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"Now, what was that about "CRAPPLE"?"

From Wired at the time:
"Today's the Day. Apple is offering to owners of the beleaguered PowerBook 5300s and the 190s one of the company's current PowerBook models -- a 400 MHz G3, with a six gigabyte hard drive, 64 MBs of RAM, DVD and a 14.1-inch display -- for $1,800, a $700 savings over the suggested retail price.

The PowerBook 5300, introduced in 1995, was the first PowerBook with a PowerPC CPU but is better known as the "Flaming PowerBook."

Apple speedily recalled these units, soon reintroducing machines sporting new batteries. But these 5300s were also plagued with widely reported problems: the plastic casing was fragile, the case hinges cracked, there were motherboard and circuitry issues, and some of the AC power ports easily broke under normal use."

http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,38345,00.html

"the plastic casing was fragile, the case hinges cracked, there were motherboard and circuitry issues, and some of the AC power ports easily broke under normal use."....
Even the replacements were screwed up too..Umm.. still CRAPPLE.

The PowerBook 5300, introduced in 1995, was the first PowerBook with a PowerPC CPU but is better known as the "Flaming PowerBook."

Whow! TEN YEARS... you really hold a grudge, don't you?

Again, the vast majority of the 5300s performed impeccably and did not catch fire. I had one. The motherboard connection (which was weak) for the power brick broke five years after I got it... Apple replaced the motherboard. My cost? ZERO.

After the first release 5300s the rest of the 5300 models did not suffer from these problems.

Despite this aberation, the Apple PowerBook line has a reputation for robustness and reliability.

I could also point out to you Apple's handling of another lemon product (and every manufacturer has them). Apple wide carriage ImageWriter II dot matrix printer did not hold up as well as the normal carriage ImageWriter II... in fact, they sucked big time. After a couple of years or so, Apple offered all owners of the wide carriage ImageWriter II a FREE Apple LaserWriter...

The 5300 was one of a whole class of machines that all came out at the same time.. which were all dogs.. and this event nearly killed Apple.. so they paid a very heavy price.

However, thats 2 CEO's ago, and long before the introduction of the iMac, the G3, the G4, the G5, iBooks, OS X, iPods.. and a whole progression of wild successes that have brought Apple back from the brink to being highly enjoyable and desirable. 1997 was like.. uh.. 8 years ago. Get over it. Or don't. What ever.. this is starting to sound like counting ballots in Ohio.. when the real fraud was occurring in Washington.