Your experience with the AirPort base station is unique, AFAIK. However, your charge that the "only times Apple admit(ted) something outright" is flat-out false. The iBook G3 logic board, certain iMac power supplies, and iMac/eMac problems directly analogous to the Dell situation were all acknowledged and addressed aggressively by Apple.

I've been an Apple Authorized Service provider since 2005. Apple had the "capacitor plague" problem with certain iMac and eMac models. Apple acknowledged the problem, and customers were authorized to come to me for a free repair for as long as three years after date-of-purchase if the warranty had run out. Those repairs constituted a good part of my work from 2005 through the middle of 2008. Every customer--especially the ones out-of-warranty, were grateful. I made a point of telling them that the problem wasn't restricted to Apple machines, and I directed them to the Wikipedia entry on "capacitor plague."

I was on the AirPort team from 1999-2001. I heard not one word about thermal problems with graphite base stations. I did the build acceptance and functional testing on AirPort in the first version of Mac OS X. I also performed automated and manual usability testing with dial-up, my own Earthlink account, and a Graphite base station. That base station worked constantly--day and night--for over a year. It was still working when I left.

Fujitsu is doing Apple a great big favor. Losing this suit would be the best thing to happen to the company in this historic product stumble:

There's a five year-old MadTV skit touting a mythical cross between an iPod and a feminine sanitary product--and it's called iPad. The Colbert Report just joked about calling it the "TamPod." The obligatory Downfall/Hitler mash-up is as devastating a critique of the product's capabilities as you could find in an industry magazine.

Word of warning, though. Apple is at its best when it's fallen flat on its face. The Apple ///c was followed by the Mac. iTools was followed by .Mac. The Mac Portable was followed by the PowerBook 100. The Cube was followed by the Power Macintosh G4 (Quicksilver).

Wait a year...

Apple used to leak like a sieve. We employees used to read MacWeek to find out what the agenda for new projects were. There's a reason you can date PC laptops within six months of the release of Apple ones and I think we can guess why that is.

The engine of Apple's economic success is innovation. Unfortunately, there are companies sitting on pins-and-needles waiting for that next idea so it can be copied and capitalized upon. Secrecy maximizes Apple's advantage when their products come to market. That's not an opinion; it's an observable phenomenon--Stock Price Pre-Jobs vs. Stock-Price Post-Jobs.

And part of that success is keeping their mouth's shut until it's time.

Nicotine is a bio-hazard. According to the Wikipedia entry for nicotine, "spilling an extremely high concentration of nicotine onto the skin can result in intoxication or even death since nicotine readily passes into the bloodstream from dermal contact."

That's why cleaning a contaminated machine involves a lot of time, effort, material, and preparation. Isopropyl alcohol is the most effective agent for removing it, and it takes a lot of alcohol. You end up with a poisonous mess, not to mention the filth that's attracted to it.

It is a nasty job, and it has the potential to make the technician performing it ill.

The decision to void a covered machine is on a literal case-by-case basis. If I can attribute a machine's failure to something other than the smoke, I'll do it. And I'd definitely charge the customer for the cleaning. And if I refuse to repair a covered machine because it's filthy, maybe another technician would agree to do it. But Apple doesn't require anyone to jeopardize their health and well-being to clean a filthy machine.

Inferior RAM is the leading cause of kernel panics. And drives are rated by Mean-Time-Between-Failure (MTBF). Buy a cheaply-made drive and it's going to fail more quickly than a better-quality drive. Bad RAM can cause enough data corruption to scramble a hard drive. Parts installed incorrectly can lead to shorts or physical damage.

For instance, if you install a 7200-RPM SATA drive in a machine that came with a 5400-RPM drive, you've exceeded the specs of the machine as sold. If the faster drive isn't supported and something goes wrong, you're out of luck.

As I said, if you don't have the original parts, you're out of luck.

I'd be stupid not to check. I always ask if any modifications have been made to the machine. If the original parts are available, I swap them in and test. If you don't have the original parts, you're out of luck. If you do have them and the original parts work, you're out of luck. If the machine doesn't work with the original parts replaced, then the problem is attributable to something else and is covered.

As Apple's representative to the customer, I owe the company and the customer my best effort

Think about it this way: Apple has a warranty on that part just like you do. If you've modified a machine and Apple replaced your cheap-o RAM or bargain-basement hard drive if it's found to be at fault, they'd be Major League Chumps. Although, you'd get screwed, too, because if you upgraded with a non-Apple part, Apple would replace what they sold you. You buy a five-hundred gigabyte hard drive? You get back the three-fifty that was originally installed. You upgrade two gigs of RAM to four? You get back two.

The AppleCare Warranty is actually VERY clear: Any defective part that Apple sold you is fully warranted for three years as long as the defect isn't traceable to customer abuse or accident.

That's it.

And you'd be surprised at the number of people who think that AppleCare covers the disappearance of their iPhoto Library into the trash...

I provide AppleCare service and normal wear-and-tear don't even catch my attention. I don't kick a repair for scuffs, scratches, dents, or dings. But I've been brought:

--A MacBook that was "dropped a little." The hard drive had impacted so hard that you can hear the parts rattling around in it (I still have it);

--An iMac (Aluminum) with display problems. I opened it, found evidence of a liquid spill, and the customer's daughter confessed that her boyfriend threw a beer at it;

--A MacBook whose "case had cracked"... someone to remove the top case without referring to a manual and ripped the bottom case from its fasteners on the frame;

--A wireless keyboard that "wouldn't work." Turned it in for testing and, as it heated, water came oozing out of the battery bay.

