To some extent I think things have gotten a bit shoddier, but thats true of electronics in general. Electronics companies like Apple are not building virtually everything in China from day one, and the labor costs in these situations are basically zero. It costs about a penny to pay some poor woman to put together an iPod, but it costs several dollars just to advertise it. Since the customer will just run out and buy a new model when their stuff brakes, Apple doesn't see it worth the financial investment to up the sub-slave wages they pay their workers, and we know their moral fiber isn't going to compel them.
This has also happened to Nintendo. Their handhelds are just not as reliable as they used to me. The DS Lite for example, as wonderful as it is, is also the most poorly built product Nintendo has ever made. It used to be that initial runs of Nintendo stuff was always built in Japan until they had the process perfected, then they'd move production overseas. The Wii was built %100 in China from day one.
Sony stuff seems to have actually gotten shittier, if that was at all possible.
As for Leopard costing too much...I don't know what that's about. Isn't it $129? The same price as 10.4, 10.3, 10.2, etc, and isn't that still far cheaper than Windows? Maybe I'm missing something. Until I get a 1TB drive I don't see the point in Leopard since Time Machine is the coolest feature, and that eats more HD space than Final Cut Pro, so I'm holding off.
Another thing about these anecdotal Apple complaints you have to consider is Apple has a lot of new customers, and I think a lot of them are just retarded noobs who don't know WTF they are doing complaining about shit that might not even be broken, they just don't know what's going on. Basically, Windows users. So now Apple has some Windows users using OSX, they are going to have Windows users complaints too.
All I can say is that I use OSX exclusively at home, and I love it. Nero would be nice, but since its only needed for pirating PCE games, I can't really count that as a strike against the machine/OS.
My only problems with Apple are the same they have been for ages; 1) they make software that obsolesces their hardware too often, 2) they remove features then make a big deal when they bring them back as if they were new or something (see iMovie).
