@ angel_m:
Sorry for you, but yeah, i don´t think its fitting to say Apple´s general product quality is bad due to one incident.
Some manufacturers generally make crappy products where most of the devices break or don´t work as advertised in general but i don´t think that holds true for Apple products in general.
Mind you, i´m not an Apple exclusive fanboy, i have a pc sitting next to my mac and devices from pretty much all major and some minor brands, i just generally like quality products no matter from which brand they are and well, it happens to be that Apple products are as far as i can tell of quite good quality overall.
I had a lot of devices from many manufacturers over the years and you know what? I had at least one device from every one of the major brands out there work fine for many years and at least one of their devices broke without proper reason, often after short use time.
With all the Apple devices i have i only had issues with two, in one case it was after years of usage the device just showing its age, in the second case the iPhone 3gs i bought my Mom broke after less than one week usage due to obvious manufacturing failure.
I had such things happen with devices from any major brand though so Apple isn´t any worse than the others.
My mom´s iPhone stopping working had a good side to it though: It made me make use of Apple Care for the first time and that made me really appreciate their service a lot. I called their customer support, told em the problem, the guy at the phone tried to guide me through some steps to see if we could get the device working again and after 5 minutes when it was clear the device was definately broken he started a replacement order which lead to an ups guy coming by the next day to pick up the broken device and bring me a replacement unit.
As i said, i had devices from most major brands already broken once at least and in most cases while in guarantee timespan i got those replaced nicely in a week or two, it had never happened before though that it happened right the next day, that was quite a pleasent surprise.
So yeah, my suggestion is that everyone should get Apple Care protection plan with his devices because it makes the guarantee timespan longer and leads to you getting a replacement device quickly when the old one is broken without even having to pay shipping costs or anything (As far as i know because the device was pretty new it would have been within usual guarantee timespan and replacement would have been covered due to that without Apple Care, too, but then i´d have to pay the shipping costs at least).
Btw i argued against your statement because you singled out one brand as releasing mediocre quality products,if one doesn´t do that, i would sorta agree that there are certain types of products which are made for durability and maximum reliability and other types of products which are more made for limited lifespan usage but in return during that timespan often high performance leading edge functionality.
I just don´t think that´s a brand specific thing, its more about, well, being aware that for example notebooks and smartphones are usually made for being used a few years nowadays, pretty much no manufacturer intends to make a device that works for 10 or even just 5 years (which with many devices is already pretty obvious from the get go when one considers their setup, for example in many cases not having replacable battery packs).
One can like that or dislike that, sure i liked it that we bought a tv or fridge 20+ years ago and those devices survived longer than any device i bought in the last 5 years, but well, i think to some degree that´s just the nature of the beast of buying higher and higher end devices feature and performancewise which are more and more complex in setup and at the same time consumers would like to get them cheaper and cheaper if possible.
