In the past few days I have had a chance to personally experience
the incredible durability of a MacBook. However, Macs were not always
this durable. Several of the past models have had specific components
with incredible high rates of failure. I also recently had an
experience with one of those.
Good News First, Of Course
Before I dive into the bad news, I will start with something good.
The MacBook I recently acquired is a Late 2006 Core 2 model,
and it had been through quite a battle: the previous owner accidentally
stepped on it. However, this did not do as much damage as could be
expected. The screen, of course, is destroyed; only a narrow strip at
the top remains intact and semi-functioning.
What truly surprised me is that the SuperDrive, though definitely
damaged, still functions. It can't burn anymore, but the drive still
reads discs normally. However, from the sound of disc
injection/ejection, I can definitely tell that the servo got pretty
crunched and may give out any time. So for safety, I cloned a Leopard
disc to my bootable 4G iPod and installed from it. (Try that on a
Wintel laptop!)
This computer will be a file server/802.11n router until I can find
cheap parts to fix its problems.
During all this, I really wish I could have used Remote Disc, like
the MacBook Air. Apple, if
you're listening, please bring Remote Disc to the entire Mac
population; I know others will be able to make good use of it. Surely
the Intel Macs can have their firmware tweaked to support all the
features of Remote Disc. Maybe the next Leopard update could even bring
Remote Disc support to all users of Leopard, including those on
PowerPC.
The Bad News
Unfortunately, just prior to all of this happening, I had an
unfortunate episode with my 700 MHz eMac. A part in the
display assembly called the IVAD cable gave out. This caused the
display to exhibit what is commonly known as the "Raster Shift" issue.
According to reports on the Web, this part has an extremely high rate
of failure. Some people have even had to swap the part multiple times
in less than a year. Thankfully, the part only cost me $40.
I was also required to do the parts swap myself, not a small task.
The local Apple Store told me that my model is no longer supported, and
the Apple Authorized Service Provider informed me that they only do
$400 analog assembly replacements for this problem. This was something
Apple's consumer division was very interested to hear, because a
service notification was sent to all AASPs stating that this problem
was to be repaired by replacing the IVAD cable, not swapping the analog
assembly (as was initially done before the true point of failure was
identified by Apple several years ago).
This problem reminds me of the myriad failure reports regarding the
solder issue on the Dual USB and later
iBooks. It seems that during this period, Apple may have had some
issues with the engineering behind some of their products, leading to
weak designs that failed over time. I seem to remember there were also
a few other faulty designs during this period that led to Apple issuing
recalls on other models to replace failing parts.
Put Down Your Screwdriver and Come Out Peacefully
Perhaps the reason why most new Apple products come with very
limited user-service potential is indicative of their new standard in
engineering. Apple has done what is necessary to ensure that blunders
like these aren't likely to occur again on new products (or maybe they
just think it's more fun to watch a Genius try to disassemble one of
the new Intel Macs). 
