Have any of you sad fucks ever met someone who was deaf? Or do you just mock them from afar, as though they were retarded and couldn't understand you anyway?

People like YOU are the reason some in the deaf community would rather maintain a separate existence. It's hard to blame them.

Holy cow, CONSENSUS!!!

I was definitely lobbing cluster bombs when I should have been sniping; I DO believe that when you pay for a Mac you're paying for the "lifestyle brand" at least as much as the quality, but anything I can say about the technical aspects is repeated third-hand.

Contract law is in serious flux these days, and it's unclear how courts will treat certain of the provisions in question. A lot of it depends on what circuit you're in, because the Supreme Court has consistently denied cert. on these questions. I definitely stand by the "watch your ass" comment, because we ALL have a lot more to lose than the companies we're buying from.

I should have known better than to bring real world issues into a tech forum.

I renounce anything I said about the quality of one platform versus another. Happy now, douchebags? Will you FINALLY be able to see the point now?

Do I want you to keep going? No, for christ's sake. I want you to shut up for a minute and think about what you're actually dealing with. You, like the rest of the users of this forum, would apparently prefer "benevolent" dictatorship to real legal protection.

Learn something about law, economics, and practical transactional practice before you spout some bullshit anecdotal evidence like it's scripture. Hell, I've owned 5 PCs, and I've NEVER had an issue that wasn't user-created (I make mistakes all the time, and I'm not afraid to admit it). The fan on my notebook died last month and Acer repaired the unit for free within 10 business days, including shipping (from PA to TX and back). I've NEVER had to reboot either my notebook or my desktop in the middle of a project, for any reason whatsoever. I've been extremely happy with the customer service I've received all around. But I STILL make sure to send a arbitration- and forum-selection-clause-cancelling disclaimer to any software or hardware manufacturer I deal with. What does all that prove?

Not a damn thing, unless, apparently, you're one of these fools who's never bothered reading a contract....

Seven caps-lock words in 3 messages, in a total of at least 3000 characters.

Sure, I need to relax.

Zoara, you have no idea what you're talking about either. You're apparently one more market whore among millions. Have YOU ever read a EULA carefully? One shouldn't need a legal education to realize that one is being anally raped with no vaseline virtually every time one clicks "I agree."

We can't afford to relax anymore. We can't afford to trust hardware or software manufacturers. The vast disconnect between corporate sellers and private consumers, at least in the technology realm, has led to a culture where all of us assume extraordinary liability without gaining any legal ownership rights. If you think I need to relax about this, then you're just not paying enough attention. Start with your critical reading skills. Then, once you've figured out what's really going on, feel free to attack me. Until then, worry about your own ass.

You missed my point AGAIN. This is about arbitration clauses in contracts of adhesion. Clearly that's something YOU know nothing about. If you had a clue, you'd realize that it's much bigger than pissing contests about operating systems.

Your nonsensical, ungrammatical rant about customer service at car dealerships underscores this perfectly. The issue is not about which companies have better customer service, and how that affects the market. It's about what happens when customer service fails the customer, and what options the customer has. Just like with Gateway, the Apple customer is shit out of luck. Frankly it's almost a miracle the iPod battery plaintiffs were allowed to proceed as a class; the license agreements expressly prohibited class action, and Apple's lawyers filed thousands and thousands of pages of motions against it. They don't want to make the world a better place, jackass. They want your money, just like everybody else, and they've proven that they'll lie, cheat, and manipulate to get it.

Have you ever bothered to READ a EULA or a form contract before agreeing? I mean really read it, carefully, with attention to the interactions between the clauses. You might be shocked what you've agreed to. And just because it hasn't bitten you in the ass yet doesn't mean it won't. Then you'll come running to an attorney like me, begging for help, and s/he'll derive particular satisfaction from charging you $200/hr to help you out of the hole you dug by making foolish assumptions about the relationship between anecdotal customer service experiences and your legal rights.

Of course, count on the Mac fanboys to seize on one tossed-off sentence and ignore the POINT.

What was the POINT, you ask!? The point is that Apple's contracts generally contain potentially unenforceable arbitration clauses too. If you complained about your Apple product, and they were unresponsive (it DOES happen), you'd run into the same trouble as this poor bastard if you tried to sue them.

A couple stories about good customer service from Apple don't disprove a damn thing. Hell, I've heard stories about good service from Gateway. This story's about an arbitration clause in a contract of adhesion, which is WAY more important than your constant desire to fellate Steve Jobs. Count on you guys to miss the point; your eyes must have teared up when he pushed down on the back of your heads.

Gateway is garbage. But SO IS MAC! So get over it, jackasses. Macs are now PCs in prettier boxes with more expensive, less versatile (for the power user) operating systems.

Anyway, Dan's only half-right about Gateway's contracts. Judge Easterbrook ruled in favor of Gateway on several of those in-box contracts. The circuits are split. The only reason it doesn't come up so much anymore is because it's all either click-thru on purchase or on initial boot, and because Gateway's actually (supposedly? dunno, haven't researched thoroughly) changed the relevant clause in the contract.

The relevant clause, of course, is the arbitration clause. These are generally the most controversial in any contract. Used to be, Gateway's clause specified ICC arbitration, which meant the parties had to pay a non-refundable $2000 fee to the ICC in Paris (obviously worth significantly more than almost any Gateway computer) and appear before a panel in Chicago. In addition, Gateway got to choose 2 of 3 arbitrators. THOSE clauses have been almost universally rebuked. The question now is what exactly DOES the clause specify?!?

If there's a legal lesson to be learned, though, it's that American judges are much more likely to ignore or strike arbitration clauses in end-user consumer contracts than in business transactions. But like all law, nothing's clear or certain and there are no guarantees. Watch your asses (ever read a Mac contract, you sycophants? Steve Jobs owns your souls).

Aye, this is what happens when MBAs and young "marketing professionals" are given too much discretion to *ahem* adapt a classic brand.

As I understand, the company's been called "iRiver" for more than a decade, their name appearing concurrently or even preceding the iMac, the first "iWhatever" consumer product I remember. Or...iRemember?