consumer warning, and annoyance with apple.

umm, how about telling us whats wrong with it?!? it might be just user error.

If you havent heard about this, check it out on my website soon.

http://mysite.verizon.net/res0feg3

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*APPLE MAC HOME*
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what is it?

nm putting it on my site, i will eventually. I had to take it in 5 times for the screen changing colors randomly (new PAV board 5 times...) then 3 for other things they messed up when fixing that. Almost a new logic board twice, but only once. New CD-RW, new monitor neck, oh yeah, they lost a rubber foot from the bottom also. If it werent under warranty i woulda had to pay 10 bucks for a FREKIN RUBBER FOOT. They were all bitches every time i went in.

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*APPLE MAC HOME*
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Not to be insulting, but... I wonder if it's bad luck or the more obvious reason (which I will not explicitly state, you're a smart bunch), but it seems that a disproportionate number of 'lemon receivers' are clueless and abuse their machines. I'm not saying you do; I don't know you, so how could I make such a judgement? However, simply saying you've had to send your machine in repeatedly does not give us any reason to find Apple at fault. This would be akin to saying, "He's filed 11 insurance claims in three months.... Man, does Toyota suck!" More details would help in establishing your case.

I would have to agree that it's annoying to be put through low tech support levels and endless minor repairs before they send you to the real experts and replace expensive components, but you must remember that perhaps 95% of repair cases faced by Apple or any other computer manufacturer are due to user stupidity, not hardware faultiness. Therefore, if they don't weed out the idiots who thought their keyboard was broken because they had CAPSLOCK on from people with actual defective models, they end up spending a lot of extra money on unneeded replacement parts. Guess who gets to pay that cost in the end? If you said the customers, you'd be right!

Apple stuff is generally very well made, but from my own experiences and observations as a PC and Mac tech/on-site service person, I find that when a Mac acts up, it's a real lemon.

It's incredibly common to see a Mac that dies/breaks once get sent back for multiple repairs shortly afterwards.

Part of this may just be because specific things in various models of Macs are "weak spots". (EG. Lots of the original iMacs had problems with a black screen/no video - and Apple's official repair policy was to swap out the power board first. They'd then proceed to swap the logic board if it came back a second time. Thing is, the power board was often zapping the logic board when it died. The only real sure fix was to swap both parts at once, but Apple didn't want to spend that kind of money and take that kind of time, when they knew they'd be ok in at least a certain percentage of cases where just the power board was swapped.)

You also have to realize that Apple is a very protective company about their image. When they find a design flaw, their policy is usually to pretend it doesn't exist, while they secretly start taking a closer look at the units coming back for warranty work. If things get out of hand for them (either from a flood of repairs, or from lots of negative media attention), then they're quick to publically announce the problem and play "good guy", offering to fix them free for everyone. (You saw this happen with the "white spots" issue with the Aluminum 15" Powerbooks.)

The deal with Apple hardware is that there isn't any direct competition to keep Apple's QC department on its toes. Since competition is fierce among the biggest PC makers (Dell, Gateway, etc.), they all keep QC as stringent as they can. Since nobody else makes Macs, Apple can be lax. Which is a bummer, because for the price you pay for a Mac you should be getting above-par quality.

My $.02, at least.

I'm not sure how different it would have been were it still under warranty at the time, but when my mum rang Apple to ask about the dead hard drive/shockingly distorted sound/moving monitor(would always shrink/expand/wander off the screen after calibrating then shutting down) in her old iMac 600 Snow, they simply said it's been over-used, and it would cost upwards of $600 to replace all the 'faulty' components.
Well. The hard drive hadn't been overused at all, probably used quite a bit less than usual; my guess is it just overheated due to bad design. The speakers were appaling since the machine was taken out of the box; and not only when the computer heated up, but if the volume was anywhere near the 2/3 mark when you started it up, the startup chime would be a fuzzy, hissy mess... And the monitor issue, well, it happens.
Basically I think a good lesson here is to NEVER buy Rev A OR end-of-line runout models. The rev A iMac was plain rubbish(and most should be dead within months), and the last ones at the runout prices were seriously skimpy as far as quality goes; even the trim plastics were replaced with tacky, almost-but-not-quite transparent jobs that really didn't quite match the case.

Well that's in my experience anyway.