I own a MBP, and my battery did balloon, but Apple replaced it right away, no questions asked. As for the other host of problems, yeah, I bet some machines have had them, but not the majority, or even a large minority. Plus, Apple has been really bent over backwards to replace faulty hardware, doing as much as swapping out whole logic boards for some of the hissing problems.

And it's not like other manufacturers don't have problems with their own machines. I just think Apple gets a bad rap for whatever reason. Have a problem like a battery ballooning or a computer making strange noises with Dell or HP, and I doubt they would do too much about it.

Just my two cents.