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Dear Apple, my first Mac was a $600 Mac Mini. Your salesman informed me that I needed to buy a $30 Mini-DVI to DVI cable, which I did, only to discover one alr

by byuu 13y ago

Dear Apple, my first Mac was a $600 Mac Mini. Your salesman informed me that I needed to buy a $30 Mini-DVI to DVI cable, which I did, only to discover one already came in the box. I kept it out in the open, with good ventilation on all sides, in a 70f room. It ran great for about six months before (most likely) overheating killed the hard drive, where I lost all my data. Opening the case with a putty knife was a fun treat. A CD was stuck in the drive, and none of the various methods and shortcuts to eject it were successful, so I had to physically pry the disc out once I swapped the hard drive to get the OS installation media in. The disc did not survive the extraction. About three months later, I noticed my Linux VM was running ridiculously slow. Upon investigating, I learned that my RAM reported as 1GB instead of 2GB. One of the sticks had now (again, most likely) died from overheating. I tried replacing the RAM with new RAM, and the system refused to recognize it. I tried putting the original RAM back in, and the system still refused to recognize it. Tried every combination of all four sticks in both slots to no avail. The system never booted again. And that was the story of my first Mac.

72deluxe 13y ago
But, does your First Mac == Last Mac?
- byuu 13y ago
  If all of my software remains free, then yes. I am using a Hackintosh to continue porting my software to OS X, but obviously I can't and won't release any software built on an untrusted system, so everything is source-only. If I ever decide to sell a product, then my personal grievances will be irrelevant and I'll have to buy another. When it was running, it was a nice, sleek, quiet, fast, low-power system. I did not enjoy developing on it at all, but web browsing/movie playing/music playing/chatting was very nice and polished. I realize my experiences may not be the norm, but it has shattered my perception of, "you pay for hardware quality." All of the parts inside were stock Samsung HDD/no-name RAM/etc, and the cooling system was clearly compromised for form over function. No, you're really only paying for the ability to load OS X without relying on sketchy third-party cracks. I will definitely be buying their top-end AppleCare warranty if I ever do purchase another Mac.
quesera 13y ago
It's 12 hours after your post, so you almost certainly won't read this, but you describe two serious hardware failures within the first nine months of ownership. That sucks, but Apple would absolutely have fixed both problems quickly and without charge if you had given them the chance. And if you're right about an overheating problem, they'd have fixed that too. Use your standard warranty! I also recommend buying AppleCare. It's not a trick like most extended warranties, and it's fairly priced.

by byuu 13y ago

72deluxe 13y ago

But, does your First Mac == Last Mac?

byuu 13y ago
If all of my software remains free, then yes. I am using a Hackintosh to continue porting my software to OS X, but obviously I can't and won't release any software built on an untrusted system, so everything is source-only. If I ever decide to sell a product, then my personal grievances will be irrelevant and I'll have to buy another. When it was running, it was a nice, sleek, quiet, fast, low-power system. I did not enjoy developing on it at all, but web browsing/movie playing/music playing/chatting was very nice and polished. I realize my experiences may not be the norm, but it has shattered my perception of, "you pay for hardware quality." All of the parts inside were stock Samsung HDD/no-name RAM/etc, and the cooling system was clearly compromised for form over function. No, you're really only paying for the ability to load OS X without relying on sketchy third-party cracks. I will definitely be buying their top-end AppleCare warranty if I ever do purchase another Mac.

quesera 13y ago

It's 12 hours after your post, so you almost certainly won't read this, but you describe two serious hardware failures within the first nine months of ownership. That sucks, but Apple would absolutely have fixed both problems quickly and without charge if you had given them the chance. And if you're right about an overheating problem, they'd have fixed that too. Use your standard warranty! I also recommend buying AppleCare. It's not a trick like most extended warranties, and it's fairly priced.