Apple DRM Lawsuit Might Be Dismissed: Plaintiffs Didn't Own Affected iPods 141
UnknowingFool writes The lawsuit involving Apple and iTunes DRM may be thrown out because the plaintiffs did not own the iPods for which they are suing. The lawsuit covers iPods for the time period between September of 2006 and March of 2009. When Apple checked the serial numbers of the iPods of the plaintiffs, it appears they were not manufactured during this time. One plaintiff did purchase an iPod in 2005 and in 2010 and has withdrawn from the suit. The second plaintiff's iPod was manufactured in July 2009 but claims purchasing another iPod in 2008. Since the two plaintiffs were the only ones in the suit, the case may be dismissed for lack of standing.
Obligatory (Score:2)
You're suing it wrong.
You're buying it wrong.
You're DRM'ing it wrong.
Now that the stupid cliché is done, let's continue with the real discussion.
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Except in this case, there really isn't a real discussion beyond lawyers wanting to make money but who can't actually find a case...
"Lawyer for the plaintiffs, Bonny Sweeny, suggested that while one or both of her plaintiffs' iPods might not be covered by the case, there are plenty of others to be tapped."
Clearly a case of a lawyer representing the interests of her clients and not just fishing for cash!
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Lawyers not doing their homework (Score:5, Insightful)
I guess the thrill of big fees in a class-action suit made them forget to do some elementary checking.
Re:Lawyers not doing their homework (Score:5, Funny)
no it was Steve Jobs reality distortion field that made the plaintiffs think they bought an ipod when they didn't.
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Apple is a brand that tells people to think outside the box.
Sue different.
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I would have thought if you were launching a class action suit where each potential litigant had only a tiny damage, that you would have hundreds of candidates up front. If you can only find 2 people, and each of them has coming to them.. oh what $50, and even they don't own the right iPod, how good was this suit?
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or perhaps, allegedly, Apple's legal team put these people (the plaintiffs) up to it just so they could easily dismiss future suits of this type. I wouldn't put it past them.
What you are saying is pretty idiotic. Just because lawyer A sues and makes some idiotic mistakes that get the case thrown out doesn't create any precedence for anyone else.
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when have icrap supported non-apple DRM? (Score:1)
you could put all the non-drm music you bought or "acquired" you want on them, but anything with DRM was always only itunes music. the same thing was with every other MP3 player of the time with a DRM'd music store. but only apple is left and they have the money
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That's what this lawsuit was all about. The problem here is that the plaintiffs bought their DRMed tunes prior to Apple stopping that practice, but didn't buy a PMP until AFTER Apple had a solution.
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what is a PMP. there are no pmps, just ipods.
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It's a shit acronym and using it makes one a dick. ;) Where are the impersonal Music Players?
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It's a shit acronym and using it makes one a dick. ;) Where are the impersonal Music Players?
Windows Media Player?
Re: when have icrap supported non-apple DRM? (Score:2)
You mean , like a turntable or vcr?
Not unexpected. (Score:5, Insightful)
I've observed that flaws in Apple products seem to most affect those who do not use Apple products.
Re:Not unexpected. (Score:5, Interesting)
Well said. There are criticisms of Apple products by Apple users. But they have a level of nuance that's appropriate. The Apple haters who know nothing of Apple products yet thing they do, you end up having to argue with all the time. I've noticed the same thing about Oracle on /. as well whenever databases come up.
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I've noticed the same thing about Oracle on /. as well whenever databases come up.
Really? Apple has both critics and fanbois/fangoils. But I have never seen anything but universal hatred for Oracle.
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But I have never seen anything but universal hatred for Oracle.
Oracle haters are hyperbolic and hateful.
Oracle users are factual and desperate.
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Yep. You'll see the people who need Oracle's features say positive things about it. People who have to admin hundreds of databases, or very large tables or need to tweak queries. I've definitely seen the Oracle users stand up for Oracle. I've seen the "I could easily run this on MySQL but I have to use Oracle" crowd say bad stuff as well though.
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I think most agree that when you really need Oracle, you need it but I think the company has a lot less fans than the product. When you have a huge, mission critical database running on Oracle they know they got you hooked deep because short of a major disaster nobody wants to try migrating away. And last I checked their financials they're very good at making you pay for the privilege. Of course that's not unique to Oracle, but they're the big player in that segment, while for example SQL Server is used for
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Oracle as a company has been moving up market. A trusted vendor to the fortune 100, state and federal government. They still have clients below that level but they are going after big money clients. They've been disrupted from below.
