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Why Everyone Loves Apple
realtorperson writes "Why, at least the Apple users, love Apple? According to a recent article, the pure and simple reason is customer service and overall experience. The author writes, 'When Apple competitors are focused on cost reduction to increase profitability, Apple is investing resources to enhance its relationship with its customers. To me, that's impressive. Unfortunately, there are too many companies in the market that could care less about their customers, but Apple is determined and committed in delivering the experience and not just the product.
It's regrettably amusing that Apple competitors are working hastily to develop iPod clones to reap in success, but what many of them fail to comprehend is that it's not necessarily the iPod that makes Apple successful, but rather its customer service.'"
Unfortunately - its customer is RIAA, not us the people who buy & use their products.
I'll certainly get modded down for this, but consider this scenario:
I'm in a garage band, I've got about 1000 mp3s of clips, samples, bits of me noodling around on my guitar or keyboard, live performanaces of the band, etc. I keep them all on my ipod. The other band members have similar large collections.
We all go round to the drummer's house to have a jam, we all have our ipods with us. Now - we should be able to pool all our music together. But try doing it using iTunes - its on the verge of impossible (in fact most ipod owners are afraid to plug their ipod in to someone's computer in case all the files are delete)
At least in this case, Apple has chosen the interests of large corporations over the interests of its consumers...
My pics.
It's spelt A S T R O T U R F.
How is it a bad thing if other companies could care less about their customers ? I'd hate to a customer of a company which did care less about me than one of those that could do but didn't.
I recently had to take my Intel Mac Mini back to the London Regent Street store after a problem booting up. Unfortunately it was one day after the 14-day refund and replace guarantee had expired. They said, 'oh well, 15 days is close enough', and they replaced it there and then on the spot, and transferred all my data on to the new machine on the same day. I don't think I've ever experienced anything like that with any other company ever.
Yeah, cause it couldn't be a combination of a lot of things, including solid hardware, a useful interface/software, thoughtful design, good marketing, adequate customer service, and having the right product at the right time...it couldn't simply be that complex.
Nope, Apple must have some special secret. And all it'll take for some other company to pull the rug out from under them is to find that magic bullet, that one key aspect of their success, and then an iPod killer can truly be born.
Dammit, some people are stupid.
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
Apple's success clearly lies in marketing its products, which is what Steve Jobs is good at; this covers not only creating a buzz at media events or seeding the iPod so that it is "cool," but to give clueless journalists who write articles which are featured on slashdot the impression that they offer some magically better quality of service.
My 3D Texturing Skinning work (under construction)
Well, I'm rather worried about those that couldn't.
Gravitation is a theory, not a fact.
If you have a problem with one of their systems or an iPod (like I did) you can damn well forget it unless the problem becomes widespread enough to hit popular tech pages.
Apple is a corporation, it is not Steve Jobs, it is not warm and cuddly. If Apple loved their customers then Apple would not charge such a premium for their systems. The fact is, Apple loves to exploit, and rightfully so, their position with their customers. They have worked long and hard to create their image and they sure as hell ain't going to let the profit it generates slip by.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
I've been into computers for 20 years. Never once have I needed to call a customer service for a home computer (This probably goes for alot of people). Exactly what is it they do so well? Why does Apple users need customer service so badly.
Sure if I bought a notebook and the motherboard breaks every week I would also like good customer service, as I understand it iBooks are like that.
I have two dead iPods and a dead iBook to show for my experiment with Apple. One died just out of warranty, the replacement I bought had the drive go with less than a month left on the warranty. The replacement came, and turns out had a bad dock connector. Unfortunately they wouldn't honor a warranty on the replacement and in the two remaining weeks of the warranty, I didn't happen to use the replacement. So now I've got two dead iPods.
I also have a iBook that died with the extremely common logic board failure two months out of warranty... a problem that they extended the warranty coverage for on the G3 iBooks, but didn't do on the G4 even though its a very common problem.
Apple was the reason I left ten years of Linux use as my primary desktop OS behind, and Apple is the reason I'll be going back.
Why I gave up on Apple: A tale of unrequited love
http://world.std.com/~swmcd/steven/rants/mac.html
Unfortunately, there are too many companies in the market that could care less about their customers
;). The phrase is "Couldn't care less". As in, it's not possible to care less than they do. "Could care less" implies that they could actually care less than they do. Why is this so hard for people to get right?
Ok, I've got karma to burn
Oh no... it's the future.
... the phrase is 'could NOT care less'. If you COULD care less, that means you do care and have room for treating your customers worse, doesn't it?
Please allow me to utter a short yelp of annoyance.
Ignoring the fact not everyone loves Apple I can't help feeling that a lot of people just love to support the underdog. I'm fairly OS independant, in that I use whatever I need to use to get the job done (Linux, Apple, MS) but I will say that experience tends to tell me that Apple fans tend to be the most rabid about it.
:)
On that subject... does anyone know why people feel they have to defend their choice to the extent that they lose all rational capability? It seems to be the same with games consoles. I know very few people that have a PS2 and an Xbox - Most people seem to go for one or the other then rant about how much the other one sucks. I find it kinda confusing as I liked aspects of all the last gen consoles so I bought them all when the price dropped.
Not yet decided on the next gen.
People that believe in their opinions don't post AC.
It's regrettably amusing that Apple competitors are working hastily to develop iPod clones to reap in success, but what many of them fail to comprehend is that it's not necessarily the iPod that makes Apple successful, but rather its customer service.
So many are trying to copy the result of Apple's innovation, and so few are actually trying to copy the concept of innovation. There is the reason Apple has been around for so many years, and why the iPod knockoffs will be gone next year.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
So Apple's customer service happened to get way better right when the iPod was released?
Customer service may be a (small) part of the experience, but don't go claiming that iPod competitors are chasing a pie in the sky.
Most Mac users I know, including myself, have never called customer service.
This is absolutely true. I've bought many macintosh computers for the companies I have owned and worked for.
During lean times we would use eBay to buy computers and equipment for employees. One occasion in particular I bought a strawberry iMac as a work station for a designer advertised as new in the box only to find out the machine was two years past the date of manufacture. As a matter of policy, Apple only honors the warranty within I believe 90 days of the date of manufacture. After a few attempts to repair the machine unsuccessfully, Apple replace it with a new (at the time) iMac that had much better specifications at no charge. Just recently, they gave me a lot of good advice and support on a lemon iMac I received from MacMall.
I value customer service primarily because I pride myself on giving it - and it's nice to deal with a company then genuinely seems to care about it's customers. I'm an Apple customer for life partially because I prefer their product, but mostly because they treat me like a human being instead of a credit card number.
The iBook that eventually died had its on-board memory fail six months into the warranty period.
When I brought it to the apple store, the fix they did (after trying to convince the bonehead that it was supposed to have 256 meg of RAM and not 128) was to replace the 128 meg SODIMM with a 256 meg one... something I didn't notice until I went to put a 512 in there. So my defective logic board wasn't replaced even when it WAS under warranty.
It's regrettably amusing that Apple competitors are working hastily to develop iPod clones to reap in success, but what many of them fail to comprehend is that it's not necessarily the iPod that makes Apple successful, but rather its customer service.
It's not specifically the service but the end-to-end experience. Everyone else is working on great music players, but they cannot control the music download and management experience as well.
$nice = $webHosting + $domainNames + $sslCerts
I had a problem with a recent iTunes patch, long story short it broke all DRM-ed music playback on my PC but not on the iPod. Tried all the standard bits, uninstall, reinstall, looked up help page...
..." and they sent back a cookie cutter "You can't convert to WMA" ...
Sure Apple did have a help page for the problem but it didn't help one tiny bit.
So I contacted them. Said something like "DRM protection music is distorted during playback as suggested by an apple help page(URL); MP3, WMA, and CD Audio playback works just fine
This is just yet another company that doesn't give too hoots enough to read what you send them or to respond on their forums. The article is talking a whole load of bull from my experiences with apple up to this point.
If you ask me, the company with the single best customer service is Amzon(.co.uk). They don't bull you... They are MORE than fair, and don't make you jump though hoops.
Forget about the pathetic 14 day in store refund rubbish, that's only if you change your mind and decide you don't want it.
I've been an Apple fan for the past two years since buying my first Apple product, an iBook, in early 2004 (I've since entirely switched). Still, 99% of my love for Apple is for OS X, and I wouldn't agree that their customer service is amazing.
/warranty/.
Consider that all their machines come with a year's warranty. You can buy AppleCare within the first twelve months, so it makes sense to not buy AppleCare at day one and rely on the warranty for the first year. The problem is, they make it really hard to work out who to talk to in that first year. AppleCare comes with a phone number and all the details, but if you don't have AppleCare, working out who to call regarding your warranty requires some digging. Put it this way, if you trawl through their support site(s), everything is pitched at AppleCare and there are no specific references to who to call regarding the
My iBook had a fault at age 11 months. Whenever you opened the screen beyond 90 degrees, it cut out. I eventually worked out a number at Apple (which goes to Ireland) and waited in the queue. I eventually found out that Apple didn't actually do the servicing. They gave me a URL to find a local 'approved' repair center for Macs. Turns out my nearest one was 2 hours away so I called them up. They told me to bring the machine in and they could sort it out under warranty. They also said I could send it in, but I'd have to pay all the costs and insurances, etc.. which came to more than actually going there. Eventually I decided against it, ripped open the machine myself, and found a wire was getting caught in the hinge, which was easily fixed.
So it ended well, but not thanks to Apple at all. However, they've opened an actual Apple store about 90 minutes away from here now, so it won't be so bad in future, but still.. it felt that without AppleCare, Apple were more interested in getting rid of me than fostering a customer who'd go on to spend thousands on Apple products.
You're right, it is 'basic consumer rights', but how many other companies do you know who would have kicked up a fuss, or got the machine fixed, probably with a 2 week+ turnaround?
That really irks the hell out of me too!
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
I think Pear is much better.
200GB/2TB $7.95 Coupon: SAVE90DOLLAR
I don't love Apple.
Like you said, the customers service is nothing special, and arguably worse than companies like Dell, which operate in a market with more severe competition (the windows PC).
The Apple II was pretty cool, but the 25 years of unjustified media hype and the attitude of Mac fanatics have really spoiled the Apple brand for me
I love Apple's products - have been using them since my grad school bought a bunch of 512K "Fat Macs" (dating myself here). But, customer service was never the reason. In fact, during those 20 years or so I don't think I've ever had to call or deal with Apple customer service once. Of course, maybe THATS the reason I like them so much...
IMO, the real reason why Apple users love Apple is that their products just work (tm). The hardware and software work together -- there's no fussing with drivers, with inoperable configurations, with non-supported features. The user interface is consistent, and the physical products are seemingly sturdy and well thought out.
In Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, this is known as quality. Apple has it. Sony used to have it. Microsoft has never had it.
Support a few technologists in Washington.
So when Apple initially refused to acknowledge that their new iPod Nanos would scratch easily, where exactly was good customer service being practised?
Height: 38U, Weight: 0 Newtons, Eyes: #0000FF, OS: Gray Matter 1.0 (Alpha)
Free blowjobs for Apple users at the Genius counter. Ask for Ken.
Funnily enough I was on the phone to Apple last night, I have three ongoing problems with my 2 yr old powerbook. I purchased Applecare so I thought I'd phone them and see if they could resolve the issues.
... (I wish)
1) Finish around the keyboard, to the right of the trackpad, has worn away. Cosmetic wear, not covered by Apple.
2) Keys on the left side of the keyboard have a very different feel than those on the right, it makes it uncomfy to type and is really annoying. Ergonomic issue, not covered by Apple.
3) One of the feet is missing underneath. Apple covered, they are sending me 8 feet so that I have spares.
While the support was nice, polite and friendly I found the whole expreience pretty pointless, and now I'm wondering why I bothered with Applecare at all. OK I can understand 1 not getting covered, but 2? The keyboard is fundamental. Apple, feel free to mail me and set things right
Apple's Steve throws frisbees, not chairs.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
From my own experience of dealing with Apple support, this is simply bs.
My ibook didn't boot anymore and it wasn't only incredibly expencive to fix it (if you are out of warranty, you'll pay a fixed price, even if the fix only consists of exchanging a 5 cent piece in 2 minutes, now ain't that great), but it took weeks and weeks before Apple was able to fix the problem and finally send me my ibook back.
I know this is just annecdotal evidence, but at least for me it's clear that Apple's support sucks and I'll never ever buy an Apple product again.
Seriously, with articles titled "Why Everyone Loves Apple" you wonder if Apple is a company or some sort of religious cult. Its this kind of stuff that turns me off to buying anything from Apple.
Let's be honest, Apples cost a heck of a lot more than most PCs so it should have better customer service by default.
I think one reason people like Apple is that they have very well-designed products, they don't get as many viruses as PCs, and they claim to be an 'outsider' in the computer world. It is considered 'cool' to be seen with an Apple product - just put on your white earbuds and you are noticed.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Oh, that's easy: many people lack self-esteem and don't want to be ridiculed for the choices they make. It applies to everything -- editors (vi! emacs!), desktop environments (kde! gnome!), operating systems (Windows! Mac OS! Unix! Linux!), consoles (Sony! Microsoft! Nintendo!), politics (Fill in your own damn names!), you name it. If there are two or more choices, sooner or later an argument will break out about it.
Any challenge to any choice can be conflated into personal insult by the right (or rather, sufficiently wrong) person, requiring a response, usually visceral and insulting. And there's an even stranger response on the part of some designers, where they simultaneously insult a product for being clunky and hard to use at the same time as they're lifting UI elements for use in the version of the app that they're designing.
The only exception I can think of is U.S. mobile phone service. ("My service sucks more." "No, I have worse coverage." "Maybe, but at least you don't have as many dropped calls as I do!" Etc.)
You cannot truly appreciate Dilbert until you read it in the original Klingon.
Not that perception isn't an important thing. I mean people seem satisfied with their Apple product, they don't mind the slight price premium. At least for their computer products, you have something akin to a luxury market (Jaguar, BMW for cars) where people not only buy a state of the art product but also an experience, a peace of mind, a fashion statement, a satisfaction guarantee, etc.
Anybody who try to compete head to head with Apple on price alone is bound to fail since that isn't their market. Now, today, it seems like a niche market, but I would be surprised if (at least in the computer industry, since it has probably already happened in numerous industries before) that is actually a growing market. I wouldn't be surprised if 5 years for now the "Quality of Experience" market takes a sizeable chunk of the overall computer market and able is had the head of this "revolution". It's been tried before in the computing industry (Gateway maybe) but Apple has the acumen to deliver that experience.
Another thing is that Apple sells you ways to do *new* things with your computer that are simple and powerful. Last time it was so apparent was in the 80s where families were eager to enter into the personal computer bandwagon. It seems to be repeating now.
I love apple because its Shiney... Mmmm Shiney...
-- Josh
"Whoopie! Man, that may have been a small one for Neil, but that's a long one for me!" - Pete Conrad
I've been an Apple customer for almost 20 years, and a big fan of the Mac. However, I don't buy their products because of Apple's wonderful customer service --- frankly, it SUCKS!
.mac subscriber since day one, but there's really no customer support. Compare this with Google's Gmail or Blogger, where my concerns are addressed immediately. Certainly other examples abound.
One example, I've been a
I work in an institute with apple user computers ( servers are something with a good service, so no apple). We get a good deal, because of our user base size, but they are still able to ship us comps with US power adapters (try them in europe), again and again.
Tiger didn't run some of the software we are using, our problem... They ship all new iBooks, etc. with Tiger, whereas some of the two year old modells doesn't run Tiger, that's called support hell.
And while the Mac shops in U.S. may be good (I don't know) you barely see some here and occasionally you get the impression they are run by, well, apple fanboys...
Wasn't there this problem with these ipod batteries...
"People who are willing to sacrifice essential freedoms for security deserve neither freedom nor security."
B F
I can't say if Apple's Customer Service is better than others but at least here in France I haven't had any major problems, especially if you take the Apple Care plan that costs a little extra.
They certainly try really hard on the phone to be polite and helpful.
Except for on time when I called during the night (their Customer Service is 24/24h,7days) and obviously there was no native French speakers left in the Call center. The woman who took the call spoke in French that was not so great, to the point that she insisted the number 3 which was part of the serial number, was not 'trois' as in French but 'drei' as in German.
What I managed to do with Apple's Customer Service recently :
1.
I recently bought an iBook and only 2 weeks later a new model came out.
I called the Apple Store where I bought the iBook, and they agreed to ship me the new model in exchange of the old one. All done by UPS on their charge.
The only hassle was that they had to reimburse me for the old one and I had to order the new one again which was fine because the new model was cheaper.
2.
My Airport Express access point died on me several months after the warranty. Apple replaced it with a new one, no questions asked.
My advice, if you're into Apple hardware, buy from the Apple Store and at least for laptops make sure you take the extended 3 year warranty - the Apple Care Plan.
A hungry bear does not dance!
Don't believe me? Why is that people were actually wearing just the ear buds when the iPod was becoming popular? Image. During the switch campaign, all of the folks that I saw in the adds were the all blck wearing, pierced noses, and other younger folks who looked really cool. I didn't see any folks in business suits talking about ROI or how it made their organization much more profitable - like you see in IBM, Oracle, SAP, etc... ads.
Is Apple really that much better than any other computer out there? I haven't seen any compelling evidence for that. I would agree that as recent as the mid-90's, Apple was superior, but now, I don't see it. Prove me wrong - please. I have to say that Apples are much nicer looking than anything out there. And I think Jobs knows this. Jobs is a genius when it comes to marketing. He made a brilliant move with the "flavor" iMacs years ago. I thought those machines were crap to use - it was slow and OS 9 crashed and hung a lot. OS X works much better on them, but it's still slow. But they sure looked great!
I haven't tried the new machines, yet. I'm not in the market for a new machine, but when I am, beleive me, I will look at Apple again. I do like the fact that all of the dev tools are free! Unlike the other OS company.
