[sdegutis]

- This mid-2013 Mac Pro wakes up every few hours at night, even though I have disabled every "wake from sleep" setting that exists in OS X

- My mid-2013 MBP has, several times this week, turned on while closed, and continued as if it was opened (playing YouTube videos or whatever else it be doing), only shutting back off after about 120 seconds or so

- Every time I turn this Mac Pro on, it doesn't recognize the wired Apple keyboard that's plugged into the Apple Cinema Display, and says it's looking for a bluetooth keyboard, until I unplug and replug the keyboard in at least 3 or 4 times

- My MBP once emitted a (very) loud buzzing sound from its speakers, for absolutely no reason, that lasted about 3 or 4 seconds, startling everyone nearby, when no sound-based programs were running

- My wife's Surface Pro 3 continually needs to be restarted because touch-screen controls simply stop being able to open programs on the home/grid page.

- If our family ASUS $800 computer is left on and falls asleep, it won't wake up, and will need to be manually shut down and restarted

These are just off the top of my head. Point is, Microsoft/Apple reliability is a complete myth. I'm tired of it and I'm tired of throwing extra money away for the sake of "higher reliability" and "fewer quirks".

[matt_wulfeck]

Your anecdotal experience runs so completely contrary to mine that I don't even know what to say.

My MacBook works. It just works. No tinkering, compiling, fidgeting, anything -- and this is precisely why I like it and will continue to use it. I don't want my hardware getting in the way.

And reliability is certainly not a myth. In my days I've supported all three platforms and by far it was MPB that gave me the least grief. This is doubly true with hardware. Linux is close behind Mac but I think most engineers brave enough to venture it would competent to deal with problems on their own.

When a MPB has a problem: take it to a Mac store and get a replacement. When a Lenovo had a problem? Ship it to Virginia on your dime and wait 6 weeks.

I seriously suggest you take your MPB to a mac store and speak to them about your problem.

[myztic]

What you in effect just did: "Your experience is anecdotal, so now I tell you that Reliability is not a myth based on my anecdotal experience."

The point he wanted to make is most likely not that all Macs suck all the time, but that Mac does not automatically mean reliable or more reliable than any other OS/system. So while it might not be worse than other systems (I don't want to make a judgement based on the few Macs I had to fix for friends without ever having used them myself), it certainly is no super-reliable saint either.

And my limited first-hand experience agrees with him.

[mondoshawan]

Additional interesting anecdote: my brother and I bought identical macbook pros at the same time. I generally didn't have much of a problem with it. Him? Well, let's say it was barely more reliable than the windows laptop he had before. Powering down wrong, failing to identify displays, color gamut screwups, power issues, boot problems. Mostly transient, but very real, failures in both hardware and software.

[davidw]

> When a Lenovo had a problem? Ship it to Virginia on your dime and wait 6 weeks.

When I've had problems with US purchased Dell's, I had someone there within 48 hours with a replacement piece, despite being in 1) Austria and 2) Italy.

[mikejmoffitt]

Lenovo support has been great to me as well. With my second-hand machine, a year out of warranty, they paid to have my laptop shipped to them for a keyboard and possible motherboard replacement for free. This is after I'd damaged the keyboard by intentionally testing, "How well DOES the water drainage system work?" by pouring water into the keyboard. I was frank with them about what happened, and it did not matter.

[cturner]

I had a run-in with Lenovo support last year. Three-year warranty, two and a half years old, fried motherboard caused by the plastic in the power socket coming apart. Not sure how, don't care - it's wear-and-tear. On initial calls they refused to honour the warranty. I went through the complaints procedure and eventually they relented. It took six weeks but they covered all costs and completely fixed it.

In the meanwhile I'd got a macbook so I could continue working. The mac was driving me crazy. The keyboard feel, the trackpad feel, the lack of nipple mouse, the every-changing UI that never does quite what I want it to.

When the Lenovo came back I tried it out, fell in love again, and moved back to it. At some point the SSD will die and I'll get another one. There's nothing close to a Thinkpad. To me, they feel like they built as tools in a way that other devices lack.

[lfam]

Care to elaborate on what happened when you poured water onto your laptop? Which model was it? Do you know why it failed?

[i80and]

THANK you!

I'm tired of the cult of perfection surrounding frankly middling proprietary operating systems.

- Every mac I've ever used has had Launchpad UI bugs requiring me to try several times to launch things.

- OS X has woeful graphics drivers, to the point where Mesa is doing better.

- My Air got erratically unusably laggy until I finally gave up on it.

- My MBP will occasionally forget that it has any integrated input devices, requiring me to either find a USB keyboard or reboot.

- Microsoft still hasn't resolved their graphics driver stability situation; blue screens are far from a relic of the past in my experience.

These are anecdotes, yes. Sure, some (rare) people might have a perfect experience with OS X or Windows. But the point is, free operating systems don't have a monopoly on driver and spitshine issues.

[Zikes]

Windows 10's UI is pretty half-baked, as well. I mean, the UI concepts aren't bad, but they're only applied to half of the OS, with everything just below the surface still using the old-fashioned dialogs that've been around since Windows 98.

[scholia]

They're converting stuff to Windows Runtime. There's a lot of it. It will take a while....

[douche]

On the other hand, my desktop that's been dirty-upgraded from Win 7 to Win 8 to Win 10, and is hand-assembled from components I didn't necessarily check too closely for compatibility has uptimes regularly measured in weeks, despite running multiple instances of Visual Studio, a full SQL Server instance, piles of long-lived Chrome tabs, and whatever crazy stuff Steam and my Steam Link are doing.

I'm not sure I'll ever buy another OEM PC. So much crapware comes pre-installed, and it's so difficult to get rid of it, that I usually wipe the disks and install Windows from an MSDN iso. Of course, there's still the drivers... And more importantly, the tens and hundreds of MB of shitware that comes bundled with a tiny device driver. No, I do not want the ASUS Smart Keyboard Whoop-dee-doo application launching at startup. I just want my keyboard to work like every other keyboard has worked for the last 30 years.

[_0w8t]

Did you disable just wake-from-sleep or standby mode using pmset utility? In my case only after I disabled standby completely both MacBook Air 2014 and MacBook Retina 2015 stopped waking up under the last 3 versions of OSX. I suspect the bug depends on the software one uses that is why only some users are affected.

[X-Istence]

Is your apple display an actual Cinema display or one of the newer Thunderbolt displays?

I've noticed some issues with the USB hub that is built into the Thunderbolt display whereby for some reason it doesn't enumerate correctly every 40 - 50 plug/unplug cycles while using my MBPr at work. It only happens when the Apple keyboard is plugged into the display, with alternate keyboards it doesn't happen.

So I personally feel like it is an issue with the Apple keyboard.

[sdegutis]

I don't know, but it shouldn't matter. Apple products are known for how they Just Work™ but in this case it's not true.

[Zikes]

I once had a 1st gen Chromebook wake up in its bag near my bed and resume playing a YouTube video at 2am. I forget what the video was but it was rather creepy at first.