All these people expected these incidents to be covered under the AppleCare warranty. If I'm brought a machine that isn't working due to a defect in manufacturing or the failure of an Apple- covered part, I'll do everything that needs to be done to get it fixed and the customer doesn't pay a dime (but if you've installed third-party drives or memory to which a problem is attributable, tough luck, Chuck).

But if it's drowned, dropped, or ripped apart, Apple is under no obligation to pay for user carelessness. Period.

I certainly agree with you on your assessment of Word as a text processor, but Microsoft Word 5.1a on Macintosh was once the gold standard of word processing.

Word had not yet acquired the bloat that would drag it to the bottom. The interface was comfortable, accessible, and unobtrusive. It got out of your way and let you write. "What You See Is What You Get" ceased to be just a Flip Wilson gag line, in large part, because of Word and the Mac. There's still a dwindling cadre of people who use Word 5.1a because it was just that good.

My main problem with Microsoft is that they're willing to look bad themselves if it makes someone else look worse. I'm not buying Microsoft Office 2008 or its successors. It's my chance to help stave off The Redmond Monster's attempt to create yet another craptastic standard.

Your characterization of Apple employees as "cowed" betrays your lack of knowledge about the company, the culture, or its people.

When Apple leaked like a sieve--when employees eagerly awaited their free issue of MacWeek magazine because it was the best available compendium of the overall status of Apple products, policies, and strategies--it was on a path of steady, inexorable decline. The series of CEO's that led the company in the Jobs interregnum knew nothing about computers and even less about the creation and marketing of innovative, exciting technology.

The only things that kept the company alive were the quality of its products and people, and Microsoft's ineptitude as an opponent. Rival companies actually hired people to lunch at local restaurants, look for people wearing Apple badges, and eavesdrop. Visitors were regularly given tours with little regard to safeguarding intellectual property.

Apple lacked focus internally and externally. And the people and the company suffered for it. Steve Jobs's return brought focus and discipline with it. He pulled together what had become a distracted, dispirited mess and put it on the path to recovery.

Everyone benefited and continues to benefit. The ones who experienced the bad times serve as an institutional memory for those who came after. Secrecy and security have translated *directly* into profit, accomplishment, and success for Apple.

If you were to ask Apple's people, I'll bet you'd find most of them are proud--not cowed. The ones who do feel cowed can quit because they don't belong there.

I've found SATA drives to be less robust than their IDE precursors, so the hard drive IS the problem more often than not these days. And if the drive's faulty, the PC manufacturer has a warranty on OEM equipment just as you do. If a hard drive is faulty, I ask the customer if they want a data recovery attempted. If not, the drive goes back to the manufacturer.

As for standing there while the technician fixes it? Good luck with that. I'm sure you don't want someone standing over YOUR shoulder while you work. Having to explain or justify each step I take is time-consuming (as in "more expensive") and annoying. If I press a diagnostic key combination, I don't want to "explain who you just did!" (actually happened--the explanation went right over his head).

People's data is of no interest to a professional technician. Frankly, it's of little interest to anyone but the customer most of the time. With economic times as they are, the faster I turn a machine, the faster I get paid. I don't have time to rummage through pictures of someone's trip to Australia in search of pr0n; I can find my own.

I work on Macs exclusively. If the repair is under warranty, I'm obligated to get things done quickly and correctly, so this attitude carries over and becomes a habit for non-warranty work as well.

Anti-virus work is practically non-existent, so a machine is either broken or a victim of user-error (e.g. lack of maintenance; failure to follow instructions during installations/updates; installing inferior quality, do-it-yourself parts; damage; misbehaving software, etc.).

People depend on me to be fast and fair. I point out to them that Mac OS X's console records a good deal of what happens to their machines and I educate them on how to do a layman's reading so that they're secure in the knowledge that if they brought in a machine for disk maintenance at 11 a.m. and the first restart is at 4:30 p.m., it really did take that long.

I've found that keeping my customers fully-informed and educated helps us both. When I run that credit card for my hourly fee, they know that they got their money's worth.

Breaking a customer's property is beyond-the-pale. The "I Thought You Were From A Rival Repair Company" excuse is as idiotic as their act was criminal. I'm *especially* careful when I'm dealing with my colleagues/competition because bad news travels fast, I live on the island of Hawaii, and if my reputation goes, there's no way to get it back--and there are people here who'd like nothing better than for me to fail.

I make a point of doing a quick check of machines that come to me while the customer's filling out paperwork. People are much more impressed with a minimum or no-charge "Here you go! It's fixed!" than they are with anything short of a difficult data recovery. Those people come back and they recommend me to their friends.

And--when I'm going my job--I don't have TIME to snoop on people's computers. We repair techs have a responsibility for protection of privacy that approaches lawyer-client or doctor-patient because our clients may BE doctors or lawyers. I'd be surprised if EvNova didn't lose a majority of that business.

Juvenile and criminal...

...the correct answer is no answer at all.

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