I assure you, I am not an Apple employee, but a retired photojournalist and a freelance photographer. I did do three or four consulting and training jobs for their art and marketing departments 20 years ago, but nothing since. I am just a satisfied, longtime customer (since 1987). Products come and go. Some are better than others. Most Aplle products are fantastic, and the customer service is exceptional. I once had a Mac Pro G3 that was a lemon. After trying but failing to repair it three times under warranty, Apple called me out of the blue one day and offered to replace it with the new G4 model. That had just replaced the old G3 line. The warranty department did not know me from Adam. But I also once owned the under-powered and ill-fated PowerBook 100, which was too slow to use as a desktop calculator, much less a computer.
I check back in on this list every once in awhile simply because I still receive the email notifications from a second sign-on I once had here. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to ferret out the old password to that otherwise unused account to turn off the notifications. But I occasionally respond to posts because sometimes, people post factually incorrect information, or perhaps overreact emotionally to their problem. Also, I am sure that Samsung has shills in this forum feeding the rumor mill with propaganda — that unethical company is well known for pulling crap like this and I personally have traced two anti-Apple news stories sent out to multiple mobile Web sites tdirectly back to a Saamsung PR firm.
Apple is not perfect, but on average, the company has excellent products and tech support — the best in the industry. I tend to judge any company by the overall consistency of its products and support, not just one issue. That said the quality of tech support you receive from Apple is better when you purchase the extended warranty for any of their computer products — generally, they are more flexible with coverage and repairs. I always purchase the extended warranty for their mobile products.
This is not to say that your problems aren't very real. As you uncovered, early on I had my own bout with "Safari crashing regularly," but resolved it by re-installing the OS. A short time later, I went ahead and bought the iPad 3 simply because I needed the more powerful model at the time for my business and because it was a good excuse to pass along the iPad 1 to my younger sister while it still had life in it, to help get her started. She already had a MacBook Pro, but based on her iPad 1 experience, later bought an iPhone 4. Astonishingly, since she received the iPad 1 more than two years ago, she's still happily using it with no complaints, which leads me to believe that sometimes, the crashing problems are caused by a combination of the machine model, and the complexity of the Web sites and Apps people run. With just 256 MB of RAM, the original iPad 1 was underpowered, and I knew it at the time I purchased it.
This fall, I plan to pass along the iPad 3 to my sister and get the next, new model. My plan always was to use each of these for a couple of years, write them off and pass them along to family members. We also bought, or helped buy an iPad or iPhone as graduation presents for each of their three children. I wouldn't do that if I thought they were likely to be troublesome. I don't need the grief from an unhappy teenager. Thank goodness, I have received no news of problems from the kids.
All this is to say that for every crashing problem noted here, you can find 10, maybe even 100 or 1000, problem-free owners elsewhere.
