Not in defense or to the detriment of anyone, just some observations from my 44+ years working in manufacturing. If the top brand is so good, hows come everyone uses brand "X"? As in, there can be no question that the lousiest operating system is also the most common, called windoze, other wise famous for the 'blue screen of death". When a company grows, their quality control usually will degenerate to kwalitie kentraul, and nobody inside the company will note the difference. The more products a company offers, the better chance that some of them will be of no worth at all. In ALL industries, the quality control or quality assurance personel are looked at by management as overhead, something to eliminate. I won't make any exceptions here, the inspectors produce only paperwork that is of importance only to other inspectors. The managers don't want to see a breakdown of "These products failed because of this defect", they want to see a chart that shows output increasing and cost decreasing. The only manager that is concerned with what leaves the factory is the manager of quality control, and he's usually only looking at his budget compared to the total facility budget. The peon inspector is probably the only one that is really concerned with the quality, but it's his job if he lets something past or misses something. Add to this that the latest trend at the time I retired, or tossed in the towel, was to make the inspector, assembler, repair man, ONE AND THE SAME, and he's on piecework. Poor quality is always a management decision, and the bigger and more prolific the company, the more likely to happen. 3% is considered an acceptable rejection rate in most industries, which means 97% are satisfied, but doesn't mean the 3% are crackpots. Just generalized remarks, directed at no one.