Saturday is April 1. Slashdot will be shut down. Sorry for the inconvenience.
I don't personally know much about Apple customer service, because I haven't ever had to deal with Apple's Customer service. If you'll read some of the responses lower in this article, you'll find that my situation isn't particularly atypical.
/.), certain very specific programs just don't work. If Macs weren't good in the first place, why would anybody buy a Mac?
6 5548298&q=microsoft+ipod), but the reason Apple is still around is because Macs are good computers, and smart people are willing to pay top dollar for quality.
I got started using Macs because that's what my dad used, way back in the day, and my consistent impression of the differences between Macs and Windows PCs has been that Apple, as it has been said, got "the whole widget" right. My iMac G5 works seamlessly with almost any peripheral that I've thought to buy for it, and for any Windows-specific NON-GAME program, I've been able to find a more than satisfactory equivalent.
I don't know how people get off on thinking that Apple products suck, and that Steve Jobs must be the best marketer ever born. There are disadvantages to having a Mac; I can't play all of the latest games, people look at my computer and assume I'm an idiot (CS Major, definitely know more than your average Joe, though I'm sure I'm in up to my ears here on
No, I didn't read the article; and I don't care to, because any writer who says that Macs are "just another computer", only "OH MY GOODNESS WOW THE RECEPTIONIST WAS NICE!" is missing the point. Steve Jobs is a very charismatic figurehead for Apple, and yes, Macs and iPods are marketed aggressively (but not beyond reason or taste, by contrast see http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=360995396
I've had about 5 dealings with Apples customer service and have had a bad experience each time. Every dealing with them has been a hassle of fighting for what i needed. In the end they always do whats right, but its a fight to get there.
Obviously milage will very, and i'm sure many people have had nothing but wonderful experiences
Luckily they make products that I want to use and are generally very reliable, else they would have lost me as a customer many years ago.
Okay okay okay, enough with the Apples already. I am a self proclaimed Apple fan-boy, but I am honest to myself and if Apple ever mess me around I will switch. The customer service is great, the products are great and Steve Jobs is a very clever little geek. The question should not be why is Apple popular amoungst its fans, the question should be where is the rest of the computing industry? Sony and Dell should be doing better than they are. Much better. It isnt about "market share" it is about sustainable profitability. Ben.
There's a myriad of reasons why people love Apple. Their products are very capable, very attractive, and they've grown a cult following over the years that has now become trendy. I find the trendiness annoying, but it's not completely undeserved. In a world where most products are completely unoriginal, poorly designed, with very poor asthetics, and usually go through several iterations before even working as they're supposed to, Apple delivers an appealing product that is reasonably well thought out on their first try.
Take the iPod(s). They're very capable, asthetically pleasing, and the interface is reasonable. Every other player on the market is littered with buttons instead of having a clean interface. STILL. There's a few players that are an attempt at a clean interface, but they have serious show-stopping flaws. Apple can thank their competitors incompetence, and laugh all the way to the bank. That doesn't seem to be changing either.
Mac? Honestly, I'm not a fan, but that's irrelevent. Compared to the fucking ghetto that is your average Windows desktop -- goddamnit! right out of the box Windows machines are litter with a metric fuckton of bullshit -- OS X looks like a dream come true. That irritates me, because I personally don't care for the OS X interface. But compared to the competition... And it comes with nice, simple, shiny, useful apps.
Customer service? Bahaha, Apple could completely close down any customer service at all and people would still buy Apple.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
1) Proprietary hardware makes outfitting a customized kick-ass solution a problem.
2) Everyone has a friggin Ipod now. Why can't Apple come up with a dorky, techy version of the ipod?
3) Ipod doesn't support Ogg files.
4) Apple DRM sucks
Any other reasons why you slashdotters out there HATE Apple?
People love Apple because they INNOVATE!
When was the last time Microsoft innovated? Windows? Nope, they copied that from Apple and Xerox. Word/Excel? Nope. DOS? Bought that from another company. I would think you have to go all the way back to Microsoft BASIC to see the last unique product that they created.
How about Apple? Apple I, Apple II, LISA, Mac, iMac, iPOD...
Creativity wins in the long run.
ttyl
Farrell
CAN-CON 2019 - Ottawa's only book oriented Science Fiction Convention! October 18-20, Sheraton Hotel, Ottawa, Canada h
Although their consumer products are great, the Enteprise support is a total loser. Answers like "You need to reload the OS from scratch", "There's a third party application/pci-card running, remove it off or I can't support you", "You need to reformat your 6 TB raid and restore from tape", and the painfully Windows-like "have you rebooted?" are just not enteprise-level support answers for a *NIX platform. Solaris, IRIX, AIX, and even RH support does not work this way. Apple really needs to fix their support, not laud it.
Gee, I was confused, I thought you were talking about Apple records!
nothing
being on my 6th replacement 4th Gen 40 GB iPod (and i treat it insanely gently), it is certainly not the product, but the fact that they cheerfully and apologetically replace the damned thing within a few minutes of my walking into the store. it is certainly not product quality that makes me want to stick with apple, it is the folks at my local apple store, who are knowledgeable and actually interested in the computers and other "thingies" they sell, and the knowledge that if i buy a lemon product, it is going to be replaced, period.
MORTAR COMBAT!
I would disagree with this article.
Apple is now just selling cheap commodity x86 hardware at a hiked up prices. Their customer service is absolutely terrible. I have looked after a network of apple machines, and had to deal with their evasive resellers who refuse to sell you parts, their inept customer support that only seems to be able to follow a list of things to tell unhappy customers, and their singularly unhelpful and arrogant attitude. Different is not necessarily better. Apple is just a commercial as microsoft, just as proprietrary as Microsoft, and just as greedy. Every day, apple makes dirty deposits of their anti-customer DRM on people computers, sucks customers money in for poor quality ipods that seem to have a very limited life, sells music you can't copy to your car mp3 player, and sells pretty computers that have not been through a process of even limited quality control, which when they break apple won't sell you parts for, and consequently, you will have to pay insane prices to have fixed. The problem of the cult of a few select crazed mac fanatics insisting everything is perfect also scares people away.
Their operating system is just a glossy and pretty layer over a fairly dated and ugly version of UNIX, based on a relatively outdated kernel that has serious problems with threading performance, seems to have issues with high network connection loads and TCP latency (try writing applications for it), and has a really horrible binary format and idiosynchratic APIs that are tied to the technological backwater of objective c.
I have had enough hearing or reading the views of cult of apple. Benchmark objectively with real workloads, and draw the conclusion for yourself. Xserves seem robust enough though, at least once they have Linux on them, and they make good number crunching clusters. Otherwise, stay away from apple and their dubious quality control.
Yep, Apple's nothing but a marketing company selling you DRM and overpriced computers.
Even Jobs is dumping his stock in Apple.
On that subject... does anyone know why people feel they have to defend their choice to the extent that they lose all rational capability?
They're human. There are fanboys for everything, some are more zealous than others, and some are more brainwashed than others.
It seems to be the same with games consoles. I know very few people that have a PS2 and an Xbox - Most people seem to go for one or the other then rant about how much the other one sucks. I find it kinda confusing as I liked aspects of all the last gen consoles so I bought them all when the price dropped.
In my experiences, I've actually found the opposite to be true, many people (eventually) buy both.
Humans just have a natural tendency to choose sides; ergo their side is the right side. You can see this in almost every market, but it seems most pronounced in technology: XBox vs Playstation, AMD vs Intel, ATI vs nVidia, etc. Politics is, of course, no exception.
This has got to be a joke. Apple CS sux just as bad as all the rest. I bought my son an iPod which after 2 days failed to power on, the battery overheated and died. It took 7 days to make an appointment with an *expert* who just replaced it on the spot. We walked into 5 apple stores and were told the same thing at all of them "You need to make an appt with an *expert*". They immediately assume that everyone is an idiot and if they need help they need to make an appt. Those of you who actually like the CS are most likely the same folks who don't need their support to begin with.
Why Everybody Loves Raymond
According to a recent article, the pure and simple reason is customer service and overall experience. The author writes, 'When Raymond competitors are focused on cost reduction to increase profitability, Raymond is investing resources to enhance his relationship with his customers. To me, that's impressive. Unfortunately, there are too many companies in the market that could care less about their customers, but Raymond is determined and committed in delivering the experience and not just the product. It's regrettably amusing that Raymond competitors are working hastily to develop clones to reap in success, but what many of them fail to comprehend is that it's not necessarily Raymond that makes him successful, but rather his customer service.'"
What's the easiest default configuration for most people?
:/ All it takes is two minutes of reading around to figure out how to get music files back off your iPod. If you are advanced enough to want to do that manually, you should be advanced enough to search around and figure out how.
:p
That's right - sync to the library on my computer! I'll bet this exceeds the 80/20 rule, but let's stick to that - if more than 20% of iPod users ever plug their iPod into more than one computer, I'll eat my iPod.
As for hiding the music directory on the iPod, what do novice users do all the time? clean up files! So I don't blame Apple from hiding the music files on the iPod either. I can't tell you how many windows and Mac computers both I have had to fix over the years from users who didn't know what they were doing, but just had to "tidy up"....
And if you do plug your iPod into a new computer, iTunes prompts you as to what to do, and warns you that if you sync it will wipe out all the existing music on your iPod. Heck, my mother figured it out when she plugged her iPod into my laptop so I could copy some files off of it.
So stop spreading the FUD... if Apple really cared about the "interests of large corporations" they would have gone to greater effort to prevent you from copying music files off than just hiding the directory
Unless you are trolling on slashdot
I have a 3rd generation Ipod, my sister has 4th gen, and my dad has a nano. Neither one of us had any contact with Apple's customer service. The reason we haven't, is because there was no reason to; the ipods work flawlessly. It's because of the Product, that I like Apple. I bought an Ipod because I wanted a good mp3 player, not because I wanted to talk to friendly customer support.
I myself have found that running a business is tough, not because of all the strenous work, not because of having to support customers, but in trying to sway customers your way and get them to stick with you. You can have the best intentions in the world and explain that you are on the customer's side and do all these great things for open source, but in the end customers will still treat your business like its the enemy and just go for the cheapest.
What Apple has is amazing and is not easy to get. Its not just a matter of projecting the image of being a hip company that is keen to the alternative way of thinking. Even if you mean it, that's not enough. You have to be consistent, put up with a lot of shit for a long time until you finally win. Especially since the majority of people really just care about price over their own principles.
What Apple has is rare and amazing. Truly loyal customers.
If Apple is so committed to support,
why are they sending support jobs to INDIA???
and fanboys with mod points.
I was with my cousin in an Apple store the other day. His PC died recently, and I suggested maybe it was wise to replace it with a Mac.
I started to show his daughter an 17 inch iMac with built-in web-camera. The computer comes with a program called Photo-Booth or something that allows the user to make funny pictures of herself with the camera (of course you all know it).
I was amazed - that iMac sold itself to this young teenager in 10 minutes. Not that she got it, but she talked of nothing else for the entire trip back home. The design, the feeling, the experience... it is just so very appealing. Apple design things the way people will want it when they try it.
"But... but... but... it's Apple! You can't say anything bad about T3h Appl3!"
All your sig are belong to us.
There is one side to this the writers overlooked. Years ago, you wanted an apple computer you went to the local computer shop. All of your service needs tech support etc was provided by your mac shop. It was a direct one to one relationship that spawned user group involvement and sence of "family" that really helped apple dominate a peice of the market. Apple knew this and maintained very good relations with their retailers.
Within the last 5 years something changed. Without warning, apple began competing with their mom and pop retailers. Opened their own retail shops, undercut retailers online and eliminated advertisement sharing. Look around, all those mac shops are gone. They attempted to squeeze and additional x% of revenue out of their retailers and cut the hand that fed them. To me it is no surprise their revenues are down and have continued to drop. Remember, they almost tanked a few years back if it were not for the generosity of Bill Gates...
Its a glowing article but my experience is different. I no longer have a close relationship with apple. The community is gone and I think their support sucks.
Most of what I see is kids living thru a fad. "i am cool because I dont run windows.." That me keep them afloat for a little while.
Hey! That's your problem! Obviously you're not running Linux on your iPod.
Unfortunately, there are too many companies in the market that could care less about their customers
So if they could care less it means that they do care a little, right? Except I don't think that's what the summary writer was trying to get at.
The phrase is couldn't care less. I.e. they care so little it is impossible to care even less than they do.
Bewilders me that a phrase that means the opposite of what is intended is coming into common usage.
...Did you mean Apple Computers or Apple Corp. I get them confused all the time.
Tom Caudron
http://tom.digitalelite.com
P.S. Yes, it's a joke. Laugh now.
-Tom
Having just called the local Apple Center in my town to ask about a Superdrive replacement to my MacMini all I got was "that will cost 500-600 Euro", appalled I replied that I would be better off buying a new one, the reply "that's the way we like it"... some service buddy...
I like the product but the retailers (in EU) have to learn that this is not the way to keep me coming. For what it's worth, I just ordered the damn drive myself online for significantly less and will end up installing it myself. I hope an Apple (EU) rep will read this thread and get the message. This is the last time I am fixing it myself. I am perfectly happy to switch back to *nix systems that I service myself, if the supposed convenience of Apple fails me, I will.
-if at first you don't succeed, stay the heck away from paragliding.
Everybody that I know that hates Apple hates them for the same reason that the dedicated users love them. The arguments are presented that in their attempts to deliver the best possible experience they "lock-out" their system. The integration causes their prices to be higher and that premium price isn't appreciated by the "average" consumer that is looking for the lowest price. The integration of hardware and software is viewed by the Apple haters as Steve Jobs just wanting to control everything so that he can screw over the customer rather than the desire to produce the single best user experience in the computer industry. Then there's the competition factor. When you're a Windows user and Apple keeps beating "your" company to the punch by continually innovating the industry, sometimes this threatens your "team", thereby threatening you.
Some people just don't understand. Some people are just cheap. Some people are afraid of change and innovation.
There are plenty of stories of AppleCare also totally screwing people over as well (ie: the outside of my powerbook is dented. The infamous logicboard problem occurs, but because there is cosmetic damage to the laptop, Apple refuses to fix it). I'm not saying that Apple is the devil, but they are hardly perfect.
I wouldn't call it great customer service when a company charges for support calls after 90 days. And it's not cheap either (50 euro as far as I've heard)
If you buy computer equipment at the premium Apple prices, you would expect free lifetime phone support. I understand that they have to charge for extended warranties after the first year, but having to whip out your credit card just to talk to someone after the first 3 months is purely ridiculous.
Don't get me wrong, I love my powerbook and I don't care myself because I can solve my own software issues. But I think it's very tight of Apple. This is NOT a reason to love Apple.
By the way, I work at a callcenter of a major computer peripheral manufacturer and we DO offer free lifetime telephone support. And 2 to 3 years free hardware warranty, depending on product type. If we can do it, so can Apple. No, I won't say which company.
I think there's a lot of antipathy out there for Apple. I happen to like some of their products, but I wouldn't say I "love" them, or any other company.
(%i1) factor(777353);
(%o1) 777353
Hey Neal,
You obviously havent had to deal with Apple
on a yearly/daily basis. Not to mention their
inability to support their older platform's
the list goes on and on..
Quit sucking up..
It is also, in large measure because people want to be part of an aesthetic elite. They want to be smarter than the masses. They want to belong to a club.
Apple is smart enough to be that club's totem. They have managed to get people to invest their desire to be smugly superior in a product and in Apple's products at that.
There are no flaming fanboys who defend, say, Wusthoff kitchen knives, regardless of the quality of those tools. Clearly, Apple has managed to insinuate itself in people's need to think themselves smarter than others in a way that other sold at a preimum products haven't.
This makes them largely immune to network effects: They can have 3% of the market (or whatever) and not find themselves made irrelevant by their competitor's 95% share. In a "rational" calculation, you would be a fool to ensure that your version of most consumer software products will be thrown together as an afterthought, after the larger market had been satisfied. Or built for your platform without the benefit of economies of scale. By exploiting people's needs to think themselves smarter than the herd, Apple has turned this drawback into an advantage.
Dude, rats in cages learn faster than that. Lesson here: DONT BUY AN IPOD.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Customer service may play a part, but imho it's all about design. The public doesn't always associate Apple products with having the highest performance, but they do view them as being well-made, "just working", and being beautifully designed. Everything Apple: their website, commercials, other marketing materials, and products, looks attractive. Contrast this with the majority of PC hardware vendors, whose offerings look like they were designed by...well...an engineer. I never ceased to be astounded by the sheer quantity of ugly junk the Dells and HPs of the world manage to release each year. If they'd just drop a million bucks and hire a crack design team to come up something less clunky, I'm convinced they'd recoup the expense in additional sales.
Apple is NOT our friend, and people need to wake up to that fact. The fact that so many pro-open-sourcers here rave about Apple stuff makes me sick with the stench of their hyposcrasy. The systems produced by Apple are as closed as they come, even if they HAVE switched to Intel processors.
With a real computer, I can install any OS I want, without jumping stupid hurdles. With a real MP# player, I can plug it into any PC with a USB port, and my music works.
Apple is all about closed systems, less choice, and DRM. How is this good for the consumer? Slashdrones need a reality check.
Nope, Apple must have some special secret. And all it'll take for some other company to pull the rug out from under them is to find that magic bullet, that one key aspect of their success, ...
Well it's not that secret, others have found out as well (e.g. Coca-Cola, Swatch, McDonnald's). All you need is a top brand name. But to become a top brand name is completely another story. It helps a lot if you are the first, it helps a lot if you have something outstanding/exceptional/extravagant and it helps a lot if you are able to communicate this to the masses. But it still needs a lot of hard work to get to the top but when you are at the top you can sell almost everything. But almost everything does not mean everything. If you annoy your customer too much the top name is faster destroyed than you can blink. Just look at Sony, I still remember when buying Sony mean buying something good. But today Sony means cheating, means confined to their products.
