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As a result of my PowerBook failing again and Applgeek’s MacBook problems along with issues with other Macs from other friends, I decided to write an open letter to Apple requesting them to stop making poor products. It will remain open until March 26th (The date which my PowerBook died the first time). From March 26th until April 1st (Apple’s 31st birthday), I will be collecting signatures for this letter. If you want to sign or want to make a revision, leave a comment or email me csporn@gmail.com. And for those of you who say that online petitions never go anywhere, this is not an online petition, I will be mailing this in to Apple on April 1st.

To whom it may concern:

I recently noticed that at Macworld 2007, it was announced that Apple Computer would drop the “Computer” from it’s name. Personally I think this was not a foreshadow of things to come (more consumer electronics from Apple) but a reaction to things that had happened. What happened? Apple started shifting their focus from computers to the iPod, the prototype (then) iPhone and other consumer electronics. I have many cases that can prove that too. I will start with my own problems, not to be self-centric but I know those the best. While I am talking about mine, I will also throw in other examples of like issues.

I got my first Mac in December 2005. I loved it very much and it just so happened that around that time I was in the market for a laptop. I was looking at some PC laptops when I discovered something; there was a huge price gap between the low end and the high end! It was then when I found that the PowerBook was the perfect gap between them and I bought it on December 31st. After several long days I got it on January 6th, and just my luck; Apple introduced the MacBook Pros. Now at that time I did not feel bad about that. I thought the Intel based Macs would be horrible and besides that I used Photoshop a lot. On top of that I had heard that it was never good to buy the first generation of a new Mac. Looking back, the MacBook Pro customers got it easy compared to what happened to me.

It all started around early February 2006. I was playing a movie in QuickTime when I decided to make some music in GarageBand. Once I opened up GarageBand, the audio in my QuickTime movie started stuttering. Thankfully this was fixed in the 10.4.5 update. Shortly after that, I noticed that my sound card was not outputting to the speakers anymore. Instead it kept the optical audio output on all the time. I had tried every chicken swinging act I could think of to no avail. I went to an Apple store and spoke to a Genius who told me that because I had dropped it a few times, I had caused exactly one dent on each corner of my PowerBook that had hit the logic board or the sound card. This is the start of where my PowerBook experience started to go sour. But it wouldn’t happen all at once, it would start fine and go downhill quicker that Windows Me.

Everything was great after I got my PowerBook back from Apple. It was working quickly and nothing was going bad. Then something very weird happened back in July which still to this day I can not fully explain. On July 8th I decided to check out the new operating system that was taking the Open-source world by storm; Ubuntu Linux. I was burning the iso I got off of their website to a CD when the battery died. I thought that to be weird as two seconds before it shut down, my battery meter displayed that I had 15 minutes left. After I plugged it in and turned it on again, I realized that the CD was a coaster despite the fact that it was verifying when the computer died. I have to admit I swore a little bit and then perhaps the strangest thing in all my computer-using years happened. Right after I swore, I got a kernal panic. I don’t know if this is some little easter egg in the operating system, but I am not the only one who had weird things happen to their Mac after swearing at it. A friend had his MacBook Pro beep after swearing at it and another friend had his Mac Mini get a kernal panic after burning a Ubuntu CD. Weird. So that meant that I would have to spend the day before my birthday fixing my PowerBook. (Reinstalling, updating, etc.). Then in August my battery failed out of the blue. I was surfing the internet, and then poof! My screen is black and I can’t turn it back on. I called Apple and thankfully they sent me a new battery the next day. In some ways I wished they hadn’t.

About a week later I heard of the huge battery recall that Apple was doing. I checked my battery’s serial number (the one Apple just sent me) and my computer’s s/n against the numbers that I saw and they are both in the range of the recall. During my 1 hour lunch break when I could connect to the internet I went to Apple’s web site and found that my PowerBook’s s/n was ok, but my battery was listed as having the wrong s/n. I thought this to be odd so I called Apple where I was told to go online. This made me furious; I had tried going online which didn’t work and on top of that I no longer had internet access! After I managed to get someone on the phone, they told me that their phone lines were tied up so I would have to call tomorrow, then they told me to go to the website for help. Before I was able to tell the person on the phone my story, I heard the dial tone. I had just waited an hour and a half to be told to go to the website and hung up on. I tried both the phone lines and the website the next day and nothing changed. On Friday, (my first try calling was I think on Tuesday) I called the number for Apple Retail phone number. They were able to help me and most importantly they listened. I requested that if they could get me the battery before Sunday (when I was going on a one week vacation) it would be great. They said they would try but they promised that I would get it by the time I was back. I returned, no battery. In the end I had to wait six weeks to get the new battery. This is compared to the 1 day when I called before. I couldn’t believe it. Between a ticking time bomb and a dead battery, I would choose the dead battery.

In October, I noticed that sometimes when I was running Aperture, iTunes, and Firefox at the same time my computer would get very hot then shut down. I thought this was an issue that only happened to MacBooks but I was wrong. I did a bit of researching and found that there were and still are a lot of PowerBook owners who suffer from RSS (random shutdown syndrome). Because of this I scheduled an appointment at the Apple Store where the “Genius” declared everything to be fine. Not five minutes after I got home, it happened again. I called Apple and after waiting about an hour I was told that they would send me a box and they would fix it for free.

After being computerless for a week (I know I have other computers, but everything is on my PowerBook), which was nearly impossible due to the fact that I am a student, I got my PowerBook back and it was as good as new. Until December 26th that is. About a week before that I noticed that my screen was rather weird and also that my SuperDrive was not buring DVDs correctly. By this time I had Apple Tech Support as the number 2 speed dial on my phone so I called up. When I got it back, I noticed 3 things: 1, My SuperDrive was fine as was my screen. 2: My PowerBook had a new dent in it. 3: Some of my RAM had been taken out. Not to take away from the good job that was done on fixing my problems, but I would like to focus more on numbers 2 and 3.

I was furious when I got my laptop back and noticed that it had a new dent in it. I know that PowerBooks and MacBook Pros dent very easily due to their alumium case. In fact I once talked to a Genius who had a PowerBook which was all dented up. However, it is one thing when I dent up my computer, it is a whole different animal when Apple does it. Next I was just as annoied when I found that my 1 gigabyte RAM stick had been taken out. I read on the little piece of paper that it was defective and I knew that that couldn’t be true. Before I had sent my computer in, (as part of my battery of tests) I had run memtest. Memtest is a memory checking tool that runs in Single-User mode. When I ran it, everything showed up okay. I am wondering if this was a ploy for you to get me to buy your overpriced RAM.

I have had many more repairs and with each one, more things get better and things get worse. Just today I got my PowerBook back from it’s 6th repair and I noticed that basicly all of my problems (including the aformentioned dent) are gone, but your track record is not good and I will most certainly be checking up every day.

As stated before, I am not the only one who is having trouble with his or her Apple Laptop. My co-blogger, Applgeek has had immesurable trouble with his MacBook and his previous iBook. A good friend mine Joe Sayer has had problems with his MacBook and his MacBook Pro both to the point that he got rid of both of them.

So Apple, do you feel that just because you have dropped “Computer” from your name you can start making poor quality computers, or do you feel that you can make good computers while making good consumer electronics too?

Sincerly,