Oracle the product gets criticism I think mainly from people who have never admin a complex database.
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I'm neither an Apple nor a Microsoft user. There is no need for me to criticize either of them (especially from a standpoint of a non-user with limited knowledge). I just ignore them and go on my own way. I'll leave the complaining to people who actually use their products.
On the other hand, I can see complaints from non-users on the basis of compatibility. I do get tired of people saying "send me a Word document" and the like, but they just get whatever LibreOffice puts out and that will have to do. It g
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Those complaints in the "playing well with others" they both kinda suck at. Even their defenders concede that point. FWIW they are both getting better. Apple used to be much worse about compatibility a decade ago. Microsoft has the "we are the standard". Funny enough Office, at least: Word, PowerPoint and Excel works pretty darn well between them. Office for Mac has been a rather good seller for Microsoft for decades.
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The Apple haters who know nothing of Apple products yet thing they do, you end up having to argue with all the time.
I hate Apple the company for the way they have behaved over time. I have personally been bitten by some of their bugs, like the B&W G3 data corruption problem (well documented across the mac web) which they deliberately deleted from the KB when they rolled the TIL into it to hide that they told their paying customers to suck it up and live with the bug, and either spend money to buy FWB toolkit and degrade performance, or buy an IDE card complete with mac tax. (I did actually price this, at the time it
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I hear OSX has improved a lot since the last time I used it, on a dual G5 which would beachball constantly and hang hard on occasion. Apple couldn't find anything wrong with it, so I conclude that it was the OS. But it was fairly awful to use and horribly unreliable at the time, so I had lots of valid bad things to say about OSX, from experience.
So you are basing your experience of OS X on a version you used somewhere between 8 -11 years ago? Well that explains a lot about your posts on Apple then.
It is pretty much indisputable that itunes is a gigantic turd, especially on Windows. I know this from experience, too.
If you just admitted that you haven't used OS X in at least 8 years can you say it was a turd on OS X? You don't know, do you?
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That's true. The 2 are correlated, but I suspect you have the causation backwards. It's not that the flaws affect us because we don't use Apple products, but rather that we don't use Apple products because the flaws affected us. At least that's the case for me. I actually gave Apple a shot for a few years, and the longer I did, the more I regretted it, so I'm done with them now.
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Gee...and here I thought the premise of this thread was that it was Apple haters, not Apple lovers, making the unfounded claims.
In any case, it was only 2-3 years ago that I gave up on them (and before your rabid fanboy mind starts making more unfounded claims...no, I wasn't using 15 year old hardware).
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It's hard to make a founded claim when there was little useful information in your post.
So, when you don't have anything to go on, instead of asking for more information you just make something up?
You've now covered off the time frame but none of the flaws you claim.
Nor will I. I have no interest in going through my specific reasons of dissatisfaction with you. I need neither your validation, nor for you to show me the error of my ways.
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Don't go through your specific reasons of dissatisfaction just for me, do it for all the other readers, i'm sure they're interested.
Well, to those people I'll say this: Welcome to Slashdot. The topic has been posted about to death a billion times before. See that search box next to the logo at the top left of the page? Click there, type the word "Apple" and hit enter. Then read until your heart is content. You're welcome.
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Well, to those people I'll say this: Welcome to Slashdot. The topic has been posted about to death a billion times before. See that search box next to the logo at the top left of the page? Click there, type the word "Apple" and hit enter. Then read until your heart is content. You're welcome.
Wow.
Just to recap here, you have basically: 1.) said Apple stuff sucks in the middle of a thread almost designed to be a flame war invitation; 2.) refused to explain why you think Apple sucks with any specificity; and 3.) given a follow-up response akin to "I don't have to tell you why I don't like New Zealanders. Just Google 'New Zealand' and read until your heart is content.'"
You, sir/madam either 1.) win the Internet brilliant troll of the year award; or 2.) should ask yourself why you bothered posting n
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Wow.
