No ideas here

Apple’s quality problems in the recent time don’t affect only hardware, but also software. It is still not like in the Windows world, but it’s getting close. I still like Apple’s products, and I wouldn’t change for Windows or Linux desktop, but the sad truth is that it’s on it’s way down…

I think Apple tried to add as many new features as they could, but this, of course, affected the quality. Quite well engineered, but poorly built.

Couple of years ago when I bought my first Mac, I had OS X Panther. This version was still quite early release in the development, but you know, it was a slow and sometimes painful transformation from the OS 9 -> OS X, so many things were not in the state as we would like to see them. At that time OS X had maybe 4 years of life, and so it had some features that crippled user experience (I would maybe say bugs). As I remember, the worst was file manager. I mean the system component, since when some process created some file, the running applications were not able to refresh open dialogue panels to show the new file. Quite stupid, right? But I think this was one of very few remaining problems from the old OS 9, and it was fixed in Tiger.

Tiger was the best release so far. No problems at all. Really great!

At the time Loepard was supposed to be released, I was looking forward to see super cool, stable OS without any problems. Bah, big mistake. I was hoping that since Apple postponed Leopard, so I thought they will make it a really good system. But as it turned out, they just wanted to shuffle developers there and back to iPhone without worrying about the new release quality. Just to get the f* iPhone out.

The problems with Leopard started at the beginning, and are not fixed yet. The first problem is that Leopard cannot keep WEP2 wireless connection. I see all the time connection dropping. Leopard almost every hour or half hour disconnects from the network without any reason.

Besides the connection dropping, there are more problems with network. Why is it so hard to remember networks that I have used, and to which I have password in my keychain, and why is it so hard to connect them as Tiger was doing? I just don’t get this. Why should I click on some stupid dialogue to choose a network I want to connect? I use just ONE network at home in Prague, ONE network at my parent’s house in Olomouc and ONE network at school, and that’s all! I don’t use any more networks. And Leopard is not able to remember it.

Couple of days ago I have encountered another glitch (read as fatal flaw) in my Macbook Pro. Freezing. FREEZING. Complete freezing after switching from Automatic network settings to some other. This happened three times so far. It is random and happens after couple of seconds. You cannot move mouse, press any key, screen doesn’t display any change. Nothing. Reboot.

I mean that these problems are probably not unusual in PC world, but for me, it’s been quite disappointing.

I think Apple is currently more interested in their iPhone business than in the good old computers business. They probably moved a lot of quality assurance control to iPhone, and QA for Macs is not what it used to be. Hopefully they have noticed that, and Apple announced the Snow Leopard which should be evolved Leopard with focus on stability and quality than on new features…

Even though I am quite angry on the current state of Macs. So at the end I can say only one thing: Apple, do something about this mess!

When Apple switched to Intel processors I was sad that Power architecture was gone. On the other side, I was really happy in new possibilities that were opened. One of the greatest ones was that i am finally able to run Windows under VMware, that Java finally got fast enough, and some others. But since I bought a new Macbook Pro (MBP), I sometimes really feel that Apple jumped to the world of Microsoft. The quality is not what it used to be anymore, and Apple’s world is sadly closing to the standard Microsoft have - read as NO or very LOW standards.

You can see that in many ways. Hardware is really bad. I mean it is probably still better than any other PC brand, but when I compare internals of MBP with my old Powerbook, the MBP is not as great as the old machine. I mean two factors are here - the fabrication and the quality. MBP doesn’t look like that solid as the old one. The old machine looked like from the different world, nothing I have seen before. Well build, everything fit together, not plastics. Just a solid piece of hardware. And the new one is not better. I have to say I don’t understand these things much, and so my point of view is just a amateur’s one, but I say how did I feel it.

Now to the quality. This is what disappoints me the most. The hardware has constantly some problems. Within the first week, I had to get replaced my keyboard. There were problems with pressing keys. Sometimes, you just missed the key (= read as very, very often), so I couldn’t write without typos. You just didn’t feel when the key was really pressed and when not. Even after replacement it is still not quite 100% feeling, and I miss some keys sometimes. When I compare the MBP keyboard with Powerbook which had the best keyboard I have ever seen, the MBP clearly fails. A lot. Keyboard is a basic part which you use the most. This is like when steering wheel is not accurate. You would also have many problems.

What more - my brother who bought the same laptop with me has problems as well. His DVD reader doesn’t work. He burns a DVD on his MBP, and then he cannot read it! How come? We have tried the burned DVDs on our dad’s PC with several years old DVD reader, and it didn’t have any problem. What more, we are scared to get it replaced because of poor Mac service quality here.

All these HW problems are even more irritating when you think about the level of quality of Apple support in Czech Republic - nothing that can be compared with Dell or HP. And it’s not even close. And it is not closing. I hear just worse and worse things. When there is something wrong with the laptop, you have to wait like an idiot three weeks until they get some part from Germany or where do they get it from, so you are basically out of your work. You might be able to talk to repairman to get the laptop, and bring it back, but since my brother doesn’t live in Prague, but in Olomouc or in Brno (when he is at school), it means three hours in the train to Prague (=just 4 to 5 hours from our home in Olomouc to the service building), wait till some guy looks at it (= 1 day if you are lucky, normally 2 days), and then get back to Olomouc. This is when you want it back immediately. Or it can be stuck there three weeks. Or you can send it to the service and back, but for this you would pay about €20 for each shipping. So this is how fast it is here. Just only because they don’t care about you.

You cannot even get service on site. We bought MBPs with an international English keyboards and English OSX. Czech keyboards are unusable for programmers. They are to type, not to program. With such MBPs, there is NO way how to get an on-site service plan. And what more - for MBPs with Czech keyboards, it is available just in Prague, and close surroundings. This is nothing near the quality of service of Dell or HP (I mean the premium one). And what more - this on-site service is again pricier than in the EU, and is not a standard Apple service plan - no abroad repairs, etc.

When you add 10 to 20% higher prices than in other EU countries (and more significant number like 40% than in the US) then there is just one conclusion. Screwed from all sides - Apple, local shops, local servicing companies. The next time I will buy it in Germany. It would be cheaper.

The next post will be about software which got down as well…

I have a big problem with end key on Mac. In every application it behaves differently. Why is the situation like that? I don’t know. Some applications scroll to the end of document, some text editors move the caret to the very last position of the editor, some text editors move the caret to the end of line. Who should know what the current application does? But this is only a part of the problem.

The Apple Human Interface Guidelines document mentions that the end key should scroll to the end of document. This sounds ok as long as you don’t mention text editors. In such a case I am not in favour of this at all. I would like to change it to move to the end of line. Reason? How many times do you want to scroll to the end of file, and how many times do you want to move the caret to the end of line? My rate would be something like 0:100. Yes, no need to scroll somewhere to the end of the document at all! If I need to do something at the end of the document, I would use Cmd+Page Down to move the caret there.

This end key behaviour is very hostile to all people who work with text a lot (read developers). And it’s not only the End key, but also Home key, Page Up, Page Down. We need to move around very quick, and we don’t want to touch mouse when we need to change something somewhere! This idea of just scrolling is nice as long as the control doesn’t contain any selection or caret. In such a situation, it’s unusable.

Another example are lists. You can think as an example Adium’s contact list. I have many contacts there. 4 screens in my case. When I would like to write some my friend, I need to either type his name, or I can scroll around with Page Down/Up, and then select him by mouse, and then start writing. I would like to keep my hands on the keyboard, and not to lift them to the mouse. Again moving with the selection would be so much better.

So what to say at the end? This time Mac is the looser, because sadly Windows is better in this case.