Apple’s Quality Control Is Overloaded
There is no doubt that Apple is a successful company. I've seen more Macs and iPhones in my university campus than ever before—Apple has cornered the market on "cool" and "hip". And of course, Apple markets itself as the company that makes products that "just work."
However, this success does come at a cost. The minute a product breaks down, is recalled, or has been reported with issues, it is known instantaneously by the hoards of Apple fan boys, bloggers, and technorati that circle the company like so many blood-frenzied sharks. Snow Leopard's slowdowns, the iPhone's unreliability (can't blame AT&T for everything), and several hardware failures that have led to anger and frustration from the Apple community are just a few recent examples.
As a software engineer, I can safely say that every application released to the world is not, and will never be, bug free. Internal testing can only go so far, and new bugs will always arise when a program is executed with a slightly different set of factors. This is one of the reasons why companies like Google and Microsoft release their products in beta: external testing leads to relatively bug-free software when officially released. Apple did this with Boot Camp back in 2006, and now Boot Camp "just works" installing Windows on a Mac.
With more people downloading iTunes, using Mac OS X and the iPhone OS, it showcases a fundamental problem in software engineering: the more users you have, the more ways of using the software there will be. In other words, the more users you have the more bugs you have. So, as Apple's copies of Snow Leopard and downloads of the latest iPhone firmware are flying off shelves, and more people than ever are using Apple's software, it seems inevitable that people will discover new bugs at a faster rate than Apple has ever seen.
Debugging is a time-consuming process, and with some bugs so specific to regenerate, hundreds of bugs could be reported by the time one specific bug is solved.
In terms of hardware, Apple's success is overloading its own Quality Control. With manufacturers that need to produce a record number of Macs, iPods, iPhones, and accessories, it is without a doubt that some testers overlook several tests in order to ship out as many Apple products as possible to the world. By appealing to business, education and the general consumer, Apple's products reach a larger target audience than other computer manufacturer's, requiring more units to be produced and shipped as soon as possible.
This has led to product issues such as the recent Time Capsule power failures, logic board issues, excessive thermal paste and unsafe MagSafe connectors. Obviously, Apple has expanded its Quality Control centers, but it doesn't seem to be keeping up with the demand it has experienced in the last couple of years.
With the amazing success of the iPhone, Mac OS X, and rumors of new products on the way, Apple's Quality Control will need to grow and continue to expand to maintain Apple's standards of products that "just work."
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Comments
It is no worse or better now than it has always been.
..in fact, I’ll go farther than Parky and say the belief of better quality control has always been confirmation bias, where Mac users believe the system’s quality control is higher because they bought them for that reason. Macs are right about average when it comes to reliability (as measured by time between repairs), but get higher results from surveys.
As a corporate IT Director with a lot of years overseeing Apple products, there is no doubt in my mind that Apple’s quality control has suffered in the last three years or so. Here’s some evidence to support my position: businesses generally don’t buy extended warranties. Though they sometimes make sense for an individual, it almost never makes sense when you have 300-500 computers. The cost of the extended warranties never exceeds the amount you’re paying in repair costs in a given year. Until recently, that is, for Apple equipment. My staff and I examined our outlay for repair services and downtime in fiscal 2008 and realized that we would have saved money, time, and aggravation by purchasing the extended warranty on all Apple equipment going forward. That was not the case for our Dell and HP gear. Failed hard drives, logic boards, and power supplies have become nearly epidemic.
So yes, Apple has a quality control problem right now, and I hope they solve it quickly.
Yes, you got it! I agree with your ideas presented above Albert. You have good points there. Apple is on top of the rank currently but if ever they couldn’t find a way to insure their good quality of products delivered to all stores nationwide then maybe it’s now the call of their downfall. GAR Labs
I assume it is happen, I think it is because people thinks to load heavy application in it.
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