> I don't think so because if you go to the Apple forums there are many, many people who have had the same experience.
That doesn't contradict what I said. "Other additional causes"" could be other applications you -- and they -- have loaded, that perhaps I haven't. For example, there are apps that intentionally run network connections in the background (Skype, OpenVPN, etc.) for the benefit of other apps or to monitor online status -- those apps that you may forget about are actually consuming CPU and thus battery power.
"Many, many people"... well, when there are a hundred million devices in the field, what's "many, many"? How many comments did you read -- a hundred, a thousand? Unlikely the latter, and yet even that would be only a thousandth of a percent of the users -- 0.001%.
With that many units in the field, you'll find every possible combination of software, circumstances, and use patterns, so you'll see evidence of every possible unhappy interaction. Unhappy users often post comments on user forums. Happy users most often don't.
> If one contacts Apple their "fix" it to upgrade the product.
So far with three iPods, one iPad, one iPhone, and a handful of Macs over the years, I have yet to hear Apple support tell me the only way to fix a problem is to upgrade to a new product.
> Sorry, but I am old school and believe a product costing $500 should perform more than 3 or 4 years.
I agree with you on that. And in fact only one Apple product has crapped out in less than 4 years -- my first iPod, a hard-drive model, developed a power supply issue after about 3 years, and was replaced. All the rest have been running without problems since I got them. In a few cases they've exceeded 7 years by now and all are still in active daily use.
I suppose you might claim I'm lucky. Maybe I am. :)
Every single Apple product I have owned survived until it was passed on to a new owner. . . usually seven or so years later. . . with the sole exceptions of my two top of the line laptops. Those I don't have a clue about because both of them were stolen at age six, while still going strong. . . LOL! And the funny thing is that both had been bought for me by the insurance company due to losses!
The first was from an original Mac 100 laptop (c. 1991) I bought at a garage sale for $10 in 1996 or so. It was non-operational, however everything was there including the power supply. I took it home and plugged it in and the screen powered to a sad mac face, showing that it needed a boot disk. The Harddrive was toast. So I bought a used 40MG SCSI HD for $50 and rummaged around in my junk pile and found some install disks and lo and behold it worked. WOW! it even had been maxed out with 8MB of RAM! GREAT! I had some fun with it, put it my closet, and forgot about it.
A couple of years later I heard a ruckus going on outside and went to get my trusty Colt Detective Special from my bedside drawer. . . only to find it wasn't there! On searching I found that all of my guns, including an old air rifle with a broken stock I was going to repair, weren't there. . . and lots of things just weren't there anymore. Small power and hand tools, cameras, jewelry, rare 1st Edition books, my dad's tool box I had just inherited, my thousand year old Japanese Tanto that had been appraised at $50,000, the Buck Kalinga hunting knife given to me by the President of Buck Knives, a hand crossbow, basically anything small that had been put away, out-of-sight, was just gone. One of the things that disappeared in "The Great Disappearing" was that laptop. Gone.
We had our suspicions we could never prove. My mother-in-law had come to live with us and she needed a caregiver. . . and the one she loved was an American indian lady who was very good with her. She had very strange ideas of property. She would bring in things from her house and leave them at ours. . . saying, this looks better here than where it was. However at the same time both of my daughters had friends going in and out at all hours. . . and staying over. The police could not make any accusations against anyone and nothing ever showed up at any pawnshops.
In any case, I duly reported everything to our insurance company which was affiliated with our Auto Insurance Club in California. . . and we had a "replacement" value rider on the policy. I listed that Apple PowerBook 100 as a used computer laptop bought at a garage sale for $10 and also explained how I had made it work by putting in the $50 drive. I expected re-imbursement for my out-of-pocket costs on that.
For a couple of months, it was Christmas in July around our house. The insurance company assigned an adjuster from the Santa Claus department to us. I did not have to do ANY shopping at all! Packages started arriving at our door. Remember my dad's tool chest? I arrived one day to an entry way full of boxes from Sears. . . the Elf had bought me a compete set of Craftsman PRO tools with tool chest! The power tools that were stolen were generally discount store drills, jigsaws, power saws, etc. Again, what arrived were Craftsman PRO equipment. . . top of the line! Guns she couldn't buy for me but issued checks for brand new versions at current prices. None of this modern system of go buy it and we'll re-imburse you crap. The 1st Edition rare book had been a very rare Science Fiction Zenna Henderson "The People No Different Flesh" with dust Jacket I had run across at a garage sale for 25¢, irreplaceable. She had found a price quotation on Alibris of $1600 and issued me a check for it. The Tanto? That I was very sad about. She said they could not pay the appraised value as it was an "Antique Art Object" and should have been covered under a separate rider. The underwriters decided they could cover it for $2000, as well, the limits of the coverage. RATS! Oh, well. So, you are wondering about the laptop? I came home one day and there was a box sitting in the entry. . . from Apple. a brand new, top of the line Apple PowerBook G3 Lombard Laptop $2499 value. . . for my $60 garage sale piece!
Now, fast forward SIX YEARS. . . I put that laptop in its leather case in the trunk of my car. . . lock the car and go into the house to get some something and get side tracked with a phone call and then have to use the bathroom. I come out and find my trunk lid is gaping open. The lock has been punched out! a tool kit, some other minor things, and my six year old laptop are GONE!
My auto insurance pays the $900 to fix the damage to the trunk. . . but they won't cover the losses in the trunk. The adjuster says why don't you make a claim on your homeowners policy for the loss? They should cover it. So I did. Minus the deductible which covered the other stuff. . . Two weeks later another box arrives from Apple. Brand New, Top of the line Apple Intel MacBook Pro. . . $2400. No charge. All on that original $60 I spent at that garage sale.
That one got stolen too, six years later. . . but not in a way I could make a claim on it, I loaned it to a friend who just disappeared with it. RATS.