O. Wyss
See http://wyoguide.sf.net/papers/Cross-platform.html
If you look at the new Intel Macs, all of those benefits of using cheaper chips and more off-the-shelf components did nothing for the consumer price of a Mac Mini, or a Macbook Pro. Do you remember the major plus of moving to Intel was supposed to be cheaper Macs, well how come a mini is now more expensive?
My other issue with Apple is not with them itself, but primarily with the fact that most people I know who use Macs are self-obsessed, arrogant arseholes that want to shove a Mac down your throat if you don't use one. In fact the article poster almost seems to be in this category because he's jaded by his own belief in Apple. They aren't the greatest company in the world, they build cheap in China just like the rest of them, they hire and fire, and they don't take back Macs to recycle, they make profit and they'll do anything to get more cash out of you.
In short, under that glossy white exterior, there's a whole pile of stuff you'd find in any other company really. Apple has finally become its own Intel iMac...
Concede.
/ahem/. Just had to do it.
Excuse me
-cl
Chat with other atheists http://secularchat.org
I dropped my wifes powerbook. The case was a little bent but everything was working fine at first - about 2 weeks later the screen stopped working. We took it the store and told them what happened - it's important to note at this point that I had not purchased the extended warranty - they said "go ahead and purchase the apple care plan ($100) and we'll fix it up and give you a loaner while we work on it.
I was stunned - I had been totally prepared to pay for the fix. It hadn't ever occurred to me that they would fix a dropped laptop or better yet allow me to buy the warranty post breakage. It was, to put it mildly, wicked excellent.
I have windows, linux and Mac computers at home and like all three - but this experience more than any has made me a fan of Apple the company as much as the products.
As a person who used to be an Apple tech I can tell you first hand they are not known for "friendly" technical support. Most of Apple's tech support are like Apple: crass and pretentious. This is BS corporate propaganda.
That was the STORE that gave you good service, not Apple. Apple had nothing to do with it. Furthermore, I doubt the store did it out of the goodness of their heart; they probably realized you would have a lgeal case against them if they didn't get you taken care of (14 day return?).
I'm going to assume you're not including Apple in your "good companies" list. They might be a lot smaller than Microsoft but they're no less evil. Apple is simply a wolf in sheeps clothing, while Microsoft is a wolf in a lawyers clothing (which isn't saying much about wolfs).
Well their face-to-face customer support may be great (depending on the store location or the item), but their online resources for older machines -- i.e. anything more than 9 months old -- are by far the worst of any major vendor. If you don't have a serial number, they give you no way to identify the model of your machine. They make it worse because they don't assign series names or numbers to any of their products, and they introduce so many tweaks and variations in a particular manufacturing run that you have to go to a 3rd party site to figure out things.
I've always liked Apple despite (or because of) 15 years in a Wintel career, but, man, their weak tech support resources just infuriate me.
So, never mind the fact that it is a fad that has been going for what, five years now?
That's a little bit longer than most fads.
The cow goes "tink"
'nuff said.
May Peace Prevail On Earth
Really? The couple of times I called them for help they did everything they could to avoid having to take the thing back for repair, including the "blame the consumer" game. I was very disappointed.
So it should be "Why does everyone but me love Apple?"
-- I am. Therefore, I think!
Admittedly, I've never had to use Apple's customer service, but the stories I have heard from my friends who have just makes them out to be no better than any other companies' like Dell or Acer, at least here in Singapore. What I do notice is that the Apple community is something that keeps people in the Apple fold. People share their experiences, how to solve problems, you know, kind of like any Internet community, but they have this small group of seriously dedicated people who help others, making sure they don't just give up and move on to something else.
Yes, Apple zealots vastly exaggerate the build quality, performance, and innovation of Apple products. Nevertheless, Apple generally ends up near the top in customer satisfaction and reliability ratings. Combine that with good styling, good marketing, and decent engineering, and it's no surprise that they are doing well. They don't have to make flawless machines in order to appeal to people and in order to be worth the premium, they just need to be noticeable better than most of the competition in several, and they are that.
(Here is a recent PC World ranking.)
I have never used it. I like Apple because it just works. I have had a used G3 Ibook, 15" G4 powerbook, 3G ipod, 5G ipod and a 512MB shuffle. I have never had the first problem with any of them.
I compare my Apple experience to my GF and her HP laptop. She asked me once why I bought the powerbook when it cost me quite a bit more than her HP. I explained to her that when I open the PB it is ready to go in about 2 seconds and unlike her HP I never have to restart it because something is frozen, I never get the BSOD, I have never taken it to the "geek squad" to have it reformatted and reinstalled due to a virus. It just works every time. I know my day may be coming with the virus thing but as of now all of the OS X issues that I have seen require a stupid action on the part of the user (opening files, having safari auto open "safe files" etc.). The whole part of it just working right with no hassle is worth the price to me.
I guess if I had a point it would be that if the hardware isn't broken you don't need service/support because it works. The hardware may not be any better, I know Apples will break but compared to all of the problems I have had with the various PCs that I have had over the years my Apples have always worked flawlessly. You can point to service, fads whatever, but I am sold on Apple because it works.
Algerath
Customer Service? I'm still waiting for my iPod battery replacement. My G4 has gone back to Apple 5 times in 2.5 yrs, and fortunately, I purchased Apple's Maint for just such problems. Yes, the turn-around was quick with no additional cost. Or, the Apple policy of no return after they've installed additional memory in my new G4. Try navigating the info maze on the Apple website.
Apple's stance on DRM and the MPAA is much more customer-friendly than any other company's (just search slashdot for the stories about Mac DRM and Windows DRM, mkay?), but they do have to keep from getting their pants sued off... but I do agree with you, user-created content needs to be much more easily ported around on an iPod... thing is, there just aren't that many people that use the iPod to help them produce a record or song.
Ex nihilo nihil fit.
Customer service is the most overused and useless metric in business. Frankly because everyone says it's the most important aspect. Newsflash: it's B.S.
Quality of product is the most important. Quality ( another overzealously used term used without regard to what it really means ) is extremely important. Quality craftsmanship, quality in design, quality in user experience, etc. Quality != customer service or higher cost. It also doesn't mean you make the best product possible, but you make YOUR product as well as you can possibly make it. You have to demand it of yourself.
Apple does NOT, in fact, make their own products (read the box, designed by Apple, made in China/Indonesia/Korea), but they do produce a certain amount of quality in design, and do strive to produce quality in craftsmanship (note the continued push for longer battery life, in-house redesign of the click wheel, brighter displays). Out-of-the-box, I believe a new user will have a good experience with a Mac and its OS and therefore the quality of user experience is good as well. Add these factors up, and you get a significant amount of quality product. Yes, there are constraints (iTunes has to comply with DRM, the RIAA, FCC, et al.), but you can still provide quality... you just have to know how. That, in reality, is what most manufacturers and designers just don't get: quality is a sum product of a lot of hard work ON THE PRODUCT ITSELF not the PRODUCTION OF A PRODUCT. People will buy quality products at a higher price, but only if they know it's going to a quality product. That's where sales/marketing and business collide. There IS a difference between market-speak and business-speak. I wish people would stop using such crappy crosstalk.
Regarding the article, using "could care less" to mean "couldn't care less" is an expression that should not appear in written communication. Lacking the tone of voice cues, it's meaningless and distracting.
mt
Spot on! I'd give you mod points for that posting if I'd ever get any again....
But, to go one step further, even the CLI is a framework hiding True Names. To really find True Names, you must go into the depths of the the actual hardware addressing. This is generally considered much fun by those to whom social skills are like an abstract foreign language.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
simple as that. People who owned their computers in the 1990s fell under one of a few catagories:
Teachers
Artists/publishers
Movie Stars/Characers People who think Apples make them cool because they are "different".
Lately we have added 2 more categories:
People who worship the piece of jewlery called "iPod"
People who want a usable *nix-ish Desktop (ubergeek)
In the UK, anything that develops a fault within 6 months of being purchased (assuming it can reasonably be expected to last that long) is the retailer's problem. They don't have to refund but do have to replace/give credit and at no additional cost to you.
Even after that (up to 6 years, IIRC) if it should have lasted that long you can take it up with the retailer.
This example is good, friendly and efficient but they are just following the law.
I've had a couple of occasions where Apple went well beyond the call of duty in dealing with a DOA lap top.
Now, I *have* noticed that their "genius bar" approach is getting really sluggish - overburdened, I suspect, but even there, once I got their attention they really worked with me to resolve the problem.
Clear, Dark Skies
Business is about the bottom line. For publicly-traded companies, even more so. You deceive yourself if you believe anything else matters.
What sets one company apart from another, is how they go about getting their bottom line. A lot of companies say they care about customers, but none *really* do. However, some will recognize that taking good care of their customers is good for them, and make it part of their business model.
If you want an organization that really cares about you, go find a nonprofit group you like and join them. It's all about priorities.
Recently I bought a new iPod Nano. Being at a friends house, I first plugged it into his Mac, since I wanted to try it out as fast as possible. Something I could have better not done. As soon as iTunes on Mac detects a *new* iPod it instantly installs a HFS+ filesystem on it, replacing the VFAT filesystem. Even though the MacOS X iTunes has support for VFAT.
Thereafter I plugged my new iPod into my Windows machine, to no avail: Windows iTunes has no support for HFS+ (and trying it under Linux didn't work since 2.6.15 had no support for journalling on HFS+ yet (2.6.16 has)). Ok then, let's try to reformat the iPod to a VFAT filesystem. Strangely, the updater didn't detect my iPod at all.
After going through all the troubleshooting documents on the website, I wasn't any further than knowing every single reboot, restart, filesystem-mode and debug mode of my new iPod. Going through the forums, I read about many other users having the same problem as I had. Odd, why doesn't it show on the support pages? Then it hit me: all the users had no device initially assigned to the C: drive-letter. What would happen if I'd let Windows map C: to another device, and then plug in my iPod? Voila, it worked: my iPod was mapped to the K: drive and the iPod updater could detect my iPod and put another filesystem on the device. And as I was 4-5 hours further from the start of my adventure asking myself: why couldn't they have mentioned this on the Apple support pages? Almost all of the questions on the support forums had to do with this bug in the updater and some of these questions were more than a month old.
So, I decided to find the Apple support line and try to inform them of my simple hack to get the iPod to work and the analysis of the problem. After searching through the website for another hour, trying to find any customer support number or e-mail address, I finally called customer support. Explaining the above story, the tech guy was a bit boggled (probably since his call script didn't work on me, and I was the one explaining the story). Nevertheless, I was thanked for my effort.
Sadly, for me the iPod experience wasn't: 'it works right out of the box'. It took me hours and hours of scrouging through support documents, manuals and forums.
This is a replacement signature.
While I'm sure it's true there are companies that could, indeed, care less about their customers, the phrase is "could NOT care less". "there are ... companies ... who could not care less".
Get it? "could care less" means, well, the amout of care they have could be less.
</rant-o-the-day>
I had a great experience with Dell. Bought a new Inspiron 6400 (with the Intel 950 IGA), and about a week after I got it, they released a new model with ATI x1300 or x1400 mobile graphics. I called and wanted to return my current model and upgrade to the new one with the ATI Graphics. Normally they charge you a 15% restocking fee, plus insurance and shipping to return something (according to their 30 day total satisfaction guarantee), Nasreen, the girl I talked to sent me a UPS return label and I was refunded the full cost of the notebook (including original shipping costs), and was not charged either the 15% restocking fee, or for shipment of the old laptop back to Dell.
..Bring it on! :), I don't like Apple, I don't like Jobs and his cronies..
And no I don't adore microsoft, or linux, i just dislike Apple, plain 'n simple, why?, Apple owners act like elitist snobs, thinking they're better then the rest of the popolous. The products themselves are way to expensive, and I just don't like their CEO..
There that should get the Fanboys knickers in a twist.
"If it's true that our species is alone in the universe, then I'd have to say that the universe aimed rather low
First of all, I don't mean this as a flame, I'm just talking about my experience using Apple stuff and what I prefer. And also, when I talk about things being good if they're easy to use, I mean it's good for people that just use computers and don't actually mess around with them as a hobby (for those people the open source community has plenty of goodies :-).
:-) I notice just how much more productive I am when I've configured the computer how *I* like it. And I'm spending much less money too.
When I was using a mac with OS X I loved it, but I'd only experienced Windows before that, so I liked it because it didn't crash on me all the time and it was easy to use (I was interested in things other than computers and generally didn't give a damn about them as long as they didn't get in my way). I then started using Linux, and I've used it ever since (I'm using gentoo w/ FVWM now). I don't mean to say Gentoo and FVWM are great and everything else sucks, but I've learned that what actually matters is how your computer performs when you're using it day after day after day, after day, after day. And then some. So, it took me a week to get everything compiled and configured to my liking, and I had to tweak things after that sometimes, but now when I try using OS X (I've kept that old mac
The trouble is, now I'm kind of interested in computers, but before I couldn't give a damn. It's not that I didn't CARE about things working how I want them to, or things being fast - everybody wants that! - but I'd only known Windows and OS X, and configuring a Linux system at that time would have scared the shit out of me, and since OS X was so easy to use and stable I thought it was great and didn't realise how much faster and cheaper things could be. And for me, at that time, OS X *was* the best decision, really, since I wouldn't be able to get a Linux system up and running, or find my way around the OS.
The trouble is, making things easy to use is a good thing for non-experts, but Apple has become interested more and more in adding more glitz to OS X, and their hardware is still expensive compared to a PC with the equivalent specs (I know this because I built my PC and compared its spec/price to Apple hardware). I don't see any reason why you can't have a company that makes an OS that's easy to use but focuses on *performance*, and on *cheap* hardware. It's possible, it's all out there, but at the moment you kind of have to know what you're doing to take all the best hardware/software scattered around and put it together yourself.
So what does this have to do with customer service? Well, I've talked to Apple users (and I was one, don't forget), and the pretty OS and shiny hardware seems to go in the 'customer service' department. Perhaps you disagree and see this post as kind of off-topic, but I think it's still relevant enough to warrant a post.
"I'd hate to die twice. It's so boring."
- Feynman's last words.
Read the sad tale
I love my 15" Powerbook (PPC). Awesome battery life, great feel on the keyboard, bright screen, it runs fast and does what I want it to.
...at least until that keyboard had a problem. I dropped a pen on the keyboard and in what can only be seen as a freak accident, it wedged itself between two keys and popped one of them out. No biggie I thought, I'll just put it back. Unfortuantely, one of the little plastic cross-tabs had broken in the process.
...and this was after I had been transfered up to a Manager because of their response on how to fix it.
I love Apple.
I called up Apple Support, game them the number for my Apple Care Extended warrenty, and instead of them happily sending me a new key to replace the old one, I got bitter sarcasim, accusations of being "too rough" on the hardware becuase "this does not happen under normal conditions", and a geneally piss-poor attitude.
For a single key that popped off the keyboard, I needed to pack up the entire laptop and send it in for repair. I was told I should have it back within 10 business days.
Yeah. That was my reaction too. 2 WEEKS of downtime and shipping expense to replace a single key.
Well, a quick visit to http://www.powerbookmedic.com/, 2 days and $15.00 later, I got my parts and was back underway.
Like I said, I love my Powerbook, I like Apple, they just need to get realistic about simple repairs.
Would that be the excellent customer service model which sells consumers a $250 product with an expected life of one year before hard-drive failure and then charges $250 to fix the aforementioned hard-drive. I know of many people who fell in love with Apple only to fall out of love once they found they were sold a disposable product when they thought they were purchasing a lasting consumer electronics appliance. There is nothing inherently wrong with the Apple model of designing throw-away products but it is a bit underhanded to hide the fact that the expected life of the Ipod is fairly low.
I really fail to comprehend how apple has built this myth of fantastic customer service. I used to do tech support for apple- both for the ipod and their desktops. If you buy an ipod-which costs several hundred dollars, you are entitled to ONE tech support call, and then only if you call within 90 days after purchasing it. If your ipod locks up and you call in to find out how to reset it, the thirty seconds of attention (the amount of time it takes to tell you which two buttons to hold and to introduce you to the glorious Apple Knowledge Base) you receive from a tech is your one call, if it happens to be after 90 days, the answer you get is $50 please or bug off. Many of the people who call in are elderly people who received ipods as gifts and have no access to the internet and have either not the funds to pay for the call or the means (credit card) to pay for it. Apples answer-Screw you.
I for one simply cannot understand how this is such great customer service.
Those who hate Microsoft but couldn't cut it in Linux/Unix.
Most of slashdotters.
Apple is determined and committed in delivering the experience and not just the product.
Sounds like the same approach Southwest Airlines took. Hiring a bunch of people who were good at what they do and love it not who are industry types who will do it the same way everybody else does.
The result, the only consistently profitable airline. Apple did the same thing, did it their way not everybody elses. If only Apple would follow Southwest's lead on low prices.
Still, Apple has a way to go on customer service. They are so focused on selling extended warrenties that they can be slow to act on systemic quality problems.
Check out ephPod this takes all the hassle out of managing your iPod. You can sync with a folder, rename tracks directly on the iPod if the tags are wrong rather than removing and replacing and also copy songs back to your HD with a filename format of your chosing. It's much faster than both iTunes and MusicMatch. The screen updating can be a little intermitant so it pays to be a little patient when you move large amounts of data. Never liked iTunes, used MusicMatch before Yahoo! bought it and Apple dropped MusicMatch support. Stuck I found EphPod and have never looked back, EphPod does everything I need!
For perspective, I use and enjoy my Macintoshes, but I also really dig my white-box PC I built with a Linux distro on it, and I also enjoy my Sun Ultra 5. My Windows machine is OK, and has some great uses when I need it.
Customer service? In the 16 years that I've owned Macintoshes, I've used customer service *once*. I found the Apple reps to be pretty good folks when it comes to supporting development and deployment software.
