Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!netnews.upenn.edu!eecae!cps3xx!rang
From: rang@cpsin3.cps.msu.edu (Anton Rang)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: Apple's Horrible Product Quality
Message-ID: <3260@cps3xx.UUCP>
Date: 3 Jun 89 05:14:02 GMT
References: <13743@dartvax.Dartmouth.EDU> <9169@boulder.Colorado.EDU>
Sender: usenet@cps3xx.UUCP
Reply-To: rang@cpswh.cps.msu.edu (Anton Rang)
Organization: Michigan State University, Computer Science Dept.
Lines: 29
In-reply-to: fozzard@boulder.Colorado.EDU's message of 2 Jun 89 20:32:22 GMT

I've owned Apple equipment for years without experiencing any major
problems.  My Mac 512KE drive did start having problems once; after
alignment didn't help, and Apple's test programs didn't show anything
wrong, I convinced a friendly dealer to put a new one in for labor
cost plus $20 (he figured the rest of the drive cost was covered by
the trade-in of my old drive, which he sent back to Apple, for them to
figure out the problems).
  My Apple ][+ has been working reliably for...must be 7 years or so
now, I think.  My 512K (and then 512KE) has worked fine, except for
the disk drive problem (and recently a power supply problem) for 3
years (or so).  My SE is working but I've only had it a month :-).
  About the Mac software problems...I generally find my Mac more
reliable than any other computer system I use except for a VMS
machine.  It hangs up (for me) much less than the Sun systems which I
manage, and rarely crashes unless I'm making stupid errors (usually if
I'm programming during the day, when I'm asleep, instead of at night :-).
  An IBM PC which I also work on tends to lock up more-or-less at
random; it happens when running most software, and most of the IBM
PC's (XT's, AT's, ...) I've worked on exhibit the same problems
(surprisingly, the clones seem more reliable in this regard).
  I don't think the Mac has any more software problems than any other
personal computer.  Not that Apple can't improve it; memory
protectiion would be a great first step, and not too hard to implement
on a machine with a PMMU....

+---------------------------+------------------------+
| Anton Rang (grad student) | "VMS Forever!"         |
| Michigan State University | rang@cpswh.cps.msu.edu |
+---------------------------+------------------------+