Just to recap here, you have basically: 1.) said Apple stuff sucks in the middle of a thread almost designed to be a flame war invitation; 2.) refused to explain why you think Apple sucks with any specificity; and 3.) given a follow-up response akin to "I don't have to tell you why I don't like New Zealanders. Just Google 'New Zealand' and read until your heart is content.'"
You, sir/madam either 1.) win the Internet brilliant troll of the year award; or
Not at all. I never said apple sucks. Don't grab onto my usage of the word "flaws"...I wasn't the one who picked that word. The OP I replied to picked the word and implied one causation and I was just replying he had the causality backward. Then some AC (you? OP? someone else?) got all defensive about it, as if there's not a single logical reason in the world why someone would dislike apple products. I don't see why I'm supposed to provide some sort of dissertation as to why I have the opinion of Apple that
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I've observed that flaws in Apple products seem to most affect those who do not use Apple products.
Did it really never occur to you that the ones most likely to be affected by a 'flaw' in something would also be the ones most likely to avoid using that something?
Here are other examples:
The people most allergic to peanuts refuse to eat peanut products.
The people who got a hair in their food at a restaurant are far less likely to eat at or recommend that restaurant to others.
By definition the people using pr
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Yeah but that doesn't justify the antagonism. For example lots of Chinese use a writing keyboard for characters and many of those suck and have flaws. I don't spend a lot of time talking about them though.
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>The people most allergic to peanuts refuse to eat peanut products. In this case, the flaw exists in the person that is allergic to the peanuts. The peanuts did nothing wrong.
More importantly, calling for peanut free peanut butter just makes you sound like a rambling moron - which brings us back to Apple haters.
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Do you have down's syndrome? You insert the CD, select the songs, then select import CD. I've seen 4 year olds do it.
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Do you have down's syndrome? You insert the CD, select the songs, then select import CD. I've seen 4 year olds do it.
Where exactly do you insert the CD? The iPhone doesn't have an optical drive (hell, Apple's been trying to kill them off on the laptop AND desktop too).
Login to iTunes on your PC.
Login to iTunes on your iPhone using same account.
Insert CD into PC while iTunes is running (or let it autolaunch) and proceed through the prompts the let it rip the disc.
Find the cable.
Find the adapter for the cable.
Connect your iPhone to your PC and hope that it syncs.
Assuming it has synced, eject the iPhone through iTunes and O
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And most of the steps are still required for other devices. iTunes is not more complicated than other solutions and integrates with Airport express devices, Apple TVs, allows sharing the library with other devices and controlling everything with your iDevice.
Some people prefer Android devices, I prefer the integration Apple offers. To each his own...
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you're stretching hard to make itunes look burdensome. one, you open itunes, insert disc, and rip. that's pretty simple. Two, if you have itunes match then the itunes will automatically load your ripped album to the cloud, and then it will be automatically loaded onto your iphone. pretty simple, no?
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Insert CD into PC while iTunes is running (or let it autolaunch) and proceed through the prompts the let it rip the disc. == Insert disc into device of choice. and Rip disc using method of choice.
The rest which boils down to "plug the device into the PC and sync" == Store ripped files in destination(s) and on device(s) of choice using method(s) of choice.
Sure you added "method of choice", but given the post said iTunes and iPhone the method and device is already chosen.
What is the "sane method" if my choice
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Login to iTunes on your PC.
You don't have to login to iTunes to rip music from a CD
Login to iTunes on your iPhone using same account.
You don't have to login to iTunes on your phone to sync
Insert CD into PC while iTunes is running (or let it autolaunch) and proceed through the prompts the let it rip the disc.
Find the cable
You don't need to connect your iPhone to the computer for it to sync.
Find the adapter for the cable
Since you didn't need to connect the iPhone to the computer you didn't need an adapter
Re: Not unexpected. (Score:4, Informative)
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Because you assume something easy like iTunes might have some sliver of intuitive design, but nope.. Took me a hour to try and get a CD onto my iPhone.
if you are trying to put a CD on your Phone, you're doing it wrong.
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what I hate most about those new lightning ports on the iphone is that my CDs don't fit in them.
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What's a CD?
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it's the folly of an open-source audiophile that stores 74 minutes of high-quality uncompressed music (the length of Beethoven's 9th symphony) in unencrypted format. I remember when Best Buy was a huge disruptive force in the market... tower records would sell a CD for $18 but best buy would sell it for $12. Does that make me seem old?
