I don't think it's hitachi as much as it is the way macbooks use them.

I think I agree with you. My laptop gets VERY hot - I know for a fact, they all do. I also know for a fact that hard disks dont like getting hot.

I had thought the hard drive failed when really it was just my third party memory had failed

Interesting point. I upgraded my iBook via Apple and it was, as you say, ludicrous, however it did mean that if ANYTHING went wrong, Apple would be to blame rather than my own stupidity for static sparking the hardware or something equally annoying - like debugging hard disk failure based on RAM failure.

I also agree that, generally speaking, their products are of VERY high quality and its unfair to brand all their products as unreliable due to a few issues with a set of hard disks.