I don't know that the service is the main selling point. I think the "totem" idea is much more accurate. If you can leave the "I like this system because {personal reasons here}" stuff aside for a moment, look at it this way: Do people buy Tommy Hilfiger or Abercrombie and Fitch clothes because they're all that great? Or do they buy them because they're cool or they're what others are wearing? (I know, A&F is so 2 minutes ago, just using them as a comparison. I'm not very much a slave to style.)
I think Apple has a combination of coolness, perceived ease of use, innovation, and (in general) well-made products.
Besides, I LOVE GarageBand!
A Passionate Independent Musician
Sorry, but my experience (and that is not from a customer point of view), Apple's customer service is not that great. Try and return a broken iPod Nano or a damaged Laptop and see how long it takes before the Apple shop is able to replace it.
What is great about them is their marketing and people writing articles like above. Again, marketing, marketing, marketing...
What makes people buy the iPod, again, Marketing and the fact that you are buying the "Original".
Apple has shipped flawed products and failed to deal with the problems adequately (witness the current bunch of MacBook Pro issues).
Apple also has a track record of suddenly changing direction and dropping support for what were originally much-touted products (especially software tech, like OpenDoc).
Apple certainly doesnt have a stellar reputation for handling order foul ups and product returns. They're not bad, but still on par--maybe even a little below--Dell.
What Apple does do, on the whole, is build products with the customer in mind. They usually don't cut corners, even if that keeps the price high. You know if you buy a guitar from Gibson or an SLR camera from Nikon that you're getting what you paid for: a tool with some style and craftsmanship behind it.
Well, I opened up my handy-dandy toolbox, got a set of torx screw drivers, and opened up the display. I found the ROM located on the back of the display and I erased it with a very strong magnet. You know what Apple support said, not knowing what I had done? "We'll ship a replacement out to you overnight, just send back the old one in the box we shipped to you. Postage is covered on us." Of course I had put the display back together minus a few screws (Where do all those screws come from anyway?) and cleaned it up with a damp cloth.
Ok, so the 2nd display has been working for several months with no hickups, then suddenly it breaks AGAIN. You know what Apple told me? You really wanna know?
Apple: "We'll ship a replacement out to you overnight, just send back the old one in the box we shipped to you. Postage is covered on us."
To top it off, I had G5 that had bad firewire ports (because I somehow inserted the FireWire cable in the WRONG WAY, my fault again). I also forgot to unplug the power when replacing a PCI card, rendering an expensive graphics card totallly useless. You know what Apple did, those stinking bastards?
Apple: "Take your Mac to a service center, here's a list of 100000 places you could go, we'll repair at no charge."
Less than 5 days later my G5 had a new logic board, graphics card (which I promptly sold on eBay, packaged in original Apple packaging). I had just bought a better graphics card, so I had no use for both.
Oh and then there's the time I bought a laptop from Apple and they billed me incorrectly. I was using a gift card to pay for my order but I forgot to make it my primary method of payment. That cost me $1100. You know what Apple did? The f*ckers actually credited my credit card with $1100. </endsarcasm>
If comes down to this: if you want your computer fixed, play nice with the support agents instead of having a hissy-fit and they will practically give you anything. If you called annoyed, T'd off, or other some such negative behavior you're not going to get your stuff fixed! It pays to be nice to others, something many slashdotters seem to lack. The people on the other end of that support telephone line have families, they're just trying to make a buck like everyone else, don't make the support agent mad at you for being an A-hole.
It's time to end the "Negative Nancy" attitude some people have about computer support in general and turn that frown upside down.
It's not the customer service. Apple cares as much about their customers as Steve Jobs cares about a diverse wardrobe. Apple is beloved for these reasons.... 1. Style. It makes people feel cool, cause it looks cool. 2. Intuitive use. Especially for the less computer savvy, the Apple experience is simply more coherent to how people "think" things should work. 3. When you own an Apple, you are immediately inducted into the "club". Everyone want to feel their apart of the cool crowd. Owning an Apple gives some that illusion.
My sister's friend is almost completely computer illiterate and therefore very virus-prone. She got a nasty one and called Microsoft for advice. When they asked her for her product key they determined that she was using a pirated copy of WinXP. They told her she was ineligible for any support from Microsoft, but that they would help her this once. They spent nearly an hour explaining how she likely got a virus, walked her through installing the scanner, and waiting while it did its thing. I was damn impressed when she told me about it.
Apple's success story is "they finally got it right." It only took them 30 freakin' years to do it. Still, they aren't in the clear yet. It's great that the ipod's are selling well and it's making Apple a household name, but the true worth of the ipod will be seen in it's ability to convert users from PC to Mac as their brand trust goes up. I'd really like to see numbers on the amount of people that own an ipod and a pc vs. the number of people who own and ipod and a mac, and a graph to show the change w/ respect to time.
and the real MVP in the story is marketing. Someday soon, we'll be reading stories like this about Gnu/Linux, as soon as some one spends the money on marketing.
IMHO, dropping the Windows version of Emagic Logic was not very customer-serving. On at least one other forum I frequent, people have lamented the loss of Logic for Windows. It sounds, however, like more people are finding other software, than switching to Apple.
Doug
The article can be summarized thus: 1) Apple releases iPod software that locks down the volume, therefore 2) Apple is so wonderful because they focus on customer service, which is why Apple beats everyone else, which is why people love Apple. 2) might be true, but 1) by itself does not prove it.
Penny - plain text accounting
The reason I love Apple is not their customer support or anything like that - absolutely not. Apple's support people are mostly ignorant minimum-wage kids with no professional experience and a total of 3 days of on-the-job training. The reasons I love Apple are their products and services, which, quite simply, are vastly superior to anyone else's.
My wife's new iMac G5 developed a start-up problem in December. I called Apple and a delivery man came to pick it up. Four days later, they returned it fixed -- on what happened to be Christmas Eve. They even kept her data untouched; by contrast, every PC shop I've ever dealt with started their "repairs" by wiping the hard disk.
He who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.
The study's gist was that the PC users tended to enroll in the more rigorous courses whereas the Mac users gravitated to the less demanding courses. Of course some Mac users went ballistic but they never succeeded in undermining the facts the study unearthed.
Mind you, I'm not implying a generalization about today's Mac/PC users. I'm talking about Zealots who have a difficult time understanding that computers are just an appliance, not an object of veneration. You're not a better person because you use a Mac or an Intel or an AMD machine. You're just a computer user. An inability to see that qualifies you for the less rigorous courses.
This article must have been written by either a humanities major or an MBA - there is no substance behind it. Instead, the author makes the point by saying that the new volume-limiting patch for the iPod is a great example of Apple's superior customer service. Somehow, according to the article, "it's not necessarily the iPod that makes Apple successful, but rather its customer service."
.Mac, the Apple Store, cultivating the iPod's hip image (made by Apple), and so on. These kinds of things do increase Apple's stature in the consumer electronics world, but are not, Not, NOT the same as good customer service.
I call bullshit. Of course the iPod is what people love about apple these days. iPods make up about as much of Apple's revenue as its computer sales. The other driving force is the fact that an Apple computer running OS X and Apple applications is a rock solid system, with tremendous capabilities right out of the box, and a great user experience. Do not confuse user experience with customer experience - they are not the same thing. I myself love apple, own a powerbook and an ipod, will continue to buy from them, and think their customer service is indeed top notch. However, I wouldn't in a million years claim that it is the customer service that drew me to them. People do not care a lot about customer service when they are spending money, otherwise no U.S. cable service or cellular phone provider would still be in business.
The author may have hit nearer the mark by saying "Apple is investing resources to enhance its relationship with its customers." I interpreted that as brand promotion, integrated services like
Let me tell you the Tale of Two Companies.
My girlfriend bought a brand new top of the line Gateway laptop in December. After 18 days of use, the screen fried. She owns three Gateway laptops, has always purchased the most expensive warranty plan, and up until this year, they always have had as a part of that plan:
1) Free overnight shipping for repair service.
2) A toll-free number to call for repair service.
3) Very responsive turnaround times on repair.
After having her laptop for 18 days, it took her over a month to get it back from Gateway, and she had to pay $60 in shipping costs. All they had to do was replace a backlight on the screen. All three of the warranty items described above changed in the past year. They changed the terms of their existing warranties because in the warranty it says they can do so.
While that may have been legal, it certainly doesn't lead to happy customers. Needless to say, we are never buying another Gateway.
Contrast this with my experience with Apple. Whenever I've had a problem, I've been able to go to the Apple Store at the local mall and work with the Mac Genius there to get support. Free.
I bought an Airport Express in 2004, and when it broke, I took it to the Apple Store with no receipt. In under 5 minutes I left with a brand new AXP, with no hassle. Six months later that one also broke, but as I was beyond 1 yr warranty, Apple couldn't replace it. However, the Mac Genius checked all apple stores for an open-box item. He couldn't find any. He said that he would call me when an open box AXP came in.
Sure enough, a month later, I got a phone call from the Mac Genius. They had received an open box AXP. I had already bought a new AXP, but I couldn't believe that I actually got a call back like I was promised.
Having an Apple Store less than five miles away from my house means that I get fantastic service when things go wrong, with no hassles. It's what CompUSA, Micro Center, and Best Buy have all tried to do (Geek Squad?) but have generally failed at. Apple does it well and it means a lot to the average customer.
rm -rf
People love Apple because they're supposed to. Everything from the color schemes to how new products get introduced is designed to "enhance the brand identity." Do you like Coke or Pepsi? Not a whole lot of difference, but you likely have a preference. Same with Ford vs Chevy, Nike vs Adidas, and so on.
Me, I hate Apple because their crappy file system destroyed my masters thesis years ago. Oh, and their crappy UI today. Again, it's perceptions. But perceptions turn into purchases (or not).
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
Since 'WHEN' does 'EVERYBODY' love Apple?
This is such a flame topic...
It's even stupid to read the article from a stupid headline. Give a decent topic next time.
I for one, in terms of GUI usability and feature completeness, I take Windows than Mac OS X.
Mac OS X server is a half joke product and now I don't love Apple at all. So, what is this about???
Does anyone remember those ads? Lots of smiling happy people shown with their free .Mac email addresses, because, after all, we're all part of the Mac family, right!! Apple played on the sense of community around the Mac and marketed a social identity based on that community, which it then promptly decided it could cash in on by making .Mac a paid service. Not only did they start charging, but the refused to even forward incoming mail to the stiffs that thought they had this great free email address forever.
Okay, it has been years and I'm still bitter. I've still got an Apple ][e on my desk (and yes, I still use it) and I've been a Mac user for years but I have absolutely no illusions that Apple cares about me anymore than the hot dog cart guy down the street, probably less. Your think getting good products and good customer service, fine, but don't forget you're paying a premium for it.
I personally think people love Macs because of the absolutely staggeringly amount of incredibly high quality free software that is available for it.
Let's be honest though. With open source you can't just plug it in and it works.
Oh, but sometimes you can - run-from-CD distros and distros that work with most systems (Fedora Core 4) are to the point where this is abssolutely possible.
Regardless, the point is, I can try is I want. I may fail miserably, and waste a month of my life, but I can try. Apple doesn't give me that coice; indeed, they expend a fair amount of effort to make the path of choice a rockier one to walk.
Why Everyone Who Loves Apple So Damn Loud And Obnoxious About It
But can we PLEASE get it into our heads ONCE AND FOR ALL that the purpose of any big corporation is JUST to make money for its shareholders - END OF STORY!!! Whether or not you, the consumer, thinks they make good or bad products is pretty much irrelevant to them once they have your money. And if they give you a good customer service and/or a good feeling every time you deal with them, it is not because they're feeling nice, warm or friendly about you but because it is profitable to do so.
If you love your Mac or your iPod then great - good luck to you. But PLEASE get it out of your thick skull that wearing a corporate logo of ANY sort is cool - it isn't because it just goes to show the rest of the world that you are insecure enough to want to belong to one (or more) exclusive little cliques that makes you feel special because you can look down on those that aren't members of those same cliques.
Buy an article of clothing because it looks nice on you or feels good on you, buy an iPod because it sounds good or fits well in your jeans pocket - but don't just buy something because it's made by "Gap" or "Apple" because then you really are showing the rest of the world only how much of a corporate puppet you really are...
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
1. Make iPod nano scratch by contact with air.
2. ?
3. Profit!
Bah
...you can choose whether you want iTunes to automatically synchronise with your iPod when you plug it in to your PC. The information that decides whether to synchronise automatically or not is actually stored on the iPod, which means that if you don't want to synchronise and plug it into your mate's PC then it won't completely wipe your iPod and put his Britney albums on there instead.
I've got my iPod set up so I have to move songs manually (I don't really have the need to store some 8000 songs on my PC) and I've plugged it into various other PC's all without problems.
I never apologise, I'm sorry but that's just the way I am - Homer
The bulk of your rant is about the round mouse Apple USED to sell. Your complaint was they wouldn't change it. They DID change it. Apple now sells a mouse called the "Mighty Mouse" and before that it wasn't the round mouse but a mouse similar to the Mighty Mouse.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
I don't know my eMachines m6805's hard drive died, and they sent me a new one next day air, with replacement restore CD's because I lost the originals. When my video card started acting up they sent me a pre postaged box, I packed it up, and sent it off, the day I called, yeah it took them 3 work days to turn it around, but I wouldn't say that was poor service by any stretch of the word. I'm sure Apple has good customer service, but that doesn't mean that everyone else doesn't.
First week of owning a Dell laptop that we purchased the accidental damage, spills and drops coverage on. My bosses son spilled a 12 ounce can of regular coke on the machine while it was on, and totally fried it. I called up the rep, said my bosses son spilled coke on the machine, and they picked it up, and replaced the whole machine. Yeah if you get a $400 laptop that their making a 10% profit on, you're going to get piss-poor customer service, but I've found that most OEM supported extended warranties are fairly good. So your $400 laptop is now $700, but you get treated like a star.
Peace,
-manno
There are *two* main reasons apple has so many fanboys.
:) I was impressed with how fast my powerbook showed up. then the same day that I read something about a recall for particular batteries (that might overheat) was the same day I got an email saying that they thought my battery was from a batch that needed to be replaced. I checked, filled out the online form and the fedex'd battery showed up about 48 hours later (pre-paid return box).
1. they innovate and care about the experience. they want you to like the UI/etc. so much you rave about it. they want it to be so slick that you want to sit there and pet your ipod, or at least play with the click wheel even when you don't have to because it feels "oh soooo good"
2. their customer service is really good--they focus on the customer. (the customer does pay for it up front, however
it's true, you get what you pay for, especially in this era of budget cuts to the point that minimum wage in our own country is too expensive for customer service reps/tech support staff.
of course any company is not perfect, there will be plenty of examples of "oh I had a crappy experience w/apple customer support" given the number of customers, but I'm willing to bet there's a lower % of bad experiences (on average) compared to your windblows manufacturers.
ok, I'll get off my soap box now.
Mea culpa.
Wow, I had no idea people love Apple for their customer service! To me, the best thing about Apple customer service is that I don't have to rely on it much. Things tend to work on Macs, at least relative to other platforms.
No, for me, the best thing about Apple is that they remain committed to R&D. They're coming out with new ideas all the time. Sure, some of them inevitably flop, but they don't just sit around and copy what other companies are doing. They also keep their development teams fairly small and don't put out a lot of bloatware. They keep their GUI simple and accessible, yet leave the door open for tinkerers.
If you buy something (in the UK anyway) and take it back 15 days later with a fault, you have no legal right to insist on an immediate replacement
This sig all sigs devours
Yea:
1) Apple ][ forever
2) Any machine sold by Apple in 1997 will run Rhaspody. (20th Annv Mac can't even run NetBSD fully)
3) The Newton is an important part of our educational lineup. (March 3rd, Newton was canned in Feb.)
4) Apple will pay for shipping on warranted cameras (the quicktake) Yet, I got billed by the shipper later.
Apple is as trustworthy as any other large corporation. The sad part is so many other companys suck even worse.
I've got a Mac Mini Core Duo and its the fastest computer I've ever owned and I've had some fast ones. I'm now selling my 2Ghz Pentium M Dell laptop cause I don't need it anymore. So yeah your PPC Mac may have been slow in comparison to your PCs but the Intel Macs sure won't be slower.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
It's like designer cloths. Sure, some of it looks slick and all but it's gimmicky and pricey.
Dispite what fanboys say, the quality is no different with Apple than anything else. There might be slightly better hardware/software interaction because the hardware is so restricted but the quality of the hardware is not better than anything else, I would say it's even worse in a lot of cases. I have had more broken Apple's than PC's and I know more people who have had hardware problems with their Apple than people with PC's.
OS X still crashes. It's still slow compared to Windows or Linux. A lot of Apple software looks slick until you use it extensively. You then get tired of the look (mostly the overhead of the look) and realize the functionality isn't that great. Developing for OS X completely sucks ass. XCode is the biggest piece of shit I have ever used, especially the latest version. It's buggy and has a moronic workflow (the actual source code is treated as a second class citizen; it should be the most important!). All the crap behind the OS is stupid, all the different bundle types, object types, all kinds of crap. It very fragile to develop for unless it's your only platform (anybody who develops for a single platform nowadays is a moron).
It's not for their product reliability, that's for sure.
At least we had class actions to help with new Ipod batteries and burned out Powerbook main boards.
Yeah, there's a dark side to Apple.
When I was in Munich, I knew a musician that used Apples, and it was amazing how much of a pain they were.
E.g. the battery on the motherboard dies after a few years. They charge a huge amount of money to swap it, presumably in a service centre. The battery itself is easy to change and costs very little, but if you scratch the screws or case changing it, the machine is out of warranty. Oh, and it's not a standard PC battery, it's non standard enough that people imported them. He was pretty happy that he found a place in Munich that sold them
He got a second hand Mac with a German version of the OS. Since lots of software doesn't work on the German version, he wanted to wipe it and reinstall. But the English version he had was one point version higher, e.g. xx.y.z+1 rather than xx.y.z. Problem is, that version wouldn't run. He didn't want the latest version, since some of the software he wanted wouldn't work. Cue a grey import of an English xx.y.z+1 from ebay.
