Apple and PC Repair Statistics

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chosen1s

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So...

My girlfriend and I are in this endless debate about Apple and PC. Which is "better", etc. etc. It's got me thinking about the mythology surrounding Apple. They never break down, there are no viruses, they last forever, they're more intuitive, easier to use, more options, etc etc etc.

*PLEASE DON'T TURN THIS INTO A FLAME WAR*

In an effort to do some serious research, does anybody know of non-biased repair statistics for Mac's that could be compared to the same unbiased repair statistics for, say...HP's and perhaps Dell's? (I don't think you can do a straight comparison to "pc" because there is such a variety of good and bad manufacturers).

Additionally, are there unbiased repair statistics for Ipods that can be compared to the Zune?

I'm not looking to "win" or "lose", but because I have an iPhone and have found it to be a major headache in some areas, I've come to doubt the validity of this supposedly euphoric experience that comes with Apple products, and thought it would be interesting to know some hard numbers. A cursory search of Google only brought up blogs and websites that were either love-fests or hate-fests for Apple.
 
You are going to be hard pressed to find any of these statistics for either PCs or Macs. For every example report you may find, there are going to be huge discrepancies, just due to all of the different problems that can and do occur.

Apple/MS aren't going to release the kinds of numbers for iPods/Zunes. The same with MS not fully admitting how many 360's have a "problem". It's too much of a risk for them to admit any sort of number.
 
Hmm...I wonder if I were a prospective "Customer" at both Apple and Dell, even though it would probably be biased surely they have SOME sort of number at hand when you ask "what is the repair rate on this line"?

Wouldn't those numbers be important (and open) to stockholders, etc?
 
[quote name='JolietJake']Let the flame war begin. I'm staying out of this one.[/QUOTE]

Ha,

Yeah, I know, some moron is going to inevitably use this as their sounding board for their love or hate for Apple or PC, and hopefully everybody will ignore them. I really am just interested in getting to the bottom of what is myth and what is fact within the great debate of the pc and Apple.
 
Repair statistics are going to be waaaay higher for pc's since that is what the VAST majority of people use and your average no brain consumer is willing to pay for repair services like Geek Squad.
 
Right. Raw numbers will be different, but rates of repair per X number of units would make it comparable.

I owned one PC a few years ago, a Dell laptop. Had to send it in for repair three times: the heat of the mobo loosened up the solder points on the ethernet jack, the screen died, and...whatever happened the third time. Can't remember.

I've owned all Macs otherwise (7-10 over the past 22 years). This MacBook Pro I'm using (have had for 2 years this March?) has had to be repaired twice in that time. Both times were minor issues (trackpad errors and dvd-drive errors), but took pretty damned long and, in the case of the first one, resulted in the mobo (!!!) needing replacement not once, but twice (the first replacement died before they even got to test it and resend it to me).

But no repairs needed on my other Macs. Don't ask my family about Apple CS, though. :lol:
 
Just for the record, I do hate apple.

But to push my bias away, I also work for a HUGE company that has about 125 macs, and they do break down and just last week, they did get a virus, not all of them, but there is one out there.

Most of the time, models get a bad rap, if one model is acting up the rest of the models will.

We've had an enitre line of Imacs with HDs going out of it about 3 years into it, and a month after the warranty ran out.

We've had G5 Towers with constant boot problems with the pram or something.. mostly related to bad power components... had half of the G5 towers have bad power supplies.

Many of the mac books we've had had HORRIBLE batteries... a huge bad lot I think.

Right now there we've been testing the latest OS on some of our machines and the program Time Machine has been litterly killing drives. Don't know why or how yet, but it's taken out 3 set of drives.

Now on the pc side of things, 3000 here, they break alot too, far more because they bought shitty psu to begin with, but most of the hard drives have lasted and most other failures have been floppy and cd drive, but we've kept these machines for around 5-8 years.

I think if you were to build your own, most of the parts on the PC side of things are quality products and will last. Things like HD failures will happen. But otherwise I've had machines running for 10 years now.

I think that's one thing the Mac side could really benefit, 3rd party parts. you have to buy apple this apple that.

I always joke that buying an apple product is like buying a toaster because if it breaks you just buy a new one, because the parts are too damn expensive because there is only one supplier to fix them.. Apple. Apple products are more appliances than a computer. But I see Dell and HP going that route too.

At least I can buy stuff from newegg and build my own the way I want to.

Now if we can just strip the OS from the hardware, we could have affordable Macs.
 
This is an extremely difficult comparison to draw. In single source vs. many sources there are wins and losses for both sides. finding an absolute advantage for either requires highly circumstantial judgement.

If a particular PC vendor has bad practices leading to a high defect rate, there are other vendors out there with better quality. That is fine, if you're able to determine which are the good and bad companies.

Personally, I'd find Macs more interesting if they hadn't killed CHRP, which would have allowed a DIY industry equivalent to the PC.
 
I hate the "easier to use" argument. There's a difference between ease of use and being simplistic.

The only thing you can really count on between PCs and Macs is that the Mac will look pretty and cost twice what it should.
 
My brother used to work for Apple as a Genius, who deals with repairs. I think the majority of his repairs or problems were with iPods. My brother's Macbook has gotten half a dozen or so repairs since he initially bought it. At one point, they offered to replace the whole case. And now they're offering him a free iPod if he sends it in again. I'd like to think the repair rates are identical, but I'm probably wrong.

Every now and then I like to say something bad about Apple to my brother just to see what he would say.
 
Not really related, but two of my PCs broke down last month (PSU failures, and they were around 5-7 years old), the same month I bought my first Macbook Pro. Just seemed like a scary coincidence.
 
my mom has had a lot of problems with her G4s (mostly HDD), so much she has a PC now. in the past decade of owning pcs ive had 2 desktops and 2 laptops. my mobo on one of the desktops fried after a few years, but that was a custom pc so it may be have been my fault. my dell desktop is alive and kicking with no issues. i also had to get my laptop hdd replaced once. my brother had an intel power mac and to the best of my knowledge he hasnt had any problems.
 
PSU failures are generally caused by negligence. They sit on the floor for ages and the fans get full of crap and seize. With no fan, the PSU overheats and capacitors burst. Clean out your computer.
 
Anyone who builds their own systems knows that the quality of components that go into a computer greatly affect how it performs. Macs generally have better hardware (and are more expensive) because their baseline is midrange for most other system builders. Couple this with the fact that very few viruses exist for mac, and it's only logic that macs would have a somewhat lower problem rate.

However, I will say that it seems apple has let quality control slip as they've increased volume over the past few years.
 
Regardless of hardware quality, you know Windows is the cause for most computer problems. I swear to Christ, it's like Windows is designed to have massive security holes. It's the only OS that gets malware, as you're removing malware.
 
[quote name='xycury']Now if we can just strip the OS from the hardware, we could have affordable Macs.[/QUOTE]

The 0x86 Project

Mac OS X for Intel and AMD PCs. :D
 
[quote name='Access_Denied']The 0x86 Project

Mac OS X for Intel and AMD PCs. :D[/quote]

hey I heard about that ;)

But I wonder how big this will get, surprising Apple doesn't shut it down.

mainly looking for Apple to finally open up.
 
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