The reason there's a "Cult of Mac"
Sunday, November 18, 2007
I've been using Apple Macs for a
few years now. I initially switched over to them because I was impressed by
the quality of the machines and I wanted to start using a Unix-like OS
on my primary development machine. I had always been a bit amused by the
cult-like following that the Mac has (the first machine I ever bought
was an
Amiga 500 and for years I used to lament the fact that the
Amiga never really caught on even though I felt it superior to the
Apple Mac). However, once I had a Mac, I found that
the quality of the hardware was just one piece of the package - Apple seems
to be one of the few companies that can incorporate quality into so many
areas of its business. For example, you only have to go into an Apple
store to immediately notice the qualitative difference compared to
any other large computer retail chain. Just recently, Apple's fixation
on quality was spelled out again for me.
I'm a consultant and, although I usually work remotely for clients, I sometimes need to travel a bit; so I purchased a 17" PowerBook laptop from Apple in March, 2005 as my
primary development machine. As I usually do with laptops, I purchased
the 3-year AppleCare maintenance plan. Since purchasing the laptop, I
hadn't had any problems with it until a couple of weeks ago when I
noticed a vertical, 1-pixel line on the display. The laptop was still
usable; however, the line was a bit irritating so I decided to have it
repaired. I took it to an Apple service agent in Vancouver and they
confirmed that there was a problem and the display would need to be
replaced; but, their inventory system was showing that the LCD display was
backordered. I said "no worries" because the line wasn't keeping me
from using the machine. I would wait till the part came in and just use my
machine with the line on the display until then. So, I was a bit surprised when I
received a phone call from an Apple employee named Kelly the next day. She confirmed that the
part was back ordered; however, she said that Apple wanted to propose an alternative
- they would replace my PowerBook with the equivalent current model
MacBook Pro! I
was flabbergasted by this and thought initially that someone was
pulling my leg. However, she confirmed that the offer was genuine and
that they were doing it because they couldn't replace the part in a
timely manner. I thanked her profusely and accepted the offer. Within
3 business days, I had received the replacement laptop. The
following table compares some of the specs of my old 17" PowerBook with the new
17" MacBook Pro that they replaced it with:
| Old 17" PowerBook | New 17" MacBook Pro | |
| CPU: | 1.67 GHz PPC | 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo |
| Memory: | 1 GB | 2 GB |
| Disk: | 100 GB | 160 GB |
The retail price of the 17" MacBook Pro is $3,099 and I was given (for free) a dual processor machine that is much, much more powerful than my PowerBook with twice the RAM and 1.6 times the disk! The fact that Apple was willing to do this speaks volumes for their attitude towards quality. How many other companies (of any type, not just computer companies) would replace a 3-year old product with the latest model of the product just because a part was temporarily out of stock? Apple's dedication to quality in every aspect of their business goes a long way towards explaining the "Cult of Mac" fanaticism that people have about Apple products.
Update-2008-01-06: I received quite a bit of email from different people about this post. Some talked about similar good experiences while others talked about poor service from Apple. One person also pointed me to a web site that indicated that the problem I was experiencing was common for many PowerBook owners who bought a machine that was part of a specific batch of PowerBooks. For more info on this, have a look at this page.