Whereas with PC's, you can put together a PC from junk, and install pretty much anything on it. It's all modular too, and you can buy the bits from anywhere.
Once you move away from an open architecture, there's an enormous temptation for the company that controls things to charge absurd prices for everything. Hell, it's put me off buying a PC notebook for ages, even though desktops are a pain to cart around the world.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
As a technician at an AASP (apple authorized service provider) I spend every day stuck between Crapple (the "Cr" is for Customer Relations!) and their angry customers. Despite all the zombie-like goodfeeling that they surround themselves and their products with, I think people are finally getting the idea that they don't give a hoot about you, your digital lifestyle, or the $2000 laptop that just gave you third degree burns on your penis. It's all about the bottom line. $500 802.11b cards, anyone? (this is the price of an original airport card through Apple's Global Service Exchange)
I haven't found this to be difficult with iTunes, it just takes a little time getting all the files onto a single computer then dragging them to the iPod after you connect it. Make sure that you do not have auto-update turned on and there should be no problem.
"I'm just here to regulate funkiness."
I think they're in a pretty good position to take more of the marketplace. I think the biggest thing preventing that acceptance today is the relative lack of games for the Apple (It's a freaking treasure trove compared to what I'm used to on Linux) and the inability to run a few other Windows apps. Seems like a lot of users want to run that copy of Photoshop they pirated in 1995...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Anyone who thinks there is something you can't do with the ipod simply doesn't know all the facts. Using the tools apple provides (and there are more there than the average person realizes) and/or using hundreds freeware options, you can do anything you can imagine with it. Go ahead, wallow in ignorance and complain about what you do not understand while I laugh at your sad attempts to "dis" it.
I've been upgraded to "bad"!
SLASHDOT editors - apple's released at least one update to the ipod since its debut, don't you think the icon ought to reflect this?
I've had a ton of problems with my iPod headphones but I thought "What luck, I'll just drive down to the King of Prussia Apple Store and get some help!" Riiiiiggggghhhht.
The first time they said that they wouldn't help me at all with the stock headphones, so I bought a new pair of earbuds. They lasted a month. Back to the Apple Store. I have to deal with the "Genius Bar" (TM) but it takes me a few minutes to figure out how to get my name on the list to be helped, wait for-goddamn-ever only to have the guy take one look at them and say "You obviously stepped on them, we're not helping you." and turned to the next person to be helped. When I complained to the manager she found someone to help me, but I had to wait two weeks for them to get the same model in.
They called in two weeks and my wife went down. No record of me in the system, no they don't have my new earbuds. My wife showed them the slip they gave me, the email printed out that they sent me. "Sorry man, but we don't know where they are." So I went down the next weekend. Hey look, they changed the way you get your name on the Genius Bar (TM) list AGAIN! Oh look, it doesn't work! Wow. What a lot of geniuses. Put my name on the sheet of paper and wait
and wait
and wait
after 90 minutes of alternately waiting and insisting I'm not leaving until I have my new headphones they miraculously appear and I can leave.
If (when) these break, I'm going to wipe my butt with them and mail them express to Steve Jobs and buy a pair at Best Buy.
Yet again, people are in denial. It must be the customer service, it must be because their products get you laid, it must be because Apple is fashionable, it must be because they pump pheromones into the stores. People will make up countless absurd stories to explain why people buy Apple products because they can't face the simple truth that Apple succeeds because they make good products that people want at a price that people will pay.
Reminds me of another similar situation - the endless sociological fictions that people will fabricate in order to explain why more people don't adopt Linux.
"The White House is not an intelligence-gathering agency," -- Scott McClellan, Whitehouse spokesman.
I had a few mod points today and was reading posts with more scrutiny that usual and I feel like almost every post should be flagged "off-topic."
The article says apple is liked because of it's customer service and overall experience. Whatever your opinion of how corporate Apple is and whose interests they are protecting with DRM and who benefits from their chosen pricing structure in iTunes, it has nothing to do with customer service. Neither does switching to Intel.
I haven't seen any posts saying they don't like Apple because... or any specific references to bad customer service experiences, which is the point of the article. Regardless of your opinions of their products and practices one would have a hard time arguing that they have bad customer service.
I'm on my 3rd ipod in 18 months. Within 12 hours of submitting my problem online I had a box at my door that I could put my ipod in and ship back to them. I didn't even have to address it, just peel off the address label to me and behind it was Apple's address. I dropped it off at the shipper and 6 days later a new one was in my hands. Only reason I shipped it was to preserve my engraving on the back.
Second time I gave up on engraving and my ipod was replaced on the spot - 10 minutes in and out at the Apple store. And as an example of how well they do customer service, the NYC Apple store used to be impossible to get appointments at - in response to the demand the genius bar is now open 6AM until Midnight. How many other companies would go out of their way to make that change. It's small and easy, but it's effect on customers is huge.
I couldn't agree with the article more - they do customer service right.
FULL DISCLOSURE: I am a PC guy at home and work. Not an Apple fanboy
http://www.worldsoccerbars.com
We have both Apple and Dell systems where I work, so I've spent some time on the phone with both for things like sales, repairs, etc. In terms of politeness, they're about equal. However, in terms of efficiency, Apple lags behind in my experience. Their process is a bit convoluted; I realize it is probably due to some plan for compartmentalizing each process to make the whole thing run smoothly, but I always have to talk to at least 3 different people, and often reexplain my purpose for calling. example - making a purchase: I press the button for Higher Education. an operator then verifies that I am Higher Education and transfers me (?). The next operator verifies my school and transfers me to my account salesperson. The sales person makes small talk, brings up my proposal and verifies it, then transfers me to Sales Support, who takes my payment information and transfers me back to sales (apparently typing in a credit card number is below Sales - they also do this every time, despite the fact that we make purchases all the time). Sales then verifies my shipping information, and I'm off. It takes a long time, not including time spent on hold. Once, I called with a support issue, and was given a case number by one operator and transferred to another department. The next person I talked to couldn't find my case, and when I reexplained my issue, he said "Sorry, I have no idea what you're talking about; I can't fix that -click-"
Before everyone jumps on me - No, I don't prefer to make purchases over the phone; my institution is partially responsible for this process.
Dell, on the other hand, though they seem to outsource at least some of their phone support (I'm not for or against this, but it seems to piss off a lot of people), is much more efficient. I talk to one person who resolves my issue, and the *same person* even calls me back to follow up or answer my question if they couldn't when I called.
I realize this refers to only one form of customer service, and perhaps my experience as a business/educational customer is different from a home user's; it's just my $0.02. Efficiency is more important for me than the feeling that I'm "cared for." That said, I hate assholes who work in customer service; I always wonder whether they were always that way (bad career choice), or whether years of talking to asshole customers drove them to it (from my experience it could be the latter).
"Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony!"
The reason people love Apple is spelled Q U A L I T Y !
Always. Repeat after me - ALWAYS - get the extended warranty on an iBook / PB/ MBP. You can buy it on the 364th day of the original warranty. It's a bargain compared to any tier of notebook service from Apple.
We've had a mess of SEs, LCs, PM 6xxx/7xxx, Cubes, iBooks, eMacs, iMacs from Bondi thru G5. Rare repair needs (one machine in a dozen batch?), and never more than once thru the loop to get anything done.
Ditto my personal equipment - with the sole exception of my PowerBook Duo - whch had a string of lousy keyboards. Apple replaced them, they were just lousy design and kept failing. On the other hand I've never gotten rid of my PB1400 - you can practically pound nails with it and it does everything it ever did plus new life thru processor upgrades and wifi.
I also like them because in one university lab I ran, we had 16 "fruit" iMacs and 4 mainstream Gateways. It took me and my techs as much time to babysit the 4 Gateways as it did to keep the 16 macs in line. That's reason enough.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
Being a Mac users since day one....and a PC users since day one as well, I know how good Apple is at customer service. However this is one company that has them beat hands down. Western Digital. Several years ago I had a WD 100gig hard drive go bad. I returned it to WD and they sent me a brand new 120gig drive to replace it. When I had problems with it, I thought, they sent another 120gig drive and told me to keep both for a month and send back the one I did not want. Turns out it was a flakey second hard drive that only had problems intermittently and affected both drives and I returned the second 120gig drive within a few days. The people at WD were polite, fast and knew their stuff. I only purchase Western Digital hard drives.
Apple has always been good in most respects but with the move to the iPod I think they have slipped on providing updates for iPods that are over one year old.
Any rumors regarding this?
I dont know if this is true or not, and no i didnt read the article. But one thing I do know. When I worked at (insert dying compter company) Customer "support", i swore I would never buy one. We were basicly the US "outsourced" support after they laid off all their real techs... the new company cared nothing for their customers. Getting chewed out by a manger because i spent longer than 15 minutes with a customer?!?!? Because I didnt want to leave a customer hanging with their computer completly trashed by malware? OMG, xmorg you are killing our stats!!!
And they wonder why the PC computer's industry is slumping. First sell an OS that breaks very quickly under amature use, and then provide lame support.
I was blown away by Apple's customer service as well. When I first got my iPod Nano, the white headphones that came with it broke after a week. I filed a form on Apple's website. Within 1 hour (this was at 2 am at night) I got a reply from a technician, and a new pair was overnighted to me the next day! I have never seen customer service that paralleled this, except in corporate. Very impressive.
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http://unk1911.blogspot.com/
Let's suppose some very wealthy snot picker decides to buy more iPods than the total number Apple has already sold and fill all of these with material of his own copyright which he puts into the public domain. Now the majority of music stored on iPods is user owned. Does the iPod collective sense their collective toppling into the legal side of majorism, and suddenly for everyone all file sharing becomes legal?
I find these majoristic arguments legally amusing for failing to isolate cause and effect. The iPod I bought behaves in certain ways solely because of presumptions about what other iPod purchasers are doing, at some select point in time.
Well, you could argue that because some RIAA controlled music exists, it becomes possible that a majority of iPod users have loaded mostly RIAA controlled tracks, and therefor sharing features should be disabled on the prospect that its use might be more illegal than legal, counting instance against instance.
But isn't that argument strange too? The main reason this argument holds sway is because RIAA is a functional monopoly. RIAA remains a functional monopoly in part because devices such as the iPod make it inconvenient, even in the legal case, to work around the RIAA monopoly.
Let's try another syllogism. Music is cool. RIAA has established themselves as the music monopoly. Apple is cool. Cool is a RIAA monopoly. Therefore Apple implements DRM.
It's no worse than your circular majorism, and about the level of the average person who drools over these devices. Let's face it. Cool has another property: it shuts off the brain. If you're cool, you're getting action, and if you're getting action, the brain is vestigial, and then what does it matter that RIAA is getting their cut? So is Pfizer, Carter-Wallace, Ortho McNeil, and most of the time, sooner or later, Proctor and Gamble.
I hate Apple because of the hipsters.
There is a proverb: Grass looks greener on the other side of the fence.
The reason why 'everyone' loves Apple, is because they can talk about it, as if it is some sort of a mystical creature, that is good and powerful, but in reality they are not forced to use Apple.
You can't handle the truth.
I love Apple products. I'm really in to this simple and sleek style, and OS X rocks my world. However, I couldn't believe it when I was reading this blurb about how great Apple's support is. What a joke.
I recently purchased an intel mac mini. I bought it with the intention of using it as a media center (podcasts/vidcasts/music). The day I received it I began setting it up when I noticed the fan spin up to a very loud volume. Immediately I opened up activity monitor to figure out what was putting so much load on my system. There was nothing. The CPU usage was fluctuating between 0-3%.
I shrugged my shoulders and ignored it. A little bit later it did it again. Turns out, it does it every 5 minutes. The system will be dead silent for 5 minutes and then the fan will begin to spin, slowly at first but increasing in speed until it is very loud noise that I can hear on the other end of my house.
Thinking this couldn't possibly be correct, I phoned up apple support. What a joke. I had to reset my PMU about 10 times because that is apple's phone support's solution for everything. I even spent about 8 minutes with one guy as he had me try over and over again to boot into Open Firmware with a certain key sequence. He was absolutely positive that I must be pressing the wrong keys until I brought up the fact that the intel macs use EFI, not open firmware.
So their phone support sucks, but that's not the real problem. I think the majority of computer literate users don't expect the phone support to actually solve the problem for them. The problem is the only solutions they would offer me is to bring it to a local technician, drive 60 miles to the closest apple store, or BUY APPLECARE so that they could send a technician to my home.
I obviously chose to bring it to a local technician. Turns out the local technician doesn't know jack about apple computers. Somehow they're certified, but they don't know squat. I realized this the instant I brought my mac mini to the place and they oooh'ed and awww'ed over how small a mac mini was. They had never seen a mac mini! They went on to ask me questions about it and I brought up Front Row. They look puzzled and I asked them if they knew what Front Row was, to which they replied no. I realized there was no way in hell these people were going to be able to fix a mac, they didn't even have basic user knowledge of them.
I called them two days later to see what the status was, but the technician wasn't there so they didn't know. They told me they'd have him call me the next day to let me know. Of course he didn't, so I called him. The guy basically didn't have any status to give me, he wasn't even sure if the problem was there because "he had a lot of other computers there," and he couldn't hear if the fan was on or not in my mac mini. He told me he could run some diagnostic software on it, but that he has been trying to download it from apple and their connection keeps screwing up. I told him in the nicest voice I could fake that I'd just come and pick it up since he can't figure out if there was even a problem.
After I picked up my machine, I phoned apple to let them know what terrible technicians they had sent me to, and to ask if I can just send it to someone who would actually be able to fix the problem. Turns out, I can't. There is apparently no way for apple's phone support to allow me to send a mac mini in to be fixed. Even if I had purchased the applecare, they would still only send a technician to my house (I'm betting it'd be from that same crappy local technician shop). The only other solution for me is to drive for an hour, drop off my mac mini at an apple store, drive home, and then repeat when my machine is ready to be picked up.
Like I said, what a joke. This is terrible support and I'm amazed that there can be an entire slashdot story devoted to their support being great. Has april fools started early? I just bought a brand new broken computer from Apple and they won't let me send it back to be fixed. Yeah, great support.
I'm no fan of Dell, but I gotta admit that when my girlfriend had problems with her Dell laptop they didn't waste any time in sending her a box that she could ship her computer in.
FiGZ.COM - A waste of perfectly good web space
Get out your hankies, gentlemen . . . believe it or not, what follows is a *brief and kind* detail of what I've been through.
My experience after purchasing a new Intel iMac resulted in a systemic failure of customer service at Apple. I find it hard to believe that the the problems I experienced at every step were unique.
2 weeks after getting the machine, it would spontaneously shut down when inserting any media into the SuperDrive. I would have to unplug it, wait, and plug it back in just to the machine to boot back up. If the media was still in the drive though, it wouldn't get very far. TechSupport had me reset the NVRAM and SMC . . . which didn't help. So then they had me take it into the shop.
The shop had it for 5 days, and 5 minutes after I got it home I realized the problem had not been fixed. So I called Apple back, and they wanted me to take it back to the shop. My reply was to the effect of (but much more polite and civil), "No, you can fiddle all you want with it, but you're going to have to send me a new computer."
So I argued with the person on the other end, and they asked me to wait a week while he consulted with Apple engineers to see if they'd had similar reports. A week later, I call him back and he says that they have had reports of similar problems and that the issue has been isolated to faulty a mainboard. His remedy, of course, was to take it back to the shop for a repair. I was dubious about the analysis because of some shuffling back and forth he was doing during the conversation.
Eventually we compromised on Apple sending a guy out to my location to fix the it. He said the guy would show up with every conceivable part that could be replaced, and that he'd work on it until it was fixed. So the guy shows up . . . but only with a mainboard and a SuperDrive (which had already been replaced). After about 2 hours of working on it, the computer would no longer even power up. Nice.
The technician called Apple, and they told him to forget about it and have me call them. So I did . . . and their solution was to send somebody out again in 48 hours (since it was Friday, this was actually going to be 48 hours from the following Monday). So this time I was firm. I'd accept two things: My money back, or a new computer.
After further arguing, they eventually agreed to ship me a new computer . . . but getting the data of the drive was my problem. So then I had to send it back to the shop in order to get the data off the drive. I had to pay for this myself. Eventually I got the foul thing shipped back to Apple. Just yesterday they called me to say they'd received the unit, and that my replacement was on it's way. We'll see.
One of the most interesting things, if not infuriating, was that at every step in this process I was zealously solicited to purchase the AppleCare extended warranty package . . . OK, I'm not going to purchase ANYTHING from Apple, EVER, until I have a working computer. It was only 2 weeks old when all of this started happening. I hardly think I should need to purchase something additional to get what I paid for.
-B
Many have said this before: It's just a marketing strategy. The apple brand has become a style icon. You buy apple, like buying gucci, BMW, or whatever gives you some sort of status with respect to others. Its one of the most expensive MP3/etc/ players in the market. So you'll buy a Porsche, and the least you expect, is someone calling to ask you: "How does it feel? Do you like it?". And you'll feel better.
There are tons of better and improved brands (let's say, Toyotas... that might last longer for smaller prices) but the style of the MAC is ruling because they put themselves as the "top of the line", which might not be the reality.
But... I guess If you can spend the $300, just do it and be happy.
- Note that telemarketers call everyday... it doesn't make everyone happy.
According to the link below, Apple's marketshare has been cut in half just during Job's tenure!
s iness/columnists/mike_langberg/14191452.htm?source =rss&channel=siliconvalley_mike_langberg
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/bu
Only a few percentage of the population "loves" Apple, and those people generate unbelievable amounts of smug.
You sure may look cool, but at a pretty high cost. Also, if it doesn't work, you're screwerd.
