This sounds so familiar!

Oh well, once a few hundred users have gone through the pain of sending their devices back for repair, Apple can just release a software update that increases touchscreen sensitivity in order to fix the problem. Or maybe not.

Granted I don't like apple. Ever since I was forced to use the machines in gradeschool, I've disliked them. I much prefered my dos machine back at home, even in 3rd grade. But I really don't understand how apple customers continually pay such a premium for products that always seem to have serious flaws that become evident down the road. How many major issues were there with the macbooks? Hell the things even 'mooed' apparently. And now this, but I keep reading in the comments on blogs like Gizmodo and Engadget that there are these people that are on their 2nd and 3rd iPhones due to touch screen issues, or bubbles in the glass, and yet they are still right up there running the fanboy post-o-meter off the charts and giving Steve Jobs a Blow Job. My current laptop is a gateway. The internal firewire chipset is whack and causes my external sound interface, a MOTU Ultralite, which I use for my little dabblings in music production, to freak out randomly. I've confirmed its my laptop. My touchpad also stopped working roughly a month after I got the laptop, and randomly stared working a few weeks ago, roughly a year after it stopped working. My laptop is kinda jacked. And you know what? I'm not going to buy another Gateway because of it. Maybe I'm crazy, but when I have issues with a product over and over, I tend to not want to buy another product from that company.

And now for the irony....if you're into portable music production get a loaded Macbook Pro with Logic Express ($300) or Logic Pro ($1000).
Almost every studio I've been in the last couple of years was using that software in one way or another, it's getting pretty viral now.
I take it you were using Acid Pro on the Windows box before?

Just remember, it's usually the people that get defective devices that make the most noise. Hell, just do a search on this forum for white screen of death, or touch screens. You'll probably find more than 30. If you stop using electronic products because of a few technical problems you might want to start stocking up on pencils and paper. Everybody has problems. Though you're right about gateway, when they started putting "stores" in Office Crack, they really went down hill.

who cares, this is a IT forum. go find a forum who cares.

I'd say he's found one.

So why is this true for electronics/IT and not (as much) in, for example, cars? Why doesn't it happen when i have a 2005 Ford Focus blue and i take a corner with 45km/h and my right back wheel falls off, my garage just tells me to stop the engine, put the wheel back on, start the engine again and wait for the right-back-wheel-falling-off fix to be released?
You want the same story for a plane? ;-)

I don't know why we put up with this lousy QA in the industry here.
Yes, software is complex. But so is a car nowadays.


Ton.

Nice one, Ton. Yes, QA is lousy in IT. For soft- and hardware alike. For some it's core business to release beta software as a defacto standard. I'll not name names, but they make the mainstream OS.

In IT especially, time is money. So they release stuff as soon as possible. Some companies are worse than others. And some (thankfully) learn from it. So as was said above, simply don't buy the stuff anymore when you are not satisfied with 'em!

If you read "The Art of the Start" from Guy Kawasaki (very good book!), he actually makes this a business strategy. There is a whole chapter about "Don't worry, be crappy" that talks about releasing early-stage software just to feel the market response.

Well, i don't know any companies that releases (almost) bug free software. The mainstream OS manufacturer is actually doing a great job, i think (don't flame me, it's an opinion. opinions can be short-sighted, but never be wrong.), in delivering something that works.

Ton.

Obviously a car/plane design is safety-critical, whereas most IT is not so I'm not sure it's a valid comparison. However IT on aeroplanes (not so sure about cars!) is definitely safety-critical and no doubt of extremely high quality (if not, there's another 2 non-identical programmes doing the same job to spot the error and over-rule the defective decision!) And let's not discuss computer controlled radiation therapy equipment...

If high-street computers were safety-critical, or alternatively, if users could sue developers for buggy software then quality would improve overnight. But so would prices... and even though open source software is often high quality that's mostly due to the vast number of people who test it for free (unlike MS users who pay to test!)

My point? Quality comes down to good design and extensive testing, both of which cost money and take time, and nobody is willing to pay for expensive software these days and we all want new features now not next year. High quality software is only a requirement where lives are at risk, or where the software customers are willing to pay extra to avoid business interruption.