Replace failed Hard Drives for all Minis out of warranty?

Question

I bought a mini in March 2005 and the Hard Drive has now failed. Ok, I am aware it is out of warranty but if all those minis on here are having hard drive faults surely apple should replace them?
Well we can but wish ....

Answer 1

All?
We don't know for sure how many minis have been sold in the (almost) three years they have been in production, but it's reasonable to think there have been a very large number. In comparison to that volume, the number of failures of hard drives reported here seems remarkably low - certainly nothing that would indicate a generic problem or failure.
To be sure, as with any mass production, there are some units which are either faulty or contain faulty components, and Apple should stand by those products and make them good. By and large they appear to do so. However, a drive failure after almost three years of use would not be something you could typically expect them to take responsibility for - particularly not in the absence of widespread reports of failures of the same drives in other systems. The rather sporadic reports we see here and elsewhere don't really rise to that standard by any interpretation.