Here in Brazil, Apple computers are still way overpriced. Apple Brazil, for whatever reason, likes their prices artificially high. It's actually cheaper buy any Apple product from some random store in the US or elsewhere which sells on the internet, pay the shipping costs, all those damn high taxes, and it's still a lot cheaper than buy from any store that deals with Apple Brasil. Hell, I think you could even resell imported stuff for less than Apple Brasil and make some profit, even though you're paying full retail price plus taxes.
Don't get me wrong, I love my iPod and it's pretty features (smart playlists, nice interface, etc). But once I had this crazy idea to try buying an Apple computer. It worked pretty damn well, that's for sure, and one day, I decided to play with a Linux LiveCD on it... As an Apple newbie, I didn't knew I had to hold Option-C to boot from the CD. Ok, no problem, I would just log on OS X, open Firefox and search Google. Then for whatever reason, just before the login screen OS X kept reading the CD and stopped respongind. I couldn't reboot the thing, it was completly locked, so I had to pull the plug off the wall. Turned it on and OS X wouldn't boot anymore, the instalation CD wouldn't boot either, even though the Linux LiveCD booted just fine. Then I learned about the "wonders" of OpenFirmware. I had to reboot & Command-Option-P-R a few times, then Command-Option-N-V, then Command-Option-O-F and type a few weird commands (the thing didn't even had a help menu, luckily, I had a working PC ready), just to be able to boot the OS X install CD & reinstall the whole thing.
After all that, I don't believe that "it's more user-friendly than any PC" crap. How can anyone think OpenFirmware is actually better than a BIOS? Maybe I'm just used to PCs, but whenever I screwed things really badly, I could enter the BIOS, load the default settings, and boot from a CD, then try to recover or reinstall with just a reboot or two, not ~5 reboots, disconnecting the power cable, etc. I imagine how much "fun" it would be if it was a laptop.
Speaking of which, those MacBooks sure seem nice. They're even cheaper than a Sony Vaio with Core Duo around here (ASUS has the better price here), but that's if you save yourself the trouble of trying to get it from Apple Brasil, wich must be charging something like the price of a brand new popular car (like they did when the PowerBook G4 was released). Anyway, they're still overpriced. Why can't Apple sell a cheaper laptop? I don't need a gaming laptop, I already own a gaming PC, I just want something portable (not those big&heavy HP Pavilions) and that comes with a battery that lasts more than just 90 minutes.
According to the link below, Apple's marketshare has been cut in half just during Job's tenure! That means marketshare is now below 2.5%.
s iness/columnists/mike_langberg/14191452.htm?source =rss&channel=siliconvalley_mike_langberg
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/bu
Only a very, very small percentage of the population "loves" Apple, and those people generate unbelievable amounts of smug.
The argument does not hold outside of the US. Why do we, Apple users in Mexico, love Apple? We pay 50% more for their products than US customers. We get deplorable customer service. We don't have an iTunes Music Store, yet we buy iPods.
Apple SUCKS in México, their products don't. So maybe Apple users don't necessarily think of Customer Service as the main reason to have a mac. Maybe it's the RDF. Maybe we have macs because they just work.
This is going to be terse because I'm at work and Pointy Hair is coming:
I bought my kids a pair of ipods for christmas last year. If I didn't love my kids I'd place both of the players in the driveway and run over them repeatedly. Copy the serial number? I can't read the serial number (with a magnifying glass). Irreplaceable batteries are good for about a year. Earbuds (irreplaceable) seem to be good for half a year. Doesn't work with Windows 98 (kid's machine), Itunes doesn't work with mine (linux), can't get both to work separately on wife's (XP). Bought the kids new computers and had to jump through rediculous hoops to move their ipods over to the new computers. Everytime my kids have a problem Apple wants to upgrade the software. And maybe the software is intuitive to a Mac user but it's MacAsswards counterintuitive to me.
I'm linux since '91, OS/2 1.2-3.1, windows since the beginning (NT,98,XP ad nauseum), unix since Multics, a PDA user since the IIIx, have written thousands of programs on a dozen different platforms, and install systems from the z/OS dinosaur down to the PDA and if I ever buy another piece of @#$% from Apple you can shoot me!
I don't know why everybody loves the ipod. Must be because the competition sucks or something.
I couldn't agree with your post more! I made the rather unfortunate decision to read the grandparent's bitch page. I had to laugh when I read that one of the reasons he gave up on Apple was that it cost him $292 to repair a 10 year old computer. With every point he made my jaw dropped a little more. Somebody ought to take this guy to an Apple store and show him OS X and iLife on a 20" iMac, then tell him he can get it for $1,700.
The very first thing I did when I got my ipod was installed rockbox http://www.rockbox.org/ and got rid of the dependency on iTunes. I can now plug my ipod in, copy my music to it the same way I'd copy something to a normal hard drive, unplug it, and play. Its still got some issues, but the dependency on iTunes is gone, and the people working on it do a great job.
Disclaimer: I'm currently a Mac fanboy and am fortunate enough to use them at home and at work.
But, this guy is on crack. Apple's customer service has always been pretty crummy in my experience and historically. The things I like about Apple are:
- They release great and innovative products
- They aren't afraid to shake things up
- They release products that fulfill a need or want before I knew I needed or wanted it.
- UNIX
- Sex appeal
Right after posting that screed, I looked on my desk at the book open there and read this quotation:
'Defendit numerus', [there is safety in numbers] is the maxim of the foolish;
'Deperdit numerus', [there is ruin in numbers] of the wise.
I'm not sure if he's referring to bones, boners, or boneheads. Bonus marks for anyone who can identify the book I'm reading. You have a long time to answer, it's printed on paper with a life expectancy of several hundred years.
The last time I heard "We're committed to Customer Service" was when I worked for a small Mom-N-Pop type grocery chain here in Connecticut. The end result was me quitting after 6 years because they treat their employees like crap because they cannot manage their inventory (partially due to their employees) and are taking considerable losses, thus each one of us there were miserable. I went over to Red Robin (a burger resturant) and there I found a place that at least treated their employees like humans as well as manage their business in order to make a profit.
Point is, Apple fans say things like this but in reality Apple is no better and no worse than any other computer company out there. Dell used to go that whole customer relationship way until they got too big for their pants and didn't care. Their tech support suffered for it. People like Apple because it's classy and innovative, something many companies lack. Their hardware and software isn't that much more revolutionary than anyone elses, my friend's high priced Mac can do just about the same as my custom built $500 PC. The iPod is really just the music device everyone wanted to make but Apple got it out first, if Microsoft or Dell put out a music player before Apple, everyone would be writing that Apple was cloning it.
But if anything this article has proved that I should switch to posting useless semi-relevent articles on Apple instead of the other mostly relevent stories I've submitted and had rejected.
Well, I was not thinking of a list of companies per se. But the statement stands regardless since any particular company is surely soiled by insidious anti-consumer dealings.
I am not sure what my view of Apple is. I view them as relatively good, in the same sense that I view Google and perhaps even Starbucks as relatively good. "Are they good?" is an entirely different question which necessarily entails asking "Good for who?"
to anyone who's read Asimov's Foundation series.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I think Apple has the right approach, just evil execution.
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The database approach allows for file synchronization without execessive re-writes, plus it allows the iPod software itself to have nice searching and sorting capabilities.
I remember back in 1999, I had about 2GB of MP3's and I thought then it was a nightmare to manage them all. At the time, I was intentionally stripping ID3 tag information from songs because most of them were wrong anyway and just using filenames. I got burned by this later on of course, but at the time no one had come up with a better solution.
iTunes and the iPod do it right. I've been sitting here waiting for the iTunes and iPod database structures to be cracked and brought to light so that other applications could handle synchronization both ways without breaking the iPod's "one computer trust". I see a few here or there, but none do a better job.
Getting a different mp3 player doesn't fix this problem, rather it makes it worse.
Karma: Chameleon (mostly due to the fact that you come and go).
And I own an IPOD.
For the same price you can buy a low end BMW or a pimped out Taurus. The fit and finish of the BMW just feels better. There's just more substance. The doors don't feel tinny and have to be slammed. Same thing with an ipod.
That is certainly a plausible explanation. What I'm wondering is if we're talking about speech and not writing, how easy is it to tell the difference between the two?
If that's "good customer service" I'll eat my hat.
I have a brand-new G5 Mac. Every time I try to import photos, iPhoto crashes... it used to be intermittent but now it's every time. And can I get service? No.
Useless. The bloom is off the rose for me.
I've had one great Apple experience. Bought a five-year-old Powerbook 190 on ebay. Apple at that time still had their free service for a power-cord problem. They sent me a pre-paid mailer for the 190, I sent it back, and in a three days or so had a 190 with a brand new motherboard.
I was less happy than I expected with my work 17" PowerBook G4, though. I bought a Dell Inspiron 6000 for home use for about half the price, and I must confess that, apart from the weight issue, I like the Dell a lot more. The PB screen resolution is poor. Text is a bit blurry no matter which antialiasing mode I choose. (My Palm has clearer fonts using my shareware FontSmoother hack.) The DVD playback is jumpy if deinterlacing is needed, and the deinterlacing is of poor quality (come on, Apple! this is a 1.5GHz G4; I have perfectly smooth software-decoded DVD playback on my 1.4GHz Celeron desktop with a PC100 bus and an old 8mb video card). And there is no alternative DVD player software available, unlike on the PC where I can choose from half a dozen different players. (Yes, I know about VideoLAN, but it probably violates the DMCA, so it's not an option.)
Moreover, last I checked, Apple did not provide a no-fault warranty like Dell's CompleteCare (one drops laptops).
That said, I did have an awful customer support experience with Dell once, and that got me to switch to the Apple. But for my next work laptop, I'm going back.
Maybe I just don't know enough of OS X. Little things annoy me, like the fact that on the PC I can get just any menu entry with two keystrokes (alt-x y) while on the Apple I keep on having to pull up menus. (I know I can assign shortcuts, but then I have to remember the shortcuts, and it's a bother setting them up for all the commands I use.) I don't like Expose though I use it all the time--I prefer a taskbar which lists the filenames that different windows are working on.
On Windows, I can quickly pull up an explorer folder for any directory by pressing Windows-E, Alt-D, typing the directory, pressing Enter. I can then copy the pathname from the address line, and later come back to the directory by pasting it back. On the Mac I haven't found a way of doing these kinds of things that doesn't involve lots of clicking. When I try to save a file in an app like Word on the Mac, I haven't found a way to enter a pathname directly. I've just discovered that when I press / in the Word file dialog, I get a prompt for a directory, but that's not the same thing as just being able to quickly specify the full pathname. (Of course Windows' lack of tilde expansion in pathnames is a nuisance here.)
Apps seem to me to be even more poorly integrated with the CLI than on Windows: it seems like more Windows programs (e.g., text editors) accept command-line arguments that let you load in files, etc., than Mac programs, and it's hard for me to even figure out how to launch from the CLI things that are sitting in the bundle directories. I've just tried to launch Microsoft Word by going to its directory and typing "./Microsoft Word" and I'm told it can't execute the binary file. It's all slow point-and-click, select file from list, etc. Now, I'm sure some of this can be done if only one knows how. But there is something unintuitive about it. I've tried all the obvious things (or at least obvious to someone who has used DOS, Unix and Windows). I must confess that I haven't even found a way yet to get XCode to come up with a given file to be loaded being specified on the command-line.
I've had the Apple for about a year. My overall usability experience is still worse than for Windows. It may just be a matter of the heritage. OS X's UI descends from the mouse-based interfaces of MacOS which were NOT optimized for keyboard usage, while Windows has had to support migration from DOS users who were used to the comfort of being to get everything done with a bunch of keystrokes. I hated the idea of GUIs at first (whether Mac or Windows or X). I've since recognized that some
You're either full of shit or you're not telling us something.
The G4's harddrive died, which I was able to RMA with toshiba.
Could this be part of the problem? You should be taking care of the HD replacement with Apple, not Toshiba. I wouldn't be surprised that you did significant damage to the iBook taking it apart if you actually did it yourself.
However, shortly after that it started exhibiting the same symptoms that the G3 had, however this time it died out of warrenty and thus Apple wanted around $600-700 to fix it.
Apple's flat rate for iBook repairs runs about $300 for out-of-warranty issues, even if there wasn't a repair extension program to cover these particular failures at no cost to customers. The higher cost tells me you caused some damage to the computer, and they are forced to charge you for the repair. That's standard procedure when there is evidence of abuse to the computer.
People love Apple because it is cool, but in practice Apple has done little for its users.
It all started when Apple came out with the deadend Lisa, followed by the incompatible Mac which left Apple ][ users out to hang, followed by many years of overpriced macs with small monochromatic monitors. Then from the early 90s til the introduction of OSX mac users were subjected to a remarkably flaky OS that made windows 95 look like a monolith of stability. Users were so totally fed-up that they engaged in extremely costly migrations to windows with Apple's market share falling from over 25% down to below 2%. When Mac clones were finally allowed there was such a a massive rush for the exits that Steve Jobs had to cancel the clone licensing program. Recently, under Jobs' aegis, Mac users were left with underpowered laptops even though it has been clear for well over a decade ago that the Intel line would, in practice, be superior thanks to their unlimited R&D budget. What has Apple track record been in responding to user requests such as two button mice? Love it or leave it!
But can we PLEASE get it into our heads ONCE AND FOR ALL that the purpose of any big corporation is JUST to make money for its shareholders - END OF STORY!!! Whether or not you, the consumer, thinks they make good or bad products is pretty much irrelevant to them once they have your money. And if they give you a good customer service and/or a good feeling every time you deal with them, it is not because they're feeling nice, warm or friendly about you but because it is profitable to do so.
The problem with this statement is that it ignores all of human history.
Sure corperations are put together to make money. But the people running them AND the people working for them are all human.
Name one human who is truly a purely calculating financial robot. They simply do not exist. If your statement were true then all choices made by most companies would be all about "how does this maximize income". Yet companies are making irrational discions all the time.
Furthermore in the real world there is not ONE choice that so obviously leads to "more money". You have to balance things that lead to short term income but yield little in the long term. The real world is filled with choices firmly in the grey that leave much room for, and often even demand, emotional interpretation of direction. So even if the sole purpose is to make money the means by which that is accomplished can have many other goals attached to them.
What makes Apple successul I think is that more often, the irrational moves they make generally end up making consumers happier rather than not. They make some bad calls just like anyone but they are good also at realizing this is the case and changing things when they need to.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Priceless... I make a crack about Apple fanboy-ism, and immediately get modded down. Just as I thought!
All your sig are belong to us.
Yeah, I stabbed a man in the heart!
I saw that! Brick killed a guy! Did you throw an apple?
Yeah, there were horses, and a man on fire, and I killed a guy with an apple!
Brick, I've been meaning to talk to you about that. You should find yourself an abandoned building or ailing company close by. Lay low for a while, possibly at the Microsoft headquarters.. because you're probably wanted for murder.
Don't anthropomorphize computers: they hate that.
This a very good post in the sence that it gets the way the Apple business models works ( in a way ). However, the writer keeps on repeating that it is the great customer service that sets Apple appart and this is just wrong. Apple's customer service is not that great and if you buy a computer from say Gateway or any of the highend manufacturers like Voodoo and Falcon Northwestern you will get awsome customer support. You pretty much get what you pay for with customer service and it is an expensive thing. Anyway, the point that the writer gets is that Apple is not just selling a computer or an OS or a media player, apple is selling a service. Apple's whole business is based arround the idea that people by something because of whan they want to do with it. You woun't just buy a computer but you would buy one with an OS and software that does neat stuff. So if a company can sell you the whole package and provide support for the whole package then you would be a lot happier. There are people who like to build their own computers and Apple is deffinitelly not for them. But as far as everyone else goes Apple's business model is the winning one. It is pretty much the same thing with the iPod. It is not just an audio player but it's a way for you to listen to music. You can get both the player and the music from Apple and this is why it is such a success. This is exactly why for so long Apple has no competition. Yes Creative players are better is some aspects but they offer only hardware and this makes them very unatractive. Most people are not willing to rip CDs because it seems too complicated and also why should you buy as CD then rip it and then put it on your portable audio player when you can buy the already ripped version and it would cost you less thant the physical CD? Well most people wouldn't buy the CD. But all of the above hardly has anything to do with customer service. Every company offers customer service and there are quite a few that are a lot better than Apple only there are almost none that will offer support for the whole package and not just the hardware or just the software. It is not quality that sets Apple appart ( though it is at a pretty high level ) it is the kind of service offered.
I had a flawed battery on my 1.67 powerbook. On Thursday evening, I requested a new battery thinking it would be in sometime the following week. Much to my surprise, the battery was delivered Friday. Furtheremore, the applecare rep spoke english and hold time was minimal. IMHO, Apple products are worth every penny.
Face it, man. Nobody wants to look at your crack.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Right... but I think I want Steve Ballmer in a fight more than Steve Jobs. Steve jobs would show the peace sign, Ballmer would fuck shit up.
It's just that I love having an alternative to what I hate. (ie. Microsoft).
Is it wrong?
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
I've used nothing but Macs at home since 1985. In all that time, I've never called customer service once. When I have encountered minor problems (three or four times), I've been able to find that someone else has the same problem and posted it on the boards at the Apple Support/Discussions area. In all cases, I've been able to remedy the problem by looking over the discussions and finding a solution that someone has posted. Needless to say, I'm a satisfied customer!
Yeah, at BestBuy you will end up getting another machine, and we charge $59 for a data transfer from one machine to another. If you have a "Service Plan" on a computer, it will be sent off to a service center to be repaired, and will be back in about 2 weeks. If you have software problems, you can end up spending over $200 to get it cleaned off. How much does the genius bar charge? Of course, GeekSquad is there to capitalize on people's problems, and the GeniusBar is there to help people. I hate my job, I can't wait till I'm out of school.
Sig: I stole this sig.
If you ask me, this article is a little late, as my recent experience has shown that Apple is no longer a top performer in customer service.
