Quality of everything is getting worse

After using FAS gear for over 7 years, the quality of everything I buy sucks in comparison.

My 2016 Plum Crazy Dodge Challenger SXT Plus has a little over 12K miles but has had so many problems. Thankfully they all started before the lease was up because I was going to buy it.

I have a FAMC Liquid Foot+ PRO+ and 12+ and it has had so many bugs and it's taken over 6 months to get an update, so it could work with my Axe-Fx III.

It seems like a 3rd of the things I buy arrive defective but that could be due to UPS treating packages like basketballs.

We have 4 dogs and we have gone through, so many shock collars because they either fall apart or stop working. I just bought 4 new bark collars and their sensitivities are all different at the same setting.

I buy extended warranties and accidental warranties for almost everything I buy now because it doesn't seem to matter if you buy cheap or expensive. Nothing seems to last!
 
I remember when 3 yrs was the max life cycle on a PC build or laptop. I'd go through a new build about every three years due to a video game requiring newer graphics card which required new motherboard. I have a Sony VAIO laptop I bought in 2010 that still works and just got into the Mac world when I purchased my AX8 in 2017, so it's the 2016 version. I love the Mac. I'm a PC user all my life and am really efficient using PC's. I feel I need to learn the Mac's 'tricks' or best workflows, hotkey's etc. That being said I'd be happy if my Mac lasts 6 years. A 2013 model should be approaching the end of its life, huh?

You guys got me thinking about spending the rest of the day backing up....AX8, Mac...everything. I'd be kicking myself if it died tomorrow and I posted this today.
I've been building my own for yrs.. slightly more expensive than the "vendor" packages, but I KNOW what I'm getting from a component build.
 
After using FAS gear for over 7 years, the quality of everything I buy sucks in comparison.

My 2016 Plum Crazy Dodge Challenger SXT Plus has a little over 12K miles but has had so many problems. Thankfully they all started before the lease was up because I was going to buy it.

I have a FAMC Liquid Foot+ PRO+ and 12+ and it has had so many bugs and it's taken over 6 months to get an update, so it could work with my Axe-Fx III.

It seems like a 3rd of the things I buy arrive defective but that could be due to UPS treating packages like basketballs.

We have 4 dogs and we have gone through, so many shock collars because they either fall apart or stop working. I just bought 4 new bark collars and their sensitivities are all different at the same setting.

I buy extended warranties and accidental warranties for almost everything I buy now because it doesn't seem to matter if you buy cheap or expensive. Nothing seems to last!

The related question might be: what does arrive working as advertised and keep working as intended, generally with low maintenance? For me:

  • The Fractal gear - I think I had to return my Ultra or II once under warranty and got it back quickly. Otherwise, all three generations have been flawless.
  • PRS guitars. Will buy a new one without hesitation, sight unseen.
  • Mesa amps. Same. Too damn heavy, though.
  • Apple gear - well, at least till the new MB Pro. My iPhone is a 6, and as noted the MB Pro is from 2013 and still works better than other laptops in the office.
  • Hondas - CR-V (manual transmission) at 230k miles and still going strong, gave my Accord V6 to my son, also a manual, he's at 140k, my Acura is at 50k
  • Sony TVs, both flat-panel and CRT. I gave away one CRT version that was still working; still have another one in the kitchen that I think we bought in the late '80s or early '90s and it still looks fine. The one Samsung flat panel I have looks fine but annoys me because of their stupid audio routing decisions.
  • TiVos, with the exception that the spinning drives WILL die eventually. Oh yeah, and the Hulu app sucks.
 
Cliff you should check out the Lenovo T Series. At work this refresh cycle I could choose between Mac or PC. I tried a Mac Book Pro. Horrible.... The track pad was flat unusable. I had to buy an external keyboard just to use it. I found it no more stable than a PC laptop. I got them to swap it our for a Lenovo T480 running Win10. Probably the best all around laptop I've ever owned. Does not get hot. Lite and thin, but still very solid. I've owned 5-6 IBM and Lenovo Thinkpads, a couple of Toshiba's, a couple of HPs, an Asus and that woeful Mac Book Pro....so not a laptop newbie. Thinking about buying a T480 for my personal laptop and one for the wife too.
 
