Hooray for Apple
It's only taken them a month since it was reported to decide they will look into it.
Apple 'looking into' duff Chinese hard drive claims
Apple has admitted it is examining claims that a number of its MacBook laptops include poorly manufactured hard drives that expose users to data loss. “We've received a few reports that some MacBook consumer notebooks may have hard drive issues,” a company spokesman told Information Week, “and we're looking into it.” The …
-
Tuesday 27th November 2007 11:50 GMT Giles Jones
Seagate to blame
Seagate are a well regarded brand normally. Apple have used their brand and the drives supplied are rubbish, so I don't see that it's Apple's fault?
It's hard to find a drive that does work well these days. At least with SSD we may see some improved reliability (just so long as someone works out how to increase the write cycles).
-
-
Tuesday 27th November 2007 13:37 GMT Anonymous Coward
Possibly... or possibly not
"It's only taken them a month since it was reported to decide they will look into it"
"But it still took Apple a month to bother investigating"
Let's not jump to conclusions. The InformationWeek article is dated 26th November and states "A Seagate Technology hard drive sold with Apple MacBooks has a critical manufacturing flaw that often results in the permanent loss of data, a data recovery firm reported Monday". In other words, InformationWeek apeared to notice the Retrodata report on the 26th November when El Reg reported it on 30th October.
So here's a possible interpretation of events. Retrodata report problem on the 30th October, InformationWeek notice on the 26th November and then call Apple who say "yes, we're looking at it", having been looking at the problem for the previous 3.5 weeks. OK, we might argue that 3.5 weeks is a long time to be looking at the problem, but it does not mean they spent it doing nothing before they could be "bothered to look at it".
There's a lot that could be done in that time such as trying to find out what the problem is to see if other batches could be affected, finding out where the affected machines were shipped to and so on. I expect they would want to get all of the answers before leaping into a recall or public statement.
P.S. I'm not an Apple fanboi. I mostly use Windoze and Solaris.
-
Tuesday 27th November 2007 13:37 GMT Anonymous Coward
Apple's response time
Very few companies will admit to problems early on - what's the point in attracting negative publicity and cost when it might be a small, isolated event? Don't forget, most times it's not easy to know a problem is largescale until it becomes largescale, and which point several months have usually passed.
I do think Apple's overall quality, and therefore it's Customer Service, has gone downhill though - they're using cheaper parts and catering for far more people than they ever have before, and it's proving too much to cope with.
As an actual Apple user, rather than someone who'se main reason for buying Apple kit was because it's cool, I'd much rather go back to paying a premium and getting better built kit to start with, knowing that all the cheap shit made in China will end up in a Dell :)
-
Tuesday 27th November 2007 14:58 GMT Nick Galloway
Why hesitate...
... when Apple can pin the cost on Seagate. Was there any reluctance on the laptop manufacturers when the spate of self igniting batteries from Sony became an issue. No!
Why not?
Because it wasn't going to cost them a red cent. Apple could (should) have initiated a recall and hung the cost on Seagate.
Maybe Apple just don't want to know about the new generation of Mac owners who are not fanboys but are consumers. For a product that claims a strong following amongst the professional creative types, this is sheer arrogance. I was thinking of buying a Mac laptop next time around. I might just wait and see how their customer service develops!?
-
Tuesday 27th November 2007 22:23 GMT Morely Dotes
@ Nick Galloway
"Was there any reluctance on the laptop manufacturers when the spate of self igniting batteries from Sony became an issue. No!"
Actually, there was a significant delay. Problems with those batteries continued to surface for at least a year.
And I don't own anything made by Apple.
-
Tuesday 27th November 2007 22:23 GMT Martin Bentley
My Mac and Me
My Macbook Hard drive burned out on me three weeks ago. A replacement took 2 weeks roughly but it was incredibly frustrating to lose about 6 GB of music that I hadn't backed up recently, and a LOT of creative work. I love the OSX system and despite a few flaws really do like my Mac but this really dented my faith.
Since this is now a "Known fault" I would like Mac to provide me with a new decent PC as a replacement so I don't have to worry about it, I'm going to contact them and find out what bullshit excuse they can come up with.
My only advantage is that I work for a technical support team for a large telecoms company and if they don't give me decent compensation or response I can always cost them a LOT of sales with recommending other cheaper computer alternatives. As much as I love the product shoddy quality is not going to win my loyalty.
-
Wednesday 28th November 2007 06:40 GMT Anonymous Coward
No it's not
It's not hard to find a drive that works well at all try a WD I haven't had one go feet up on me yet and I have owned quite a few stop trying to make excuses for Seagates QA failures thats unnatural if they screwed up they deserve to be punished I am sure Apple will punish them if it's convenient.
-
This post has been deleted by its author
-
Wednesday 28th November 2007 10:07 GMT Scott Mckenzie
@Martin
Why finger Apple in this? If the hard drive had failed in any machine and you hadn't backed up the data who's fault is that?
Hard drives fail, people breathe... it's a fact of life, the fact you hadn't backed your data up is entirely and utterly your fault (every manufacturer of machines and hard drives has clauses that state they are not responsible for data loss due to system failure.....)
My hard drive failed on my MBP, it was replaced within 2 days by the local Apple store, was dealt with extremely efficiently and professionally - i was asked if i would like them to restore from my backups, partitions required etc etc Try that at PC World....
That said i too would have preferred paying a premium for higher quality components too, but that's because my work pay for my machine and i'm sure Apple will get a far greater market share by selling slightly cheaper products to the masses, testament is that i have an iBook G3 500Mhz that is still going strong, i only upgraded the hard drive recently as it was full!
-
Wednesday 28th November 2007 16:43 GMT Webster Phreaky
Pot calling Kettle black, Chinese Junk MacBooks!
This is hysterical, the Commie Chinese made MacBooks have been GARBAGE since they were introduced .... continuing the HISTORY of Flawed and Buggy iBooks back to the G3 iBook ... and you Apple Kool Aid Drinkers point fingers at Seagate's cheap Commie Chinese hard drives!!?? Bwah ha ha ha ha!
Seagate's hard drives made in Singapore are flawless, with optimum longevity (we exclusively use them at our 23,000 computer school district), but they AREN'T CHEAP either like the Chinese ones. Our school district BANNED Apple computers from purchases years ago, after we had a 21% failure rate on G3 and G4 iBooks within the first 15 months of purchase!
Here the ROOT OF THE PROBLEM - Apple makes and OBSCENE PROFIT on they're garbage because they FORCE the OUTSIDE OUTSOURCED companies that MAKE their garbage (Apple MAKES NOTHING) to build it as cheap as possible and that means these contract manufacturers in CHINA chooses the CHEAPER HDs made in CHINA!
When you buy any Apple BRANDED product, you get what you deserve ..... NOT what you pay for.
-
Tuesday 4th December 2007 18:49 GMT mauro
Come on Apple, are you kidding ?
my macbook disk died some weeks ago.
Ok, it happen.. I was thinking.. Then I've read on the net about all of this faulty seagate disks mounted on Apple macbook and guess what ? Mine was one of the model claimed to be defective (Seagate ST98823AS firmware 7.01 made in China)
http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=2087130488&size=o
I've called Apple Care support today, they say there's no official document from Apple at the moment regarding this drive so, being my mac out of warranty, there's nothing they can do..
Apple should look seriously into this, this silence is unacceptable
This topic is closed for new posts.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