My Exprience:
I ordered a new MacBook Pro 2 GHz from Apple's online store. When it came, it emitted a mind splitting tone whenever the screen backlight was on. I talked to an Apple Care rep, they were nice, and agreed with me that it sounded like a problem with the backlight or the inverter board that feeds power to the backlight. I sent in my machine. This is fine everything cannot leave the factory perfect every time.
Two weeks later I got my machine back. I turned it on, and the screen whine was still there and still audible from across the room. I checked the repair record, and they had replaced the mother board. No work had been done to the inverter board which is separate from the mother board, and nothing had been done to the screen back light.
I called Apple Care and was escalated to a product specialist. The specialist was insulting, and implied that the noise was not happening. Additionally at no point did they acknowledge that this was a wide spread problem. The Apple Care specialist suggested that I take the machine to an Apple Certified Repair center or an Apple store.
Having read of people's nightmares with the Apple store, I decided to use an independent Apple Certified Repair facility. The independent repair tech heard the noise too and winced. He said they would work on fixing it.
The independent repair facility called the next day and said they could not fix the problem as Apple had not acknowledged the issue. They had to send the machine back to Apple itself, where it had not been properly repaired the first time.
Now I wait for Apple to have try 2 at fixing my brand new unusable on arrival computer. I hope I do not need to send in my machine for a third time for this problem like at least one poster on Apple's support discussion forums.
To console myself I wrote them a letter demanding either a new machine of higher specification, free warranty care for the time that I own the machine, or $500 as compensation for the fact that I am effectively receiving a refurbished machine instead of a new one.
It would have all been fine if they had fixed the problem the first time, or if the problem was one that was not obvious from the moment the machine was turned on, or if they had simply acknowledged that this was an issue that several people were having and they were trying to figure out a fix.
If you ask me, the shark has been jumped.
Score is unfair!
My PowerBook was in for repairs 4 times in the first year I had it. Two logic boards, a display, and a broken latch. This being my first Mac, I'm not inclined to get another.
That said, I picked up a Toshiba M4 (tablet PC) to replace it, and the video card fried itself 2 weeks later. It was in for repairs for a week and a half, and the local service center was told the part was backordered and Toshiba wouldn't get back to them on when it might be in. I called Toshiba, and after 40 minutes on hold and being bounced around amongst various customer service departments, sometimes repeating my problem 3-4 times to a single representative who would then parrot my problem back to me, I had to browbeat someone until they agreed that this was unacceptable and gave me an RMA for the machine.
Every time my PowerBook died, I had it back within 3-4 days. There's definitely something to be said for having good customer service and a good supply chain for your parts. If Toshiba hadn't been backordered and had better service, I might still have that Tecra.
In the livestock sense of "service", perhaps. If that isn't what you meant, then please tell that to:
- All the iPod users with dead batteries, cracked cases, failed mainboards, etc., who've gone to Apple in hopes of getting any kind of real help at all. Make sure you don't do this face-to-face or you may not survive. Then Google "iPod Repair" and look at the thriving aftermarket in non-Apple-authorized businesses providing just that. Do you also need a whack on the head to wake up to the fact that the suction factor with Apple "service" is enough to pull a bowling ball through a cocktail straw?
- All the Apple-purchase-contemplating Window/*nix users who've gone into an Apple store and had their perfectly reasonable queries publicly dissed by some 22-year-old twat with moussed purple hair and an earring. In the immortal words of Meier Kahane: "Never again."
And if that seems trollish, please, by all means, experiment with what I've just described. YMMV, but mine (and that of everyone I know) has not.
Frankly, fuck 'em.
No need to make a big deal about service if it's not neccessary.
Take the zen micro for example; the battery is easily replaceable, and the hard drive is replaceable too, although it requires opening the player, so creative should take this one step further and officially make it replaceable with another hard drive or any size compactflash card. How does apple compare to this? They've completely cut off their equivalent product, so the service is a non issue anyway. That'll cost them, now that seagate has started making 12 gig 1 inch hard drives. The zen vision also has a replaceable battery, which must be very useful not only for maintennance purposses since video takes a lot more power than music, if only they had done this with the zen vision m.
Or look at sandisk's e100 and m200 series. Battery replacement is a non issue because they run for a long time on a single AAA battery, and although the memory won't need replacing, it's upgradable in the e100's.
Almost everybody goes to work because they need money. Even so, there are some who work just for the money, and others who take pride in doing a good job. Just as no all workers are the same, not all companies are the same. Apple has a track record recently of being an overachiever, and deserves its good reputation.
...there's a simple answer, and it's wrong.
... dialog boxes.)
(H. L. Mencken, paraphrased.)
I think there's more to it than great products or R&D to improve the customer experience, although those are certainly major factors. I think there's a bunch of mutually reinforcing components to the Apple Cult, all of which certainly benefit from product quality and customer service, but which separate Apple from other companies that produce great products (e.g. Gillette, Disney, BMW).
One issue is sunken cost. If you pay a lot for something -- anything, unless it totally sucks, you tend to cleave to it. (I may love Gillette Razors, but when I run out of blades there's nothing stopping me from trying Schick.)
Another is mutual exclusiveness (which ties into sunken cost). By choosing product A, getting familiar with product A, and buying things that are compatible with product A, you make switching to product B far more difficult. (If I drive a BMW there's no real financial reason not to switch to Acura for my next car. It's not like I was planning to move the leather seats and stereo from my BMW into my new Acura.)
Another is self-image. Apple is very good at projecting itself as a cool, individualistic, creative company that produces products for cool, individualistic, creative people. Microsoft tries desperately to create this image for itself (look at ANY of its mainstream TV ads for the last ten years) and fails to achieve this. Plenty of computers appear in TV shows and movies as product placement, but Macs appear in TV shows (e.g. Seinfeld, Buffy, etc.) because the folks making the shows use them. (In both examples, Apple actually paid or provided new computers to the shows to put current models in.) Here's a rough guide: if the folks in a TV Show or an ad are using your product and the logo is taped over, it's not paid product placement. If you see a website screenshot in an ad, it's probably in Safari and showing Aqua widgets. If you see a computer in a furniture ad, it's usually a Mac. (Heck many websites are essentially ads for Aqua. Look, we're desperately trying to look as cool as Apple
There's always self-presentation too. Since Apple products are expensive and stylish they're great conspicuous consumption -- especially when a MacBook Pro is cheaper than a couple of Louis Vuitton purses, looks better (in my opinion), lasts longer, and gets more use. (How many of us can afford the *clothes* -- or *shoes* -- in Sex in the City? I owned Carrie's laptop though.)
Apple also manages -- and this is a neat trick -- to always be the underdog. (At least post IBM PC.) Even when it dominates a market (as with iPod and iTunes) it somehow manages to be the "in thing" and simultaneously the underdog. (Thank you French courts, thank you constant idiotic remarks from Microsoft, thank you Apple Records, thank you Wall Street doomsayers.)
Apple has always had a lot of geek cred too. Sure, semi-technical folks (the kind of people who consider hacking an AUTOEXEC.BAT file or using RegEdit makes them an elite hacker) prefer PCs, but uber-geeks have almost always preferred Macs (at least to PCs, if not Suns or Lisp Machines). Part of this probably stems -- ironically -- from Macs being harder to develop for than PCs. (At least until RealBasic came out.)
- Numerous misused expressions and idioms: "In today's day and age," "could care less," "CE companies are in fault," etc.
- Goofy logical leaps and non sequiturs. (Granted, many companies, Apple included, are play fast and loose with logic in their marketing schemes, but Apple at least uses ones that make sense and are somewhat convincing to the casual reader.)
Okay, now I've worked myself into a frenzy over my loathing for CoolTechZone's crappy writing. My point is that Apple tends to have higher standards for their marketing (at least in terms of polish), and I have a hard time seeing them hiring such a low-grade "journalist" for the job.On the other hand, the submission of the article to Slashdot smells a little Astroturfy to me:
Right. Okay, realtorperson, I'm sure you submitted this article based only on its journalistic merits and without any vested interest. To me, the worst part of all this is that the editors actually posted the submission.
And, as always, I could be wrong about this.
That one always bothered me, I don't know why. I guess some of it is that people spelling it that way (present company excepted for the deliberate misspelling, of course) remind me of Engrish...
Makes you wonder if people understand how dumb they look on paper. Guess not. (where is that story on people not knowing if they're incompetent?)
I [may] disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
Ok Fritz, Perhaps this will drive the point home.
I own a 30" HD Cinema Display purchased as a refurb, and a ViewSonic 20" purchased new. I paid $2099 for the 30" and $1299 for the 20" (when it was new). Given their respective pixel densities, I paid $0.051 per pixel for the 30" and $0.067/pixel for the 20".
Both of the displays have had to go in for repair. Both companies honored my "basic consumer rights", however I believe you will find that their styles vary widely.
The 30" would intermittently get an abundance of white pixels. I contacted Apple, they overnighted me a box. The next day I put the display and some photos of the failure mode in the box and called Airborne who picked it up that day. It was at the factory the following day where they replaced the panel and the cable and overnighted it back to me the same day. Total down time: approx 40 hours. Cost: $0.
Now, here's the story of the 20" repair. Basically, the inverters are failing. I contacted ViewSonic, spoke to a tech who didn't seem to understand my explanation that after power up, I could see a flickering image of my computer's desktop for about 3 seconds, much like a faulty fluorescent light fixture, then the screen would go black and the power LED stays green, and yes the cables are screwed down and firmly inserted. After about 10 minutes, she told me her computer was fubar'd, took my number and said she would have to call me back. I waited 6 hours, no return call. So I called back. Next guy says sure, here's your RMA number, you can ship it to us or drop it off at our place. You also have to fax your proof of purchase to this number. Note he did not specify any sequence to these steps.
ViewSonic is about 20 miles away from me, and I wanted to get out for a drive (and I did not have a box), so I dropped it off. I had previously taken this same unit in for repair, and they accepted it with just the RMA number. Not so this time. When I was at the factory, I was then informed they could not accept my display because nobody had approved it for receipt. I showed her the photocopy of my store receipt I had brought with me, but no dice. She tells me she has no authority to override the system, then pointed at the phone, yes an extra phone on the service desk which was oriented to face the customers. I'm guessing they need the phone a lot. So I call tech support again, give them the RMA number, tell them my situation and that they had responsibility for not properly instructing me about the sequence of faxing and returning. I ask, can you please fix this for me so I can drop the monitor off? Basically, somebody needed to push a button to enable the receiving clerks software to accept the barcode scan from my monitor. On hold for 10 minutes. The guys tells me sorry he can't do anything. I ask to speak to a supervisor. 10 minutes, sorry there is supervisor available. I tell him I'll be OK if he can overnight me a prepaid shipping box to my home, I'll send it then. 10 minutes on hold, sorry we can't send you the box. I then tell him if I have to go home I will be suing them in small claims court for damages due to their negligence. 10 minutes on hold, and still he can't do anything to help me. He says after all that time on hold that the problem is between me and the clerk. I tell the clerk that was the last thing he said, and she was flabbergasted. She says I don't have any way to do that. So she calls up tech support via the same 800 number (I heard the same voice prompts while she had it on speaker), gets through to a supervisor, who finally after she explains the situation 3 times, pushes the appropriate buttons to set whatever flag in their RMA database. Nearly an hour later, they accept my monitor.
As for the repair, well, how do you think that goes? It will be 7-14 BUSINESS Days for them to repair my monitor, at which point, they will ship the unit back to me via ground. Total down time: so far, about 11 days, and I still don't have my monitor back. Just to replace some cra
cat
Actually Steve Jobs throws digital cameras.
http://writersblocklive.com/part-55
Sorry I'm off by a factor of 100. The costs per pixel were $0.00051 and $0.00067 respectively.
cat
I've been a nearly-full-time Apple user since ~2000. I love my PowerBook, I love OSX, I love my Apple apps, and I love my iPod. But I've never felt that Apple has "excellent customer service". I mean, I'm not sure exactly what to compare it to... maybe it's better than Dell or something?
.mac and AppleCare).
I mean, the design and overall quality of products is a part of customer service, and they have that down. But actual interaction with the company we're talking about, right?
The floor staff at the Apple store are a mixed bag... I've encountered folks who were great and folks who were not. One mistake they make is to put far too much emphasis on upselling, which makes for a used-car-sales experience. They pride themselves on saying "we don't work on commission", but don't mention that their work performance is judged solely on their ability to attach items to the order (like
The Genius Bar people are always worn out and a bit testy. I've worked customer service, and in my experience this is more a function of a company who never lets customer service tell customers what they want to hear, rather than just the existence of annoying customers. Case in point: virtually any type of damage to a powerbook results in a repair cost very close to purchasing a refurb unit. If your screen is cracked or your case is dented, it's $1700 flat fee, I think. Kind of ridiculous, no? I did break a Powerbook screen once, and after steaming at their prices, I was lucky enough to find another company who would do it for $600. So I'm sure Apple could do it at a better cost.
I also remember calling support on iTunes. Back when the DRM only allowed 3 computers, i ran out because I sold a machine and forgot to de-authorize the music. They did clear my authorization list, but then they reprimanded me for my error and acted like I shouldn't expect them to do that for me. Good customers service wouldn't do that in any case.
Anyways, I love Apple products, but their customer service is average at best.
Cheers.
PS - of course I may be biased as I work at Zappos, where we really do have excellent customer service. I shit you not.
but what many of them fail to comprehend is that it's not necessarily the iPod that makes Apple successful, but rather its customer service.
What came first, the iPod, or Apple's customer service? Clearly, the iPod. Methinks the author overstates the case for customer service driving Apple's success. But it was otherwise an effective astroturfing.
Flying is easy, just throw yourself at the ground and miss. -Douglas Adams
Apple had two choices: cooperate with the RIAA companies, or not have an iTunes. There is no way at all to sell copyrighted music without DRM. I hope that will change, but there you are. Remember when the iTunes store first came out? You could stream music from any person through the Internet. There were websites where you could hook up with dozens of other users. There were also simple apps so you could "extract" any file you wanted, unprotected, from the online stream. Apple had that choice right there: take that back door out of the computer, which was a fantastic feature, or lose the support of all the labels. All of them. It's hard to blame Apple for that. Try to get the laws changed.
If you wanna know how it works and how to get it to do what you want, well, you gotta learn how it works. You must look behind the public mask, grasshopper, and see the reality throuth the lens of the CLI. You must learn to call things by their True Names, which can't be spoken by the mouse.
This is precisely why I *used to* love Apple. The old (pre-OSX) GUI *was* looking directly at every file with their real names and all of that. Using other GUIs, including OSX and of course all varieties of Windows, feels less... direct. Like it a sham pretty face put up to hide the uglyness happening underneath. As opposed to just *not being ugly in the first place* and letting users look directly at it.
Now, not only is the Finder hiding (to some extent) the true nature of the FS structure, but programs are hiding even the structure in the Finder. For example, I really hate the way iPhoto wants to keep all its pictures (the real files) organized in funky folders full of aliases, while presenting it to the user that their files are actually neatly organized as the user directed. It contributes to the "I store my files in Word" syndrome, where users think their files are *in* some program, since they're taught to access the files by opening the program and getting the files fthrough the program's interface - instead of locating the actual files and opening them with some program.
Your docs are not in Word. Your music is not in iTunes. Your photos are not in iPhoto. Clueless users, know where your files actually are - and stupid developers, stop trying to hide them from the users!
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
Ah, fuck Wusthof. No seriously, you must be an emacs user.
There are only three noble truths: vi, FreeBSD and Zwilling J.A. Henckels.
Frankly I have no idea what the OP was talking about: people who cook really do care about their knives.
It's supposed to make the point that you care so little that saying you could care less is ridiculous.
Creative Zen series and Creative Zen Micro series have Desktop Interfaces that allow you to manage your music.
----- You know you have ego issues when you register a domain in your name.
1) Clone vendors
::cough:: Dell ::cough:: at all. (Recall the first iPod and how much it was panned. Sometimes, style LEADS to substance.)
The clone vendors actually INCREASED total Mac market share while they were around, but 99% of the press absolutely refused over and over again to report on anything but Apple's losing share (and I was reading a lot of the press at the time). This was thus a major (and inaccurate) perception problem that was hurting the Mac market on the whole. Thus Apple's kibosh move (and believe me, I was VERY sorry to see PowerComputing, and their awesome ad campaigns, go with it).
2) Puck mouse.
Wow, that's a ridiculous reason...
Yeah, we all hated it immediately, but you know what? 20 bucks later and you get a microsoft 2-button wheelmouse optical that was fully-supported already in the OS. One could argue that Apple spent far too long in "2-button-mouse denial" and that a new iMac owner shouldn't have had to be subjected to this, but the fact is, I'll gladly pay the cost (as a consumer) to have Apple err too much sometimes in favor of style over substance, than have there be very little style
Forget about the pathetic 14 day in store refund rubbish, that's only if you change your mind and decide you don't want it.
You've misunderstood. Any time within the first year, Apple would have repaired the problem at no charge (and my experience with Apple's warranty service has been excellent; all they asked me for was a name and phone number so they could call me when it was done).
However, repairing something like this takes time. Normally, the computer will be shipped to Apple, Apple will repair it, then it will be shipped back to the store for the customer to pick up; this usually takes about two weeks. That's not what happened here. In this case, the employee took a brand new computer off the shelf, copied the customers files from the old one, and gave the customer the new computer after a few minutes. This level of service is most certainly not required by law.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
My favorite Apple CS story is about when I got my Airport Extreme, and an Apple-recommended printer to lug into it. We have two Powerbooks here, and neither of them could find the printer following the (meager) instructions that it came with. So, after a lot of frustrating failures, I called Apple for help.
The fellow that I talked to started off by wanting to make sure that my Internet connection was working properly. This was curious, because it had nothing to do with the problem; I should have been able to use the printer even without an Internet connection. In fact, that would have been the logical aproach to isolate the problem (and in fact would have worked). But I went along, to see what he knew that I didn't.