Cliff you should check out the Lenovo T Series. At work this refresh cycle I could choose between Mac or PC. I tried a Mac Book Pro. Horrible.... The track pad was flat unusable. I had to buy an external keyboard just to use it. I found it no more stable than a PC laptop. I got them to swap it our for a Lenovo T480 running Win10. Probably the best all around laptop I've ever owned. Does not get hot. Lite and thin, but still very solid. I've owned 5-6 IBM and Lenovo Thinkpads, a couple of Toshiba's, a couple of HPs, an Asus and that woeful Mac Book Pro....so not a laptop newbie. Thinking about buying a T480 for my personal laptop and one for the wife too.
We use the Lenovo T-series at work, too. I've found them to be reliable/durable and they work well. I also have the T480 model, have had other in the T-series in the past.
 
Heheh 'sucks donkey tits' - Noice!

...cant get much of a car for 200k any more!

Thanks
Pauly


My 2012 Macbook Pro is on it's last legs. So I'm looking for a new laptop. Should've never installed Mojave but it was constantly nagging me. Worked great before that. Now it's a dog and says the battery needs service but it only has 500 charge cycles. I'm convinced Apple slows down older products intentionally.

Dell: Gets really hot. Dell's response: "Dont' put it on your lap". Excuse me? Why tf do you call it a laptop then?

Apple: No USB ports. You need dongles for everything. Who was the rocket surgeon who came up with that idea? No mag-safe anymore. WTF? Trackpad the size of the USS Nimitz. Stupid strip thingy at the top. STILL no backspace key. Crappy keyboard where the keys stop working because they really needed to shave 0.1mm off the thickness.

Surface Book 2: Was tempted to get this until I read the reviews. 25% of the reviews are 1-star ratings. So, yeah, I'm guessing it's typical MS quality. Cut every corner possible and it breaks after a couple months.

Lenovo X1 Carbon. Overheats and CPU throttles. Gee what a surprise. You made the shell out of carbon fiber dumbasses. It's not a very good conductor of heat.

What's with the "it needs to be absolutely as thin as possible"? I'd rather have a laptop 1/2" thicker if it stayed cooler and got better battery life.



I relied on Intellicast for weather. They got bought by Weather Underground. "Dont' worry, it's gonna be great". Uh, no, WU sucks donkey tits. Everything TWC touches turns to poop.


My Porsche Cayenne got hit by a deer. Damage not too bad but was thinking about trading it in. The new ones are noticeable poorer quality. Floor mats look like they're made out of recycled burlap bags. Poor panel fit, lower quality materials everywhere. Disappointing.


Why do these tech companies have to keep moving the cheese. I swear they just change things for the sake of change.


Oh, and get off my lawn...
 
My 2012 Macbook Pro is on it's last legs. So I'm looking for a new laptop. Should've never installed Mojave but it was constantly nagging me. Worked great before that. Now it's a dog and says the battery needs service but it only has 500 charge cycles. I'm convinced Apple slows down older products intentionally.

Dell: Gets really hot. Dell's response: "Dont' put it on your lap". Excuse me? Why tf do you call it a laptop then?

Apple: No USB ports. You need dongles for everything. Who was the rocket surgeon who came up with that idea? No mag-safe anymore. WTF? Trackpad the size of the USS Nimitz. Stupid strip thingy at the top. STILL no backspace key. Crappy keyboard where the keys stop working because they really needed to shave 0.1mm off the thickness.

Surface Book 2: Was tempted to get this until I read the reviews. 25% of the reviews are 1-star ratings. So, yeah, I'm guessing it's typical MS quality. Cut every corner possible and it breaks after a couple months.

Lenovo X1 Carbon. Overheats and CPU throttles. Gee what a surprise. You made the shell out of carbon fiber dumbasses. It's not a very good conductor of heat.

What's with the "it needs to be absolutely as thin as possible"? I'd rather have a laptop 1/2" thicker if it stayed cooler and got better battery life.



I relied on Intellicast for weather. They got bought by Weather Underground. "Dont' worry, it's gonna be great". Uh, no, WU sucks donkey tits. Everything TWC touches turns to poop.


My Porsche Cayenne got hit by a deer. Damage not too bad but was thinking about trading it in. The new ones are noticeable poorer quality. Floor mats look like they're made out of recycled burlap bags. Poor panel fit, lower quality materials everywhere. Disappointing.


Why do these tech companies have to keep moving the cheese. I swear they just change things for the sake of change.


Oh, and get off my lawn...


May
My 2012 Macbook Pro is on it's last legs. So I'm looking for a new laptop. Should've never installed Mojave but it was constantly nagging me. Worked great before that. Now it's a dog and says the battery needs service but it only has 500 charge cycles. I'm convinced Apple slows down older products intentionally.