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The problem was that AC was trying to get a CD onto its iPhone -- iPhones don't have an optical drive.
AC obviously didn't realize that it needed a computer where it could insert a CD while iTunes was running, and after the auto import job was done, plug in the iPhone via USB to automatically sync the music.
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Re: Not unexpected. (Score:3)
Re:Not unexpected. (Score:5, Informative)
Apple supports hardware for 1 year standard warranty. No extra money spent. Heck I got apple to replace a logic board for free without an extended warranty. 2 .7 years after I bought it.
Not getting your drive fixed is your fault not Apples
Same goes for the hard drive. Apple would have replaced it for you.
Re:Not unexpected. (Score:5, Informative)
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Apple replaced my HDD 5 years after warranty expired on my Mac because there was a bad batch of HDDs. They did the same with the nVidia failures that affected many OEMs.
Gee, how generous of them of them to replace faulty parts. I should go thank GM for their generosity in the latest wave of recalls.
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Re:Not unexpected. (Score:5, Informative)
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The nvidia failures were due to the chip solder points coming loose. It has zilch to do with the chip and everything to do with the manufacturing of the system
IIRC, Actually, there were two separate NVIDIA GPU issues. One had to do with bad soldering (or bad board-prep) by the contract manufacturer (but essentially Apple's responsibility, which is why Apple extended warranty repair/replacement for those units); but the other involved die-bonding INSIDE the GPU, which was clearly NOT Apple's fault (and which affected other computer brands, as well). Apple extended warranty repair for those units, too.
So, what was your point, again?
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Certain notebook configurations with GPUs and MCPs manufactured with a certain die/packaging material set are failing in the field at higher than normal rates. To date, abnormal failure rates with systems other than certain notebook systems have not been seen
Die is certainly at the chip manufacturing level which is nVidia's responsibility. Packaging depends on the specifics of the chip itself. For SoC chips like ARMs, the client like Samsung or Apple can specify much about the packaging as they can customize this. Other chips like Intel x86/64, there's little that the clients control about the packaging. In nVidia's case most of the time the chip and package are done by nVidia.
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We (in the auto business) use a lot of off the shelf components, or components that have minimal changes that we specify to meet our needs. Why should we micromanage light bulb specifications when the light bulb manufacturer has engineers that specialize in all of the different aspects of light bulbs?
We don't just pick things out of a catalogue, though, and I highly doubt that Apple does, either. Apple and GM should be very, very similar.
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I didn't mention the switches because those WERE spec'd by GM. My point was, though, that a lot of things are off-the-shelf or nearly so. Look at the airbag issue that's affecting many, many auto companies right now.
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It uses the EXACT same part (down to the model number), and we're wondering why Kawasaki hasn't done a recall on theirs.
Because often the specification isn't bad, but the manufacturing process had a defect that only affected a specific run or a batch. It is quite possible that even with the same part number that one batch sold was defective while another was not.
Usually, this can be attributed to production lines using materials to their absolute limit (stamps, presses, drill bits, etc) to try and maximize profit. Occasionally one goes just enough out of spec to slip by QA, but then is corrected in the next batch after the
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And if we get in to details of GM specifically. The ignition, one part, made for GM. Now, lets talk spark plugs, fuses, seats, steel stock, paint, glass, tires, basically the entire braking system, etc. The number of parts which GM buys stalk are counted in the thousands.
Not just made for GM but also designed by GM. I think it is reasonable that you can fault Apple for design flaws in their Ax processors in their iPhones and devices but design flaws for components they bought from others like nVidia chips? Those buggy chips affected many OEM laptops not just Apple many years after the warranty expired. Like HDDs there is little Apple or any OEM can know or do as they purchased them as a unit. Now if it was a special part that Apple had made for them, that's different.
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Gee, how generous of them of them to replace faulty parts. I should go thank GM for their generosity in the latest wave of recalls.
Replacing faulty parts 5 years after the warranty expired _is_ generous, since non-faulty parts often don't last five years.
Re:Not unexpected. (Score:4, Insightful)
Apple replaced my HDD 5 years after warranty expired on my Mac because there was a bad batch of HDDs. They did the same with the nVidia failures that affected many OEMs.
