I also had a serious issue with my new MacBook Pro I purchased for business use.

Upon arrival, it constantly froze for between 2 to 30 seconds during any kind of task. Extremely frustrating and disruptive to productivity. I took it back to the Apple Store, and they told me they needed to swap the hard disk.

Fine. Time Cost : Trip during business hours to the Apple store, and perhaps 2 hours waiting around. 1-2 days without PC. Backup/restoration of all backup data.

After this, I went to the Apple store and got the computer back, and took it back to the office. It was exactly the same as it was before - constantly freezing.

I took it back again. This time, they said it must be the logic board. I argued this - a lot of other people on the Apple forums are also complaining, and they say it's due to incompatibilities by having shock detection systems on both the hard disk and the MacBook Pro itself.

In the end, Apple said fine, let us take the PC and run tests on it. Within 1 or 2 days, we'll know what the problem is, and we'll be able to fix it.

Well, I asked, how long will it take you to fix it after you figure out exactly what the problem is?

About a week, they replied.

This is when I started to get a bit upset. This machine I bought for business is not capable of performing the simplest of tasks, and they want 8-10 days to fix it?

Further, it has a serious work preventing problem, and Apple causally asks for a full week diagnosing and fixing this laptop, which I need to use daily for business tasks.

I complained, and eventually got them to simply replace pretty much everything in the PC (HDD again, logic board, memory).

They then said "Alright, because you have a built-to-order machine, we don't have the parts here. We'll need to send it out, and it'll take about 5 days."

Upsetting. I naturally complained again.

"You should get the business pack. It only costs 20,000 yen (or something along these lines), and you get priority service for a year. You'll get your laptop back in 1 day. All the businesses have this."

Once again, upsetting. To have wasted days of my time trying to get Apple to fix it, and then to be hit with a surcharge for them to fix a problem in a reasonable time frame that is likely THEIR fault in the first place!!

I complained, spoke to a manager, and had this fee waived, and they promised to return it within a day. Finally, this was a satisfying solution.

I submitted my laptop, had it back the next day, and still had freezes, but they weren't as bad. I almost went off Apple forever, but then a few weeks later they introduced some firmware changes that cleared up my problem.

Now I am very happy with my laptop, and I believe it's the best machine I've ever used.

However, I couldn't help but compare my experiences with "AppleCare" and how they support their flagship business laptop, to any experience I've had with the most basic PC configurations from Dell.

Dell will come on-site almost immediately, fix things quickly and efficiently, quickly ship replacements of broken equipment or broken PCs/Laptops.

It's a dream to get support from Dell.

But look out if you have an Apple machine you plan to use for business.