Dell: Gets really hot. Dell's response: "Dont' put it on your lap". Excuse me? Why tf do you call it a laptop then?

Apple: No USB ports. You need dongles for everything. Who was the rocket surgeon who came up with that idea? No mag-safe anymore. WTF? Trackpad the size of the USS Nimitz. Stupid strip thingy at the top. STILL no backspace key. Crappy keyboard where the keys stop working because they really needed to shave 0.1mm off the thickness.

Surface Book 2: Was tempted to get this until I read the reviews. 25% of the reviews are 1-star ratings. So, yeah, I'm guessing it's typical MS quality. Cut every corner possible and it breaks after a couple months.

Lenovo X1 Carbon. Overheats and CPU throttles. Gee what a surprise. You made the shell out of carbon fiber dumbasses. It's not a very good conductor of heat.

What's with the "it needs to be absolutely as thin as possible"? I'd rather have a laptop 1/2" thicker if it stayed cooler and got better battery life.



I relied on Intellicast for weather. They got bought by Weather Underground. "Dont' worry, it's gonna be great". Uh, no, WU sucks donkey tits. Everything TWC touches turns to poop.


My Porsche Cayenne got hit by a deer. Damage not too bad but was thinking about trading it in. The new ones are noticeable poorer quality. Floor mats look like they're made out of recycled burlap bags. Poor panel fit, lower quality materials everywhere. Disappointing.


Why do these tech companies have to keep moving the cheese. I swear they just change things for the sake of change.


Oh, and get off my lawn...


Maybe get a gently used MacBook Pro that has the I/O that you want. They are quality machines and last a long time.

Too long, some might say because if your experience. The hardware lasts so long that the company must attempt to be compatible with many generations of onset hardware. Until they, finally, EOL them. Relatable, perhaps?
 
May



Maybe get a gently used MacBook Pro that has the I/O that you want. They are quality machines and last a long time.

Too long, some might say because if your experience. The hardware lasts so long that the company must attempt to be compatible with many generations of onset hardware. Until they, finally, EOL them. Relatable, perhaps?

And screw the damn editing experience on iOS with this forum. I can’t see what I’m typing until I submit it and can’t edit afterwards. Crap for sure!!!
 
I bought my wife a Macbook Pro with the touchbar thing... She doesn't mind it...

But for a dev, the lack of ESC key - Hell no.

Wife needs a new MacBook and I think I'm going to get her the really old sliver bezel Air. She needs a typewriter/internet machine and that new keyboard is so hideous I can't inflict that kind of suffering on her.

Really? I've been typing on one for the past 6 months doing dev work in my Amazon provided Macbook pro. It's not bad at all for me. However, I'm just waiting for it to fail like the internet is telling me.
 
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I've been building my own for yrs.. slightly more expensive than the "vendor" packages, but I KNOW what I'm getting from a component build.

I'm still using my i7-2600K based rig I built almost 9 years ago. I've mainly just upgraded to Samsung SSDS. I looked at benchmarks and barely last year the new i7's have a 2x performance over the i7-2600K on multi-threaded workloads.
Even then I think I when I get around to building a new desktop, the main perf improvements will come from NVMe - I currently saturate my SATA Bus at around 550MB/s.
 
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I bought my wife a Macbook Pro with the touchbar thing... She doesn't mind it...
My wife's a writer for a living and lives and dies by her keyboard. After spending some time with my work MBP she was a solid no on the new keyboard.

But for a dev, the lack of ESC key - Hell no.
Oh don't even get me started on this. I've remapped ESC to Caps Lock everywhere now. Took me a month of retraining my brain though.

Really? I've been typing on one for the past 6 months doing dev work in my Amazon provided Macbook pro. It's not bad at all for me. However, I'm just waiting for it to fail like the internet is telling me.
Yup. I can't stand the new keyboard. I've been using one since August, also supplied by work (Stripe), and cannot stand it. There was an article by one of the Apple tech sites about how 1/3 of all their fellow writers at the Apple streaming services event a few weeks back all had failed keyboards on their new MBPs. ONE THIRD! That's not cool. I actually just ordered that Air for my wife like an hour ago. The i7 with the bigger SSD. She's got typewriter requirements for her laptop needs so it fit the bill.
 
