number of ways. When people pay high prices for equipment,
they don't merely expect a superior user experience, but superior quality as well.
To draw the automotive analogy again: no matter how good Jaguars' ride, and how good
the leather smelt, nobody bought them while they were built by British Leyland in
the 1970s and early '80s in a place the company labelled "Large Car Plant #
2". When the quality went up, the buyers flocked back. To put it another way,
you wouldn't buy a new BMW with bits that fell off it, now would you?
Or I can express it this way: the first thing I didn't expect when I opened up my
shiny Lombard was that the Caps Lock key would break off.
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