I have been using apple products for a long time now, and it seems that for every apple product I buy I manage to find a flaw. whether its iPhones that have scratches and chips out of the box, iPads with uneven tone of the display (one area water than the other), or a MacBook with the lid shifted compared to the base. my experience is that no apple product will be perfect out of the box, and that trying to get a replacement is not worth the hassle as the replacements as well are not perfect out of the box. and lets not talk about fiascos like the butterfly keyboard which was kept alive for way too long.
now, if it was a mid-range tech company, where the products were cheaper, that would have made sense, but the apple brand is synonymous with quality and luxury, and for the price they charge for their products - wouldn't it have made sense to accept no less than perfection? to expect more rigorous quality control?
maybe people who have insight on how apple and similar companies do quality control can shed some light on that, and on why the end result often doesn't seem to match Apples reputation?
Apple has had quality control issues in the past like any other firm.
I can recall shoddy keyboards, disintegrating cables, wonky power supplies, lousy antennae, and now that we're entering an economic slow down, I can see cost cutting getting too severe.
What has also changed is Apple overthinking the plumbing. A great example is putting an angle sensor in laptop lids to determine if the unit is closed. Of course it's a more complicated piece just for no reason and will fail more than a plain old magnetic sensor.