Always pretty. Rarely functional. Consistently bad engineering and manufacturing.
Today I made my quarterly trip to the Apple Store to deal with yet more of their shitty engineering and manufacturing. While in Europe, my CrApple Craptop failed me yet again.
Apple can market the bejeesus out of anything but they don't know how to actually MAKE a product that can be used by a human being over time.
I have already blogged about their lemon logic boards. I burned through 4 of them in two different iBooks before they gave up on their own product and told me to just get a new Powerbook.
Today's problem - their power adapters. They suck. Their design is so flimsy that if you move the cord at all, it frays and breaks. I am now on my 4th adapter. They cost $80 each. They warranty them for a year. For me, they never even make it that long.
After the cord on adapter #2 split, the "Genius" at the Genius Bar told me that I am moving my laptop around too much and it bends the cord and thus causes fraying and splitting.
Umm. Newsflash Genius. It's a laptop. It should be designed for movement. It's not a desktop. Duh.
So today I brought in my two non-working adapters that failed while I was in Europe. Today's adapter problem wasn't the fraying cord. But the thing was not working anyway. The "Genius" at the Genius Bar said that maybe the problem was the adapters can really only tolerate very "clean" power and the impure power that I seem to be using basically kills the adaptor's innards. The solution that the "Genius" gave me? Buy a top of the line surge protector/power purifier and take it with me.
Uh-huh. Take a surge protector with me around the world on trips. Take it to the local cafe. Take it to a friend's house. That's a good solution.
Or - how about...DESIGN A POWER ADAPTER THAT WORKS?!
It's not just me. A quick scan of the Net shows lots of others with the same problems with CrApple power adapters. Tons of pix on Flickr. Lots of blog postings. Here is one. Here is another.
Don't even get me started on the problems with the iPhone. Pretty design tho. Great marketing...