I’ve a hp zbook 17” laptop workstation for my cad drawings and office use.
I love it. Very powerful, stable, great gpu.
And a very long life battery.
a bit heavy but very suitable for sustained professional use
 
I still think Apple makes the best hardware, especially looking across all platforms and price points. If you look at the lower, user end of the spectrum, they really are awesome for what they've managed to do. I've got a 12" Macbook (for travels) and a 2017 15" Macbook Pro (my general workhorse). The 12" Macbook is fantastic for what it is. Super light, great battery life and it generally works fantastic. If you want a small, light laptop, I don't think you can do better. The new Air models looks great as well. But the Pro models are not enough Pro in my opinion. Like Cliff, I'd sacrifice a bit of weight and smallness for added battery life and room for the older style keyboards with more travel. And at least put in an option of hardware function keys as a built-to-order option on the highest spec'd Macbook Pro's.

I've also remapped the Caps Lock as an Escape key and that's an improvement, but I really don't feel like I should have to.
 
I have latest greatest MBP 15". Most I've ever spent by long shot on computer. I'm not especially happy with the keyboard, but it's worked fine. The crazy thing is that my MBP completely bricked a couple of months ago. Took it to Apple store. They sent it in to be fixed. They said problem was loose internal connection. Seriously? Thanks God I use Time Machine. Restored after computer returned from shop and it was good.

I've had a bunch of MBP's over the last several years of the eras where you could replace HDD with SDD and upgrade ram to 16gb. Can't do any of that anymore.

I wasn't originally down with the usb C thing, but since usb C is a standard beyond Apple world, you can get dongles and usb expanders cheap. The MBP also powers my Sound Devices MixPre6m via usb C which makes me very happy as it's an incredible sounding recorder/interface.
 
On the upside... The fact that your MBpro lasted for 7 years... no other laptop (and software/OS) would probably have functioned that well for so long...

I bought the MB Pro 15 with touchbar... yes, touchbar is more gimmick than anything else, but I seem to use it more and more as software makes it more relevant... unlocking/authorising stuff with you finger: works like a charm... nuff said about the keyboard, no fan of it but it works without any problems for me for 2 years now... working on a Win machine coming from years of Mac would be a really tough one for me, it just feels like going backwards in time, my MBPRO is lightning fast with 1TB ssd, Logic Pro is my main musical tool, iPads/iPhones in the household just work easier with Mac. Connectivity sucks (usb-c), but is no showstopper at all for me.

I would stick with Mac OS of you have worked with it effectively it for so long. Other keyboard is easily connected for long hours of coding if you REALLY hate it...

Just my 2 cents...
 
Cliff's next challenge: build a true modular laptop standard for people who want the damn thing to actually work well. I'll buy one.

(Apple, trying to move everyone to an iPad - yeah, just NO.)
 
PLANNED OBSOLESCENCE everything: turnover equals profits; NEW MATTRESS sucks, memory foam is planned to sink, latex lasts 20 years: New refrigerator top brand: sucks, falls apart in 1 year. I 3rd lenovo pretty good. I hate apple, non intuitive again no back space, stop lights? I hate I tunes, lists, favorites, impossible to get an album on my phone, without creating lists, and erasing other items, ugh.
 
For pure Web based browsing and emails, just get a good used Chromebook. I have MBPs of both old and new kinds, the new keyboards are strange and you need to maintain them (dust them off with compressed air once a week). The Touch Bar was indeed a failed experiment. Dell XPS are great but I've used Macs since 1988 so it's hard to move away.

Me thinks we need to just maintain our gear better, wipe out dirt, tighten screws and otherwise take care of expensive equipment. Hey, fixed my Boss ME50 MFX pedal part this morning!
 
I run a small company and get to experience a number of different machines - all of the observations in the original post are accurate. For the love of god do not buy the Surface Book 2. I hate mine. I can also tell you the Razers aren't all they're cracked up to be. I'm happiest with the current series of XPS but the heat issue continues to be annoying at best and damaging in some cases.

We have a new Macbook Pro 15 on order - didn't really have a choice as we need to do some app stuff. We'll see what's up but I'm dubious.

As far as the Porsches, I'm really surprised and dismayed that they've let quality slip, as that's very unbecoming of them. Too much Audi in the management mix? Or maybe they're making room for the Bentayga to be the nice one. Hard to say. I too have some Macan lust, if I decide to upgrade from hot hatch world at some point here.
 
I too have some Macan lust, if I decide to upgrade from hot hatch world at some point here.
What hot hatch are you driving? I've got a VW GTI now that's got an APR Stage 2 tune on it. It replaced my A4. Always wanted a GTI when I was a kid, so a GTI I now have! :D
 
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