Rotten Apples?

Written by Alex Kidman Saturday, 21 November 2009 03:20

A report this week (to give credit where credit's due: I read it at PC World Australia) suggested that Apple's hardware might not be as fresh and crunchy as it's portrayed to be. Yes, the article's somewhat designed to hook in the Apple enthusiasts who absolutely, positively cannot see anything that Apple does as less than excellent. It's typical baiting-the-Mac fanboys stuff, and there's a lot of that about.

At the same time, there are some elements that are a bit of a stark reminder of reality. Apple's a business, and businesses try to lower operating costs wherever possible. Apple uses the same core parts from suppliers such as Intel and NVIDIA as the other big notebook players. Is it any real surprise then that the failure rates are actually pretty similar?

Yes, I know there are elements of the Apple community who wouldn't want to face the fact that their shiny über-boxes do fail, but it's true. Apple itself might not talk about failures much — in fact, getting Apple to admit there's anything wrong at all, or even that the sun might be shining, can be an exercise in absolute hair-tearing futility. Still, Mr Entropy is always waiting around the corner, nibbling at the edges of your CPU. He's there right now, having breakfast.

So should you go and throw your MacBook Pro out onto the rubbish tip before it explodes in your lap, ruining any chances you might have had of having children some day? No, not at all. For a start, throw it in my direction if you must. But there's also the fact that the figures need a lot more close analysis than the linked article (and I've seen several other outlets pick up on that spin) goes into. Close analysis is at hand, however, as the company involved made a PDF available of its findings.

For a start, the figure that got the most attention was a 17.4 percent “failure” rate. How many MacBooks did Square Trade encounter that failed 17.4 percent of the time after three years? None at all. Zip. Zero. Nada.

No, really. That figure's a projection based on the actual two-year figure. There's some solid maths that allows for projections based on previous figures, and it is fair enough to suggest that over three years more notebooks fail than over two years — Mr Entropy being the hungry chap he is. So I’d let it pass, but for the fact that the synopsis of the report states (and I quote): "ASUS and Toshiba were the most reliable manufacturers, with fewer than 16% having a hardware malfunction over 3 years."

No, no, no!

They didn't. Square Trade doesn't have three years worth of figures, only two years.

The report doesn't break out how many actual MacBooks were even repaired in that timespan, just that “over 30,000” laptops were tested with a “minimum” of 1000 laptops per vendor. It's not even clear on the surface whether Square Trade's doing work under the AppleCare warranty, or as a full third-party warranty provider.

Looking at the provided figures, Apple does about as well as anybody else, really. Apple's actual failure rate (as distinct from the projections) is a smidge above ten percent, just like Sony and only ever so marginally behind Asus and Toshiba. It's also significant that Square Trade's report lists its “projected” figures as absolute numbers, but the actual, real, genuine figures from its samples are just blue blobs on a graph. The blue blob for Apple is ever so marginally higher than Asus, Toshiba and Sony, but in the absence of all the figures — especially the relative number of laptops tested for each brand — my temptation is to say that it's not that statistically significant at all.

There is a breakout of the difference between failures and accidental damage, and even the admission that “premium” priced notebooks tend to have a better chance than cheap ones. Remind me — which space does Apple ply its wares in again? Oh yes, that's right, premium notebooks.

There's no such breakdown of figures in the vendor charts however, which renders its figures rather suspect, to say it nicely. That's suspect for everyone, of course; if the Apples compared were all MacBook Pros and every Asus laptop was a cheap Eee netbook, I've got few doubts where the reliability curve would lie.

There's also another factor at play here, and it's one that the news reports only gave scant attention to. Laptops are portable. Yes, the components within do break over time. Still, many more are dropped, thumped, driven over by cars and generally pummeled into a death state. Square Trade does provide some figures for accidental damage, but again doesn't break those figures out for vendor comparison.

As an anecdotal example, my brother, who also works as a journalist, travels a lot more than I do. He goes through laptops at a much greater rate than I do. He's not a rabid luddite and destroyer of technology, but there's no doubt that his heavy travel schedule (and the associated bumps and knocks and use of laptops in interesting environments) has a huge impact on the lifespan of his notebooks compared to mine.

Now, if all the 1000 or more (it could even be 22,000 — there's no way to know from the provided figures) Apple owners were my brother (which, for the record, is highly unlikely, but that's a story for another day), then the failure rates would be an order of significance higher than if all 1000 owners were me. Try to scrub the image of 1000 clones of me out of your brain. It'll help, trust me. Anyway, there's as much missing from this report that casts doubt on its overall figures as there is actual information.

Finally, there's the question of the motivation behind releasing the report. Square Trade is a warranty company. Warranties are things you buy to insure against products failing over time. I'm not going to say that Square Trade's figures are fake but, at the same time, it's absolutely in its interests to highlight its services and make people aware that laptops do fail and warranties might be a good idea. I'm sure Square Trade would have a very good idea as to who it would like you to purchase that warranty coverage through, too.

What do you think? Should Apple's products be more reliable than industry averages? Do you believe Square Trade's figures? Discuss it with me at MacTheForum!