Apple told all owners of the Revision 1 B&W G3 Power Macintosh (ye olde bondi blue desktop) that if they experienced data corruption with ATA disks, that they had two choices. They could degrade performance by switching their disk to PIO mode with the $70 FWB toolkit, or they could buy a $99 ATA card ($20 for the same card with PC roms) and move their devices to the new controller. Rather than offer a simple software patch (let alone a logic board replacement, which was the appropriate remedy) you actually had to spend money because Apple screwed up. When they folded the Techinfo Library into the Knowledge Base, they managed to incorporate articles both older and newer than the one in which they gave this advice, but they went ahead and just dropped that one in an attempt to hide their poor customer support.
It's nice that you had better luck. Lots of other people have. But Apple has also acted completely unacceptably in the past, not just the B&W G3 but also the Cube, leaking G5s, flaky Macintosh Portables with shaky compatibility way way back in the day... Lots of this stuff just went unacknowledged or, once acknowleged, went unremedied.
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Actually, it's common across the board In Europe for manufacturers and retails to lie to consumers about their warranty rights.
It's also common for people claiming this and not knowing what they are talking about. First, the manufacturer has nothing to do with this because all rights you have as a consumer (not as a business) is against the seller, not the manufacturer. Second, the five years that you talk about are the time when your legal relationship with the retailer ends; that doesn't mean that after 4 years and 11 months you would have any automatic right to get problems fixed. Items must last a reasonable amount of time; for
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What's point of having AppleCare then if Apple replaces your fail(ed/ing) hardware after a year?
Re:Not unexpected. (Score:5, Informative)
Ultimately, I value my time enough that I will generally not purchase things I think will break and require fixing or taking to a repair shop. I'll spend extra on a dependable product. Apple computers have shown to not be dependable, despite being more expensive...
Yeah, factually untrue. Industry statistics show Apple products to be consistently the most dependable you can buy. If that's not good enough to meet your standards for reliability, what does?
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REFERENCES REQUIRED.
Re:Not unexpected. (Score:4, Insightful)
That's a myth. It's only true if you rely on subjective surveys which are vulnerable to self-bias. Owners of Apple products basically like to believe their products are more reliable, so report them as such. Same reason BMW and Mercedes owners rate their vehicles so highly, when the repair rates show them to be average or below average in dependability.
If you use objective data like extended warranty insurance claim rates or repair rates at a computer repair shop, while Apple is top tier, they are hardly the best. (Their repair rates are probably biased low too, because a larger percentage of Mac owners first think to take their Macbook to an Apple store, rather than a generic computer repair store.)
http://www.squaretrade.com/htm/pdf/SquareTrade_laptop_reliability_1109.pdf [squaretrade.com]
http://www.rescuecom.com/news-press-releases/computer-reliability-report-2014-q3.aspx [rescuecom.com]
http://www.rescuecom.com/news-press-releases/computer-reliability-report-2014-q2.aspx [rescuecom.com]
http://www.rescuecom.com/news-press-releases/computer-reliability-report-2014.aspx [rescuecom.com]
http://www.rescuecom.com/news-press-releases/computer-reliability-report-2013-q3.aspx [rescuecom.com]
http://www.rescuecom.com/news-press-releases/computer-reliability-report-2013-q2.aspx [rescuecom.com]
http://www.rescuecom.com/news-press-releases/computer-reliability-report-2013-q1.aspx [rescuecom.com]
http://www.rescuecom.com/news-press-releases/computer-reliability-report-2012-q3.aspx [rescuecom.com]
http://www.rescuecom.com/news-press-releases/computer-reliability-report-2012-q2.aspx [rescuecom.com]
http://www.rescuecom.com/news-press-releases/computer-reliability-report-2012.aspx [rescuecom.com]
And if you don't yet know, Apple doesn't make the Macbooks. They're made by Quanta. Quanta is an ODM [wikipedia.org] - original design manufacturer. Like an OEM except they also design the product. Quanta also happens to make most of HP's laptops. The vast majority of laptops sold are made by ODMs, not the brand names you see on the box. While the brand name exhibits some executive control over acceptable quality control criteria, it's really the ODM which determines build quality.
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Except the Apple products are not designed by Quanta. Quanta started out as an OEM, branching into ODM territory to expand their business, and the company still acts as a pure OEM. Plenty of contract manufactures also design their customer's products.
