Worst Apple product you've ever owned?

J

juicedown

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I think the worst Apple product I've owned would be the Mighty Mouse. It's very difficult to use, the trackball is wild and spins all over the place, the wireless version is incredibly heavy, doesn't fit my hand properly, and worst of all: Only has one click, no separation between left/right clicking. This is something all Apple mice suffer from, and it's annoying. Some games and apps require clicking both left and right at the same time (for example, running in WoW, or performing tasks in Photoshop). So, to not be able to do that is a pain.

What about you?
 
Why do people think Apple mice have "only one click", I mean seriously, this has been shot down thousands if not millions of times.


Turn on the Secondary Click option under System Preferences/Mouse, voila, a Left AND a Right mouse click. More to the point, you can also turn on zoom/scroll and other options (depending on your mouse)

Now the mighty mouse wasn't great because of a pretty poorly implimented scrollball, but all you had to do was clean it out every so often, and while that was annoying, it wasn't terrible.



Now the Hockey Puck, that was a terrible mouse, because it did only have 1 button, and was ergonomically terrible for both fingertip and palm-grab users.


On the other hand the Mighty/Magic mice are very good fingertip mice, and are very well designed ergnomically if used as a fingertip mouse.
They are terrible if you're the "palm-mouse" user, but that's a "different strokes, different folks" kind of thing.
 
The worst product I've personally owned from them is the Time Capsule. And the ONLY reason why I say that is that it failed, and it's impossible to buy a new power supply because Apple never made any (although, there are guides to disassemble the PSU and replace all the caps... it's kind of a b to do.) Under warranty they just replace the whole unit.

Mine is/was a Gen 1, I hear the power supply failure rates are much better now.
 
The mighty mouse is the worst one I've ever owned..

The scroll ball was always getting gummed up and not working, I couldn't right-click without lifting my left finger completely off of the mouse.. drove me nuts.
 
Zumino Zufeilon said:
Why do people think Apple mice have "only one click", I mean seriously, this has been shot down thousands if not millions of times.
Click to expand...

I already know that. I said you can't left click and right click at the same time. Some games/apps require this.
 
Any of the mice. Apple has NEVER made a good mouse. Which is shocking because the touchpads are hands down the best on the market.
 
valve1138 said:
Any of the mice. Apple has NEVER made a good mouse. Which is shocking because the touchpads are hands down the best on the market.
Click to expand...

Their trackpads are indeed second to none.

They are one of the reasons I buy apple notebooks.
 
My first iPhone wasn't exactly spectactular. The hardware just wasn't enough to deal with the complexity of iPhone OS at that time. I have no complaints about the current crop of iPhones, though.
 
The first iPods shuffle...the one that was sort of long and plastic. Thing didn't hold up to sweating...so working out killed the damn thing.
 
That I have owned personally: iPhone 3G. I am not saying it was bad, just that it was the worst of the ones I had. I got it for free and it had iOS 4.1 on it. Worked well for the few months I had it, but wasn't that great.

Worst I have seen/used: All the mice(its usually just one or two things that bug the hell out of me), the Swivel head G4 iMac(great looking machine, PITA to work on), Water cooled G5's (leaks happened always).
 
1st Gen Bluetooth mouse. The metal clip on the bottom came undone fairly early.

The previous generation shuffle was not that great either. Would have got the current gen Nano if that form factor was available at the time.
 
valve1138 said:
Any of the mice. Apple has NEVER made a good mouse. Which is shocking because the touchpads are hands down the best on the market.
Click to expand...

And I would disagree, I wish PC mouse manufacturer's would make more fingertip mice, instead of all the palm-grip mice.

I know people like the palm-grip mice, but I never have.

Again though, a "different strokes, different folks" kind of point, but nobody on the PC side makes a decent fingertip mouse (at least not that I'm familiar with anyways, I'm probably wrong though).
 
Zumino Zufeilon said:
And I would disagree, I wish PC mouse manufacturer's would make more fingertip mice, instead of all the palm-grip mice.

I know people like the palm-grip mice, but I never have.

Again though, a "different strokes, different folks" kind of point, but nobody on the PC side makes a decent fingertip mouse (at least not that I'm familiar with anyways, I'm probably wrong though).
Click to expand...

