Apple hardware support was legendary before they became The iPhone Company. I had the first Intel MacBook Pro, and if stuff broke or the battery started getting a bit weak I’d just walk into the Apple store, talk to someone there, and most of the time my problem would be solved that day (with the battery they just gave me a new one for free, including once even after AppleCare had run out).

Nowadays when I go to the Genius Bar I feel like I’m being cross examined so that they don’t have to replace anything. And the examiner doesn’t know the first thing about the computer but is just reading a script someone gave them. This is despite paying for the most expensive warranty.

I’ve had the absolute worst experience with Apple.

I wanted to buy Apple Developer Program subscription. It wouldn’t let me add any of my credit cards, saw an option to add payment via UPI (Unified Payments Interface) in India. Added $99 to my Apple account and was still unable to pay for the membership. Spent around 7-8 hours speaking to customer support but no one had a clue what was wrong. I asked for a refund and was told money added to Apple account as credit can not be refunded.

A very long time ago.

Today you have to be careful when dealing with apple repair as they have been found to repeatedly engage in money grubbing tack ticks which border on fraud.

And that is ignoring the fact that in general they tend to not repair component but just replace whole components (because it easier) while hindering others from providing proper repairs (because money) even if it necessary for e.g. data recovery (because from their POV you are stupid if you don't auto-sync everything with the iCloud).

It's also ignoring the fact that apple had in the recent years repeatedly some very questionable design flaws (like strangely over sensitive power management chips, missing heat pipes and similar).

And ignoring that by soldering everything including the ssd on the main-board preventing on-main-board repairs a lot of damage from a problematic USB hub to a broken SSD will always lead to a whole main-board + ram + cpu + ssd + ... replacement which makes many repairs unreasonable expansive.

Not an Apple fanboy but when I got an IPod 4(I think) they started having problems with the included headphones. Read about it on Slashdot then soon after mine failed, I called(!) support and they sent me a box with new ones and a return label for the old ones so they could do failure analysis.

One of my cousins went swimming with his new iPhone 3G 3 weeks after it came out, and they replaced it for free at the store.

I dropped mine in water (pool if I recall) 2 times and had it replaced for free also (3G and 4 I think).

Commodore did something like that for me. I had an early A3000 that got fried somehow (probably by a NewTek Digiview) and we received a brand new A3000 2 days after talking to them.

They still do. Support will upgrade models of MacBooks every once in a blue moon (have had it happen before).