Re:Not unexpected. (Score:4, Informative)
I'll spend extra on a dependable product. Apple computers have shown to not be dependable
Perhaps not in your experience. For other people, including me, the opposite [zdnet.com] has shown [zdnet.com] to be true [pcworld.com].
But you know what? Everyone has their own version of the plural of anecdote being data, so we will all work from our own individual experiences and be justified in doing so. But I wouldn't be so certain about identifying macro trends in your personal experience here.
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Of course it's anecdotal. It was posted in response to a +5 past where some guy asked about people's experiences. Was I expected to break out a pie chart? Now I see that my honest, on-topic responses have been nodded as troll. Maybe nobody hears about Mac users with problems because of willful ignorance?
The articles you link to are hardly scientific. People who install boot camps are a different subset of users than people running a cheap PC. They're going to be more knowledgeable about computers than
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all of the macbooks have 1 year warranty, and if you buy the apple care it extends out to three years. I suspect you have been looking for problems cuz you went into it with a bad perspective, and found what you were looking for.
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You buy the 3 year warranty and they do an excellent job of repair. I've had battery problems and they most certainly do fix them.
You are getting better hardware.
Then definitely go Windows. You are paying for OSX and you are paying
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The best (Score:3, Insightful)
If your hatred of Apple is so white hot,
If your hatred of Apple gets you foaming so bad at the mouth,
that you would lie, that it is okay to do
the fault's not with Apple
The fault lies with you
Re:The best (Score:5, Funny)
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Burma Shave.
Mod this guy up!
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Apple was in the right (Score:2)
This lawsuit is bullshit. I remember this time and the issue from when it happened. Apple had DRM fights with Realplayer and Rhapsody. Basically Apple allowed you to import unprotected mp3 files and audio CD's. They further allowed (of course) purchases from their own store and were under contractual obligations from record companies to lock down music from the iTunes store at that time. What Rhapsody and Realplayer wanted to do is to sell DRM'ed music yet let it play under iTunes and obviously the iPo
Subject, object, schmubject, schmobject (Score:2)
The second plaintiff's iPod was manufactured in July 2009 but claims purchasing another iPod in 2008.
An iPod bought an iPod?
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machines are more like people than we thought . . .
next, someone needs to write, Of iPod Bondage.
hawk
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Or just I, Pod.
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Make it so it really hurts. Ask them to pay Apple in brown Zunes.
Re:Lawyers (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:Apple's admission of guilt (Score:5, Informative)
Apple only removed non-Apple, emulated Fairplay DRM encoded music from iPods. Any music you actually ripped from CDs, downloaded from the internet or got from friends were completely and totally unaffected. Only music files that used a hack to make them appear to be protected by Apple's Fairplay DRM were removed.
Re:Apple's admission of guilt (Score:5, Informative)
That's a bit out of context... Apple threw up an error message when it detected the music DB had been messed with, and then restored the iPod contents from what was stored in iTunes. All Apple was testing for was that things had been messed with. If the rival music services (read: Real) had properly reverse engineered the sync process, there would have been no problem. Also, if they hadn't included DRM on their music and had pushed it through a regular iTunes sync, there wouldn't have been a problem. The only problem was when Real was attempting to sync their hacked-up version of FairPlay-DRM'd audio through their hacked-up version of an iTunes sync session to the iPod DB. If they got it wrong, everything was reset.
Real got bitten again by embracing PlaysForSure, which eventually stopped being supported by MS altogether (you can't actually PLAY stuff encrypted with PlaysForSure anymore).
Of course, Apple made it slightly more difficult by changing the sync protocl part way through this, which indicates they were putting up a token effort to prevent people doing an end-run around the sync process and the FairPlay DRM.
The real losers here were people running Linux who wanted to use an iPod -- same thing happened there. But that group wouldn't be as useful in a class action suit -- plus, the number of people affected is significantly smaller.
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Um, iTunes didn't delete ANY files. The files on your device were deleted. After that, you then had to re-load from iTunes, and if you used another library, you then had to re-load from there as well. Not rocket science.
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You are quoting out of context. There was nothing duplicitous about it, every step was clearly explained and logic if you thought for a second what you were doing. And of course Apple doesn't restore music it isn't managing. Why would you expect it to? I don't expect your backups to contain my files.
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