Logitech G9
 
Andrmgic said:
Their trackpads are indeed second to none.

They are one of the reasons I buy apple notebooks.
Click to expand...

Theres plenty of pc laptops with good synaptics touchpads. I actually prefer the synaptics motion better than the apple one. Great driver support also even the old touchpads from like 9 years ago support the multitouch features of the newest drivers.
 
Another vote for iTunes and I would like to add Apple earbuds. They have average sound, are not very comfortable and have a short cord.
 
Zumino Zufeilon said:
And I would disagree, I wish PC mouse manufacturer's would make more fingertip mice, instead of all the palm-grip mice.
Click to expand...
I go back and forth between a claw-grip-optimal Magic Mouse and a palm-grip-optimal MX510. I can't say I really struggle too much with that.
 
iTunes, at least the Windows version of it. Awfully coded, slow and clunky even on my current PC.
 
I would probably have to second the horrible earbuds that come with iPods and iPhones.
 
I really didn't like when I had a MacBook (white/black plastic) it would get way too hot and the plastic always seemed like it was going to melt.
 
It would be nice if Apple products (in general) were easily repairable. If they had the utilitarian value of Thinkpads, I think Apple products would last even longer after being out-of-warranty. They certainly 'age' slower than PCs because as long as they're still officially supported, they are still fine to use.

Though, it's a bit of a hassle to fix Apple products out of warranty without being price-gouged up the wazoo. Like the half dimmed screens on the iMacs (at least from 2008) that some people experienced and Apple reported to cost $400+, but where you could buy an individual inverter for about $40.

But of course, if you can afford Apple, you don't mind upgrading every couple of years for the latest and greatest.

I personally don't believe in technological obsolescence, though. At least not at the rate we're going through, with people abandoning phones after 1 or 2 years. But of course, devices sell. Support isn't nearly as profitable. I think it's kind of ridiculous that you're expected to upgrade your computer because developers decide to only write for the high end machines. Especially because the more I use Unix, the more I realize that computers haven't changed significantly (in terms of user experience) since the 70s. And I'm fine running even an 8 year old computer so long as I got my trusty Unix commandline.

P.S.
(Graphics in Unix is another story -- and you can chalk that up to lots of halfassed programming and arguing instead of compromising. Hell, OS X and iOS are both built on top of Unix, and their UI is much better. But you can still drop down to the terminal if you want to. And a lot of programmers do.)
 
I agree the Mighty Mouse was a total FAIL. Mostly due to the tracking ball gumming up at the drop of a hat.

I have the Magic Touchpad now, it is REALLY nice. No more mouse gumming up and gestures too. Time Capsule also sucked because mine burned itself up do to the junky power supply.

And last but not least, the grossly overpriced Cinema Display that forced me to get a 1440p chinese model because it was $600 less. ( with the same screen no less )
 
60GB 1st gen iPod Video. It was cool in it's day and the hard drive still lives on in an old Acer Aspire One but the screen was too small and had terrible viewing angles. I think it was best used to share photos rather than video.
 
These pieces of crap, hands down.
snap45.jpg
 
2011 MacBook Air.

Screen cracked during normal usage (I closed it, apparently there was a piece of dirt between the wristrest and screen -- oh wait, terrible design, zero gap there). It was a tiny pinpoint thing. Couldn't even see what caused it, just saw it when I re-opened the thing.

I called Apple, told them what happened and how, brought it to a store and they told me tough shit, hand over $600. I'd bought the machine for $850, so that wasn't happening. Why $600 for a $90 panel? They replace the /entire top of the damn thing/ because they were idiots and glued it all together so there would be no visible screws. Second strike for idiotic design.

I used it with the crack for a few weeks as it got worse and worse... then one day the damn thing wouldn't do anything but show a white screen when turned on.

So I brought it back to the store, they said "oh no worries we'll get it taken care of, we don't have the part but we'll ship it off and they'll send it back to you." A week or so later I get a call from Apple's repair center. They claim the machine has extensive water damage and will not repair it under warranty. Grand total for repairs? Over $1000. A new machine would cost the same or less. I told them to forget it, not going to happen, and oh by the way it /never/ got wet. They said tough luck, all the water damage indicators have gone off, no warranty service.

