is this really that different from, say, Dell? I imagine their tech support also has a database or two.
I called Dell to order a new power supply. They didn't have it in stock, but promised to get back to me by the next Monday. They never got back to me. A week after that Monday, I called them again and they directed me to a third-party supplier. That supplier listed the price of the power supply at $259.99 (the power supply is not available in any local store in the Seattle area)
In fairness, Dell sells PCs at low prices, Apple sells their products at premium prices and so it may not be fair to compare the two. However, in terms of customer support, it is hard to see how you could be correct in suggesting that Dell's customer database and awareness of customer concerns is anywhere close to that of Apple.
Also - None of the people who come on site, for parts or labor, are actual "Dell Employees" - they are subcontractors that are typically certified on a number of platforms - Dell is just one of them.
Should it break, I'm not responsible for packing and hauling all 25 kilos of it back and forth to a "Genius." Instead a technician will come to me because the basic warranty is next business day on site.
I didn't have to pay $300 extra to have warranty coverage which matched the machines depreciation schedule, because three year coverage is standard.
One year depot service is fine for consumer electronics. But my computer is vital to my business.
Had a new battery show up at my house either the next day or the day after, with postage-paid packaging to send back the old one. Pretty sweet.
I was looking at the PC of one of these poor customers, Dell was having me do a couple of power checks. At the end of it they said "we've ordered a new power supply, you'll have it in 2 days". When I hung up the customer says to me "they didn't say power supply did they? This will be the third one. Why doesn't someone actually figure out what's wrong with my computer?"
I've never touched a Dell product since that day.
Eventually my Mac expertise helped because I picked up on forums that 3 major repairs was usually enough to argue for a replacement (or similar, the details are hazy with time).
A rough introduction, but he's now the proud owner of many, many iPods, multiple iPhones, Airports, iMacs and Macbooks and probably going to get an iPad.
I'm sure there are stats available that would reveal exactly who is more likely to sell a defective device rather than rely on anecdotes.
What I am happy to offer as an anecdote is that there is clearly a certain kind of Apple purchaser, who even when returning a faulty product(!), will managed to convince themselves that Apple has some magical process that is unavailable to any other company, when generally almost everything they do (excepting the rare flash of brilliance) is fairly bog standard and boring, if not inferior to the competition (e.g. A4 is slightly worse than Samsung's sister chip in it's phones, PPC was in later days much slower than intel except in carefully staged Altivec bake-offs).
All PC makers are buying from the same place so of course one isn't going to be much better than the other. The difference is in customer service and extras (e.g. that fantastic touchpad on the mac book line).
I had a Dell with a faulty touchpad - it took 12 TWELVE onsite visits to fix it. That included 2 visits where the tech had been given the wrong part and 2 to replace parts that had been broken by the previous tech.
Every visit was a new person, none of them knew that the part they were swapping had already been swapped 6times before - until finally they stopped swapping the touchpad and replaced the motherboard.
But the info that this release MB was faulty was all over the net - it was only Dell that was unaware of it.
Every time a skilled technician (InfoCare business support in Norway) would arrive within the time frame specified in the support contract, change the motherboard and make sure everything worked smoothly.