Originally posted by ftpaddict Because Apple makes very high quality products in China, where workers get paid something like $4/week.
No apple has very well engineered products. Made by the lowest bidder. In order to mask this, they have a fairly well designed customer support and product return policy. The quality and durability of their products is actualy pretty average. The only thing they DO do significantly better than their competitors is keep the chinese factories from altering their designs and component specs.
The ammount of issue their macbook pros have had over the course of the various intel iterations has been pretty awful. We use them, dells, HPs and toshibas. THe plain old macbooks hold their own with the PC return rate, but the pros are running double to triple the failures of the others. THey sacrifice thermal management for sleek and shiny, and you pay the price.
As far as desktops, there isn't a name brand out there that isn't cutting corners on capacitors. HP and apple are better than average at the moment, but the average is pretty sad. Dell just isn't worht looking at outside their high end machines.
Ipods have whole web sites dedicated to dealing with their deficiencies.
The Iphone? We'll see if anyone makes it to the end of their 2 year contract with one working. REalitively speaking, cell phones are incredibly well engineered, if not well designed, devices and stand up to the use and abuse they take surprisingly well. It's not a level apple has really stood up to before.
Every market has smart, skilled people. The issue is finding them, and keeping the market cost competitive while creating a demand for that skill and talent. Mature markets are not the place to do that effectively. If you cna get into an improving market on the good end of the cost efficiency curve, it is good for you. I've seen some decent optics coming out of both the philippines and vietnam. If you get a company with a history of well designed lenses going in their to build up a decent factory, I wouldn't be surprized seeing some very nice product coming out of the place.