Did I mention I paid $250 for AppleCare extension (and the machine was less than 6 months old) at the start of this disaster? At one point I asked for a refund (given the machine was a paperweight and I'd never actually /used/ AppleCare since it was still under the first year default warranty). More or less got laughed at.

First Apple product, last Apple product. Fuck that company. Terrible products, terrible service. I love my EliteBook and will never buy another consumer laptop, period. Too much bullshit to deal with.

I paid less for the HP, it's better specced /everywhere/ than the Air with the exception of weight and thinness (CPU, GPU, RAM, battery life, screen resolution... everything). I then got an extension to 4 year warranty with accident protection for less than I paid for AppleCare extension to 3 years without accident protection.

Die in a fire, Apple.
 
^ It's shit like that that has made me lose all respect I once had for Apple back from the 80's, 90's, and up to about 2007.
I think the real shift in the company came about with the release of the original iPhone, and ever since they kind of turned into techno-nazis.

I want to like them, so badly, but their iron-fist, elitist policies just screws you every way you look at it.
Really a shame as some of their products are top notch, too bad I can't say the same for the company's customer policies and support.

You would think that with all of that liquidity, they would start being a bit more generous towards their customers, especially their loyal fans and followers.
But no, the larger they get, the more tight-fisted they get.

/rant

Their mighty mouse is terrible, and I agree with what most of the others have said about them; very flaky product to say the least.
However, their keyboards are absolutely amazing.
 
1st, 2nd and 3rd gen ipod, damn things froze on me so often and with the first gen I had to wait for it to trickle out of power so it would restart.

I have no idea how these things took off.
 
Trimlock said:
1st, 2nd and 3rd gen ipod, damn things froze on me so often and with the first gen I had to wait for it to trickle out of power so it would restart.

I have no idea how these things took off.
Click to expand...

Usability for completely non-tech individuals.
It was more the software that made those things than it was the hardware.
 
Red Falcon said:
Usability for completely non-tech individuals.
It was more the software that made those things than it was the hardware.
Click to expand...

I know, just they had so many damn problems, I constantly wanted to like then since I kept getting them as gifts (only ipod I purchased was a gen 5 which I later gifted!)

I threw my 1st gen at someone in a bar fight, didn't realize I did it but I also didnt care I lost it either.
 
+1 on the mighty mouse.

Didn't actually own one however I used one at school for media a fair bit.
Unless you had a perfect mouse pad those things didn't work and the sensitivity on the click was too much. They were also way too slow if you wanted to be accurate. I actually went into a PC classroom and nicked a normal mouse just so I could have a pointer that moved where I wanted.

They did have right click though. People didn't look very hard clearly.

The magic mouse having AA batteries I reckon is pretty lame.
 
Disclaimer: I am a Microsoft fanboy: I program for the .net stack. There are a number of terrible Microsoft technologies that we have to work around, but for the most part its windows + .net

Bump for iTunes. I've tried to use it 3 times since I gave up my first gen nano years ago, and its consistently been crap. There's so many gorgeous stable frameworks for for windows now, --including cross platform ones-- and apple still wants to maintain this application that abuses the already poor Win32 graphics API.

The first couple generations of iPod shuffle were pretty poor.

That first gen Macbook air was an expensive clusterfuck.

I do like many of their products, and I've got a resounding approval for their business model (read: we make money off the thing we're selling you, not AV add-ins, not crapware, not warranties), but the apple reality distortion field is hard to over come.

yeah, at this point I've been apple free for some time, though the new macbook airs do look pretty sweet: if the support for windows gets to where it needs to be I might pick one up.
 
Wizard: Don't do it. If the screen breaks (and it will -- do a few google searches) they will go out of their way to fuck you. They know it's a terrible product but refuse to do anything about it because the necessary changes would make it "less pretty."
 
mid 2011 macbook air - plagued with wifi dropping signals. 10.7.4 update made usb ethernet drop connection as well. no cure for the issues.

ipad 2 - keeps crashing and kicks me back to the springboard. sometimes it even resets itself. 3 months out of warranty and apple wants 250 to fix it :)
 
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