A New Support Headache for Apple -- and Mac Fans?

(MoneyWatch)  I've written extensively about Apple's major hardware problems that seem to show up more often than the fanboys would care to admit. Now we've gone from iPhones and iPods overheating to apparent big issues with hard drives on the MacBook Pro.

Om Malik yesterday wrote about being on his third MacBook Pro already within about six weeks. First one machine seized -- a hard drive failure. Then another did. And a third.

I am not even angry anymore ?€" I have lost the data, I have lost my time and more importantly, I have lost my trust in Apple and its hardware. As an unabashed fan boy of Apple products ?€" that is the worst part of this whole ordeal.Now I can understand it can happen with any PC ?€" not just Macs ?€" but then PCs cost a lot less than Apple machines. And no ?€" three machines in a row don't malfunction. And please don't tell me -- bad luck. Bad luck is buying a winning lottery ticket and losing it in a laundromat.

As Malik notes, the traditional market position that Apple took was charging more for a better product. Interestingly enough, his experience is coming at the same time that the new Mac commercials are effectively indicating a different positioning, not as something superior to a PC, but as simply a better PC. The question that came to my mind was whether, by only doing what PCs are supposed to do, but supposedly without the problems, Macs could claim a premium price. But if more consumers are going to experience these types of problems with Apple products, it could be that the possibility of premium positioning would go out the window completely. It will be interesting to see how Apple tries to deflect this particular bit of bad news, and to also see how the set of consumers beyond the fanboys using its products react.

Image via stock.xchng user goroo, site standard license.