Macs, iPhones, and iPods WIN Ping!
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Posted on 09/17/2009 6:37:35 PM PDT by Swordmaker
Apple has won every category it participated in as part of a new study of service and reliablity. The reader-driven PCMag rankings saw it lead the cellphone, desktop, notebook and portable media categories, in some cases with particularly wide margins compared to rivals. Apple's best success was in the notebook category, where MacBooks earned an overall score of 9.2 out of 10 and a very high 9.4 out of 10 "would recommend" score.
The win was a narrow one as Taiwan's ASUS made a relatively large gain to claim second place with 8.8 overall and 9.0 in recommendations. Its general quality has increased and has been helped by the rise in popularity of netbooks. Sony climbed slightly to reach third place with 8.1 overall.
Of all the categories, Apple's widest lead was in cellphones, where it increased to 9.0 and was much higher than next-up Research in Motion, whose BlackBerries only led to a 7.9 score. The difference is partly explained by a jump in the number of BlackBerries that needed fixing, at 38 percent, as well as a drop in the perceived worth of their web browsers; Safari on the iPhone was given an 8.4 mark where RIM's entry fell to 6.0.
In desktops, Apple scored a 9.1 overall and a 9.2 recommendation score, trumping even custom-built systems' respective 8.5 and 8.9 scores. The next-closest name brand was Sony, which scored 8.2, while HP was next at 7.7. Most of Sony's gains came from halving the number of its PCs reported as needing repairs.
Unusually, the tightest margin of victory was in portable media players. Apple's iPod scored an 8.5 (8.9 for recommendations) but was only a tenth of a point ahead of Microsoft's Zune line. The score notably doesn't include the Zune HD or Apple's newest iPods as both were released too soon to make an immediate comparison.
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Thanks for the heads up...
Yeah? Tell that to my daughter who is now doing her clinical rotations in OB/GYN. She switched from Verizon service to AT&T in order to get the iPhone. She has had the phone for 3 months and is now on her THIRD phone! Damn things just lock up and will not run any of the fancy medical apps that she needs. Three phones in three months.
Yeah, I’m REALLY impressed.
Im Apple all the way. Love their products, and I love not supporting MS-NBC
Apple products just rock!
If AT&T data plan was cheaper we would be an iPhone family. Looks like we will be going with Sprint in October. Unlimited data plan with 2 lines, 1500 minutes is only 130 a month. Looked at AT&T hard because of the iPhone, just can’t justify paying more a month to have one.
Still loving my Macbook. Thinking seriously of getting (begging the wife for permission lol) a new Mac Mini to be my permanent DAW.
Thanks for the ping...
Apple! They just work!
Head’s up.
Speaking of iPhones, if there are any fishermen (women) out there, some friends of mine developed a new app, it’s called mycatch. It helps identify a fish and lists all fishing regs (size, bag limit, etc.) for each individual state. Plus you can log your catch and save a photo, etc. Here’s a link:
http://mycatch.isoftstore.info/pics/screenshots.html
Sweet.
I have had a similar thing happen to me. Suddenly my iPhone broke. I took it back and the gave me a new one--no problems at all. The only issue was about 45 minutes waiting while the guy in the store diagnosed the problem. He handed me a new phone right over the counter, and I walked away happy.
Little known to me, the WiFi in the second one did not work. I took it back and in another 45 minutes had yet another new phone.
Now I agree that this is not good QC, but the customer service can't be beat. I remember when the IBM notebook I had from work went belly-up. It took 2 weeks before IBM would even admit there was a problem, and a month to get a new one.
Asus has dozens of models for under $500; how many does Apple have? Given how close they are in performance, but how far apart they are in cost (you can get an Asus netbook for $249 at Best Buy), I’d say Asus cleans up in overall value...
FYI
Are you really going to compare a $249.00 Asus running vista
with Macbook or IMac,,,,,,Please.....
BTW I just got my 1st Ipod Touch, and I am amazed at the things I can go with it, with many free apps.... WOW!
You get what you pay for. :)
I use my 2+ year old Macbook as a DAW. Runs professional multi-tracking studio software flawlessly. It cost more 2+ years ago than a Windows laptop for sure. But the performance and reliability has been worth every penny. I will never own a PC-windows device ever again as long as Apple quality and reliability remain as they are.
YMMV
Considering you get 96% of the reliability for 25% of the price, there's something that Asus is doing right.
I've got a Samsung i760 phone that's been running well for nearly 3 years now, I use it to read books on flights, watch movies, listen to music, geocache, edit Word and Excel documents, show Powerpoint demonstrations (video out from my Redfly), e-mail/text/IM, weather, be my WiFi router, etc.
The future is going to be very interesting with the power of these phones and music players (iPod) reaching what was considered state-of-the-art for laptops just 5-6 years ago!
Yep, if you absolutely need the absolute best, then Apple's are quite well built! But considering you can get 96% of the quality (8.8 versus 9.2) from a machine costing 25% as much, it's a BIG cost to get that last 4%.
YMMV
Yep. For me, I absolutely need schematic capture, magnetics FEA, and 3D CAD. There aren't any decent (or even ANY) solutions for the Macs, so I'm on Windows. My 4 year old Dell D505 is still chugging along, even though it's flown with me for close to 1 million miles! Only thing changed was a new keyboard (Thomas Kemper root beer and keyboards don't mix) and a bigger hard disk (when I got it, 80 GB was huge; now my 320 GB is getting cramped).
And I have some medical professional clients who's iPhones are working fine with those fancy medical apps. Perhaps she is in an area where AT&T's signal is very weak or spotty? In two years of ownership of an iPhone, I've had exactly three lock-ups, that required a force quit.
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