#186 July, 2006

Dear Mr. Jobs

... who is who in those new commercials?

Your new TV commercials have prompted me to write this letter. Yes, they are very "cool" and once again, illustrate Macintosh's superiority over other brands in an attention-getting and entertaining manner. However, like other Madison Avenue ads, the burgers on the screen don't always (never) match the product in the box.

For me, Apple is running a 50% to 60% failure rate. I bought three iMacs, and so far two of those have melted down. One with smoke and acid fumes! (66%)

Of TWO Aluminum Power Books purchased last year, ONE melted down with an orange fire "POP" and smoke. (50%)

I'm aware that things happen sometimes. Back in the day, my Mac IIvx caught on fire during a user group demonstration of hooking it to a PowerBook via SCSI. It turned out to be a bad SCSI board inside, with a power lead connected at the wrong place. You happily replaced the IIvx. A few years later, my Pizzmo PowerBook got so hot, when picked up by a friend, it burned his hand leaving finger impressions in the case where it was actually melted. You replaced that one too.

When the new one-piece iMacs came out, I was thrilled that at last, someone eliminated the CPU. I bought three.

One iMac has had the logic board replaced FOUR TIMES, along with power supplies, fans, and switches -- each time the field tech had to drive 220 miles (round trip) and take the entire day each time to fix it under AppleCare. Thank GOD for AppleCare! So, as long as you keep sending bad replacement parts, I'll keep calling for more service calls.

But the affair sort of reminded me of the commercial -- except the computer that keeps breaking is the Mac. Unfortunately, by my calculations you would have been smarter to send me a new one when the problems first started, because now you've spent more than the iMac's replacement at your cost! Not nearly as bright as your TV spots.

It's a HUGE pain in the you-know-what. Each of the four times, the logic board erases the serial numbers. So ALL of the anal software has to be RE-REGISTERED inflicting me with hours of frustration and lost productivity. Who cares if it talks to Japanese cameras if it doesn't work at all?

Then there's the whole thing about the "iLife" and iTunes integration. I've been so frustrated I've considered calling my attorney. With each new logic board replacement, my iTunes become locked. iTunes claims I don't own my songs -- even on some that weren't purchased from iTunes. Your AppleCare people are clueless when it comes to iTunes, and I've been able to find no humans at iTunes. Only recordings that say to go to the same web site.

The first two times this happened I went through the "de-authorization" process just so I could play what's rightfully mine. The third time was just too much so I fixed'em them all, once and for good, with my trusty OS 9 Wall Street. Still, what a pain! You can bet I won't be buying anything from iTunes again.

One of the two iMacs now seems to be okay, but the other is AGAIN having the SAME problems after about a month or normal use since the last service call. I said yesterday "I need to call them again"

The bottom line is -- you can make the best web sites, marketing concepts and TV commercials in the world, but if you can't deliver a reliable product to back them up with they just aren't very credible. And one incident of bad experience can seriously harm consumer confidence.

My private educational Foundation was in motion to purchase SIX new iMacs for the Children's Museum here for an "iChat" lab, and the same for the local Boys & Girls clubs. But now I've cooled off on that idea thinking
... "If I buy six, will four of them melt down?"
... "If I buy twelve, will eight melt down?"
Not a happy prospect.

Yes, I bragged and bragged about my new iMacs -- even wrote beaming reviews. But, now I might not be so enthusiastic. The next time you're marketing team is writing ads for TV, I hope you remember this letter.

Thanks for reading...

Fred Showker

Editor: DTG Magazine and 60-Second Windows contact me !

 

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