I was walked through the process of rebooting the Airport and my Powerbook. But when he got to the gateway, a linux box, I balked when he told me to reboot it. This was clearly far beyond any reasonable act; better would have been to disconnect it from and internal LAN (and that would have also worked, it turned out).
He got rather miffed at my refusal to reboot a machine that was outside the scope of the problem. His response was, in essense, to tell me that Apple doesn't support the Airport in the presence of "unauthorized" computers. If I wanted help, I'd have to shut down all non-Apple equipment, and give the Airport a direct connection to the Internet.
I finally gave up, and tackled the problem myself. I eventually pinned it down: Unbeknownst to me (because it wasn't mentioned in any documentation I could find), the Airport was running a DHCP server, and its address range overlapped that of the LAN's DHCP server (the linux box). When I found this, I changed them to not overlap, and the printer suddenly worked. None of this required rebooting anything.
This might just be a personal problem, except for something that I didn't mention to the CS guy: Part of what I was doing on my home network was testing stuff for the people I was working for. I wrote a report of this "support" incident, making special note of Apple's unwillingness to support their Airport in a mixed-vendor environment. This had an immediate effect: Apple was dropped from the list of acceptable vendors for their network. Like most companies with offices in several states, they had a rather mixed combination of computing stuff, and the ability to play nice with the others was high on their list of desirable features.
Although they had a lot of Windows boxes, and a few Macs, they went with RedHat linux rather than Macs for their net's infrastructure, with a few Cisco boxes in the obvious places. And a mixture of wireless things, all chosen partly because they were linux-friendly, and none from Apple.
So by blowing me off as they did, Apple lost at least one significant corporate customer.
I might add that it wasn't just this one incident that eliminated them from consideration. But everyone did agree that they were significantlly better than Microsoft.
Doing your testing from a "home" site can be a useful thing for a company to do. You learn a lot of things that you can't learn from a salesman. I recommend it.
Meanwhile, I'm still trying to learn how to access that printer from our linux and Windows boxes. It's suppose to "just work". Yeah, right.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
The wife has a newer G5 that's a great machine. She absolutely loves it. She became a Mac person through the education system, where Apple is (was?) heavily involved. I have an older Dell, which I really like. For some things her Mac is better, for some my PC is better. I really thought about getting a Mac next time, but there is a lot of stuff I do that won't work on the Mac. There are times when she has to use mine to get something done or visit some certain site. We are both pure users and not programmers or developers. Comparing them as quality machines, well, we've never had an issue with either one, both have been great. Mine came with ME, and I think I'm the only human on the planet that never ever had a problem with it. I'm not a big MS fan, but I'm not a big Mac fan either. They both work and do what we need them to do. The few upgrades I've done on mine and on her previous Mac were both simple and straightforward. We both have iPods and love them, but my guess is there are other players out there that work just as well. It really seems to depend on what you want from the machine.
Apple = good customer service? Do me a favour. Maybe the U.S. experience is different than over here in the U.K. as my experience with Apple has been less than encouraging. Apple U.K. has an appalling relationship with their delivery service which often leads to deliveries to the wrong address and months of delay. Refunds are a nightmare and I've had to contact Apple to get them to explain why they over-charged my credit card. Surface politeness counts for nothing when you have a grossly incompetent infrastructure causing chaos in the background. Want your credit card details removing from their database? No can do. I was told I would have to file a lawsuit to get them to remove my data.
My thought is that brand loyalty is a sure ticket to being useless.
We get into this war where I work from time to time and it always makes me laugh. Simply put, you evaluate everything and choose *the best product*.
For instance, we just bought some fibre channel storage and ended up going with apple for the choice because they were way cheaper than EMC/Dell and it simply did what I needed it to do...well.
I think Ipods are great and they're really useful, but you look at apple's desktop line and you just shoot yourself in the foot. Why get an apple when you can grab 2 PCs for the same money? Don't like Windows, use a distro. It's really not difficult.
Choice is good, but don't shy away from the a choice because of an aparent monopoly...that's just silly.
--pete
You nailed it. Here's an anecdote for ya:
So last November, I took my old iBook in for repairs. For the fourth time under the AppleCare warranty. Needless to say, I wasn't happy about it, since the warranty was about to expire, and with the success I'd had, I wasn't counting on it lasting much longer. I knew the problem would get fixed quickly, but I wasn't looking forward to being without a laptop for another 2-3 days.
So I bring it in to the Apple Store and wait my turn.
"Hmmm. Interesting. Is this the second time you've brought it in?"
"Oh, no, way more than that."
*tap tap tap* "Lemme search for that serial number... OK, he's brought it in 4 times. Want a new one?"
"A brand new one?"
"Yeah."
"Like, one of the new G4's."
"Yeah."
"Not refurbished."
"Yeah."
"For free."
"Yeah."
Having more than 3 repairs triggers a clause in the "AppleCare" extended service plan. Since my machine was bottom-of-the-line in 2003, that meant getting a bottom-of-the-line 2006 model. Which means upgrading from a 700MHz G3 to a 1.33GHz G4, faster graphics, bigger hard drive, better display, better sound, OSX 10.4 (instead of ol' 10.2), new iLife versions...
Now how do you think I feel today, typing on my brand new laptop, that cost me nothin'?
When I'm in the market for a new computer, where do you think I'm going to look first?
You don't exactly need a Harvard MBA to figure this one out: Happy customers keep buying your stuff.
It seems that for my whole life I have been under the mistaken impression that I am a valid subset of everyone! Now I come across this article and my beliefs are shattered!
Whatever shall I do now?
all the best,
drew
FreeMusicPush If you want to see more Free Music made, listen to Free
From the almighty Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ipod
Also, it wasn't a "fad" when it first came out, as most of the people buying the iPod when it was first released were Apple fans. It wasn't until 2004 when there was a huge jump in sales.
Mac OS X has the best, easiest-to-use Japanese language support on English-speaking computers. While I'm not as familiar with input methods for Korean or Chinese (whether mainland or diehard), they look about as simple as kotoeri. Also, Macs have the fewest problems with mojibake (2-byte-character screwups), as near as I can tell. In fact, kotoeri input method on a Mac is so second nature that I'm afraid to try whatever Windows XP has, and my one foray into Linux multilingual support ended by reformatting my hard drive and reinstalling Windows '95. Not a fun experience. Macs rule the Pacific rim, or did. Maybe other systems have gotten better, but justifiable F.U.D. casts a long shadow.
``Tension, apprehension & dissension have begun!'' - Duffy Wyg&, in Alfred Bester's _The Demolished Man_
As always depends on the company. The only Apple product I've owned is an iPod. I don't like their battery replacement policy...hmm my iPod won't hold a charge...I have to pay what, $50, send it off to Apple and they send me another iPod but all my music is gone...hmm sucks that I couldn't have "easily" copied everything off it onto my computer..because I have lost computers (stolen / broken hard drives) and lost some of the original files..
I have a Samsung Syncmaster 770mp (I think..haven't seen it in a while)...a year or so after I got it the picture slowly became darker and darker to the point where it was hard to see. So I called them...they SENT someone to my house dropped off the new one and took away they old one. Didn't take long either...I call that good customer service...
Ceinwyn
You're forgetting one important thing! The Steve Jobs Reality Distortion Field (RDF). This particular device is very good at distorting reality to turn crap into gold. Once exposed to the RDF, a person will unknowingly be willing to spend twice as much for a product of the same or lesser quality than one from another manufacturer. I'm not sure what the long term goal of Steve Jobs and his RDF is, but I can tell you that I for one, don't like it! :)
slashdot
apple is so popular for two reasons:
1. the products look cool
2. the products are easy to use for unexperienced users
thats the same reason why windows is so widespread...
technologically the products are middle-class and this
article is just cheap advertisement
The MAFIAA is a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes
I love Apple, and Mr. Jobs, because I can always be comforted in knowing whatever I buy from them will be replaced with a more powerful, less expensive model within 2 months. Oh, and with the release of every new OS, there's guaranteed to be a fraction of apps that won't work and will never work again. But heck, at least its pretty.
There are no uninteresting things. There are only uninterested people.
50% of People with bad experiences tell other people and complain loudly and publicly, 1% of people with good experiences tell other people and laud loudly and publicly.
23% of all statistics are made up on the spot.
Like anyone can even know that
My reasons for not liking appleas are many. My best example being a lightning strike at a client's home. One iMac and one Dell. Both network cards were bad. Ten minutes and $45 later, the Dell was up and going. Eight days and $850, and the apple came back from an authorized repair center never to act quite the same (client's words, not mine).
They are not more stable. "Better" is relative. They are pretty shinny things. I prefer a platform I can upgrade, and find software and hardware for. If I don't like the OS, I like a wide variety of choices to replace it with. This just is not currently available for the mac. All this, and you have to pay more, as in "A fool and their money are soon parted."
It's funny ... I guess some people just can't stand the idea of a company gaining popularity for legitimate reasons, and especially Apple.
Why is this?
I think if they don't do something, they'll be in trouble.
Ummm...why? Because you think that they're "technologically inferior"?
Apple's doing better than they've ever been doing before, OS X is a great OS, and their products, both computer and non, are selling incredibly well for a "beleaguered" company. The age of the language an OS is written in has no bearing on the quality of the OS--it's just another meaningless number to throw around to try to prove the superiority of one OS over another.
So...why on earth would they be in trouble?
Dan Aris
Fun. Free. Online. RPG. BattleMaster.
I'm sorry, but Apple's customer service moves are weak at best. I get my best customer service if I go to an Apple-certified store (yeah, those stores that Apple seems to be trying to run out of business). If I go to an Apple store, I have to pay for membership in some service program if I want to avoid waiting an hour to talk to one of their "Genius's". Once I finally get a chance to talk to them they look at the machine for a couple of minutes, and then tell me that they'll have to ship it at headquarters for someone to figure out what if anything is wrong with it. Oh, and by the way, if I want to have any kind of guarantee that I'll see my data again, I have to pay like $100 to have my hard drive backed up, even if they never touch the hard drive (what's so hard about charging me to back up the hard drive only if they need to replace it?). Then I have to wait at least 3 days to find out what, if anything, is wrong with my machine. Even if I have AppleCare there is no replacement machine offered. They have a short warrantee and charge an arm and a leg for AppleCare, which only covers manufacturer's defects (for the same price I can get a complete insurance package from Dell that provides a "no questions asked" free repair). More often than not their inflated labor costs make it so that almost any repair costs more than just replacing the hardware. Seriously, I get better customer service from basically every other vendor I've worked with.
Nah, this is a puff piece trying to improve Apple's image, and it's pretty shameful that slashdot is falling for it.
sigs are a waste of space
These are the talking points of people who haven't bought an Apple product and don't intend to. Asking them why Apple is popular is like asking a conservative to explain why someone would support a liberal candidate. You're going to get a pretty biased, inaccurate view. If you want to know why people do something, you'll get the best answer if you simply ask them--not the critics.
And don't be shocked when you get a bunch of different answers. Different people do things for different reasons...successful companies are the ones that provide a lot of good reasons (not just one) to buy their product.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Wasn't SQL Server largely developed within Microsoft's walls? It's a very decent database product.
.NET and C#? The COM object model? The registry? ::snicker:: the Start menu?
Analysis Services is an excellent tool to explore multidimensional datacubes (data mining).
Flight Simulator was pretty groundbreaking at some point.
ASP? VB?
And just so you know, this is from a Macintosh fanboy (with a lot of Windows experience), been using Macs (unfortunately not always for work- i'm a web developer) since December 1984.
Gotta give em a FEW props...
I have worked and played on Macs since the Mac SE. I had an SE, IIci, IIcx, Quadra A/V, 9500, G3, G4, iMac, iMac G4, iBook, 2 Powerbooks, and am currently using a Dual G5. I have three generations of iPods; perhaps there is some hardware I missed somewhere. At any rate, I have never used Apple's support aparatus. Ever. No DOA units, no failures, no substantial data loss -- just plenty of wonky software, but no disastrous problems. I read the support forums, and I see lots of problems -- perhaps I have been very lucky. Apple is not without their problems, and as a software developer, I do see a lot of them, but the performance of the hardware and software I have purchased from them speaks for itself. It's great stuff.
I don't think the crappy article gets this across at all, but it's probably the submitter's fault for hyping the article to be about why people love Apple so much. I would say that Apple's loud headphone solution may be commendable, but I wouldn't really know because I am smart enough not to blast my ears out with the thing and never needed to call them about it!
Fanboy? I guess so. And it's deserved. I am a conspicuous consumer, cynic, and generally hard to please. Getting me to be a fanboy is quite an achievement on Apple's part. All they had to do was make products that don't suck.
Yeah, Apple has great customer service. They really helped all the poor dual G4 owners that were so loud.
They told customers who complained to put it on Ebay and buy another new model that was fixed !
I did only the former. Never another apple product again.
-- Julien Pierre http://www.madbrain.com/blog
Either I'm completely misunderstanding what you're saying or you don't own an iPod and are guessing.
.MP3s from other sources and play them on an iPod? The DRM that the iTunes Music Store uses applies only to music that you purchase from iTMS. Most of the music on my iPod is either stuff I downloaded from Kazaa way back when or from CDs that I've ripped. You can set iTunes to automatically launch and rip a CD when you insert it, and load it onto your iPod when you plug it in. That's about as easy as you can get :-)
.WMA files, but I have yet to find content that I wanted that was only available as a .WMA.
If the user interface and audio quality are, somehow, irrelevant to you, then your first point is correct- the only difference between the iPod and other players is that the iPod can play music purchased from the iTunes Music Store (which is not the same thing as the iTunes application).
Your next statement is where I'm baffled. Are you implying that you don't think that you can rip CDs to an iPod just as easily (if not more so) as with other players, or download
I will grant that the iPod can't play
Anyway, my apologies if I'm misunderstanding you, but there does seem to be a persistent misconception that iPods can only play music purchased from iTMS.
Boundless Expansion, Self-Transformation, Dynamic Optimism, Intelligent Technology, Spontaneous Order- BEST DO IT SO!
A pain for musicians? This certainly isn't the case for musicians in general. As a professional composer, I've been using Macs for over a decade, and it has always been music friendly. With OS X, even more so. Versions of software have nothing to do with it... there is very little music wise that doesn't exist in some open-source version, and therefore mostly just a compile away. This doesn't sound like the computers problem, but more a problem with not taking the time and energy to learn how to use it.
You put a PC together with junk, you get junk. My Macs last years, with little or no problem. And if there is (back to the head of this thread!) Apple takes care of it.
But have a problem with Apple hardware and good luck to you, bub. May you have a better experience than I!
First there was the iMac whose hard drive squealed like a stuck pig from day one. Took it in to the crowded Apple store where, not surprisingly, the ambient noise made it too hard for the "genius" to hear the drive. Long, long debate with the manager: "Maybe you have mice in your house." This from a store whom we'd sent no fewer than six sales in the previous year. Finally, after wasting an hour arguing, an exchange was made; what a prick.
Later there was a defective iBook battery. Wouldn't hold a charge, under normal conditions, after about seven months. Would I like to leave my iBook for 24 hours with the Apple store in order to have it tested? Love to!
In both cases, corporate policy saw more value in creating headaches for a loyal customer than in taking care of me. Sure, the corporation is just looking out for itself; one shouldn't expect Apple to be any different. But even from a perspective of pure self-interest, is it really good for your store to stand in the middle of prospective customers being seen as too miserly to replace a loud drive? Do you really want to spend the resources to test a defective battery for 24 hours?
My iPod's functioned brilliantly; the iBook, though being of the series notorious for mainboard and hinge cable problems, has persevered, and there are no problems with the Mac minis at relatives' houses and at the office. The once-noisy iMac in every other respect has been splendid. I'll continue to buy and recommend Apple hardware.
But love the customer service? Heh. Not bloody likely.
but I know what you meant ;)
However, whether it makes sense to you or not, standard English is now whatever dialect happens to be spoken by the guys on CNN, no longer those on BBC.
Also, it should be noted that "I could care less" is an idiom, like "all your base are belong to us," and thus is not required to make internal sense... although personally I tend to say "I could not care less," and avoid the idiom altogether.
That's about as intuitive as having to drag a disk to the garbage can to eject it.
Speak American, dude. What you mean is, "white is the new black."
I don't want to start a holy war here, but what is the deal with you Wusthoff fanatics? I've been sitting here at my freelance gig in front of a Wusthoff (a 4.5 Spear Point Parer) for about 20 minutes now while it attempts to slice 17 slivers of tomato. 20 minutes. At home, on my Kai Shun 9-in. Slicing Knife with the Granton Edge, which by all standards should be a lot slower than this Wusthoff, the same operation would take about 2 minutes. If that. In addition, during this slicing incident, my garlic press will not work. And the mortar and pestle has ground to a halt. Even the Blender is straining to keep up as I type this. I won't bore you with the laundry list of other problems that I've encountered while working on various Wusthoffs, but suffice it to say there have been many, not the least of which is I've never seen a Wusthoff that has cut faster than its Kai Shun counterpart, despite the Wusthoff's faster chipping architecture. My 6-in. Alton's Angle Chef's Knife cuts faster than this 8" Chef's knife at times. From a productivity standpoint, I don't get how people can claim that the Wusthoff is a superior knife. Wusthoff addicts, flame me if you'd like, but I'd rather hear some intelligent reasons why anyone would choose to use a Wusthoff over other faster, cheaper, more stable knives.
You can read about his experiences here
http://tinyurl.com/lc43c
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
This is a software problem though (and only if you are using Safari). The fact that OS X is a *NIX environment means you don't have to settle for Apple software (which can be great, or horrible). The hardware itself though is top notch. Using Safari to prove that Apple is only in it for the money is a bit strange also. Safari is "free" (except for the cost of the hardware, obviously!) and you aren't tied to it as your only web browsing option. Where companies are in it for the money, you would see a system where the software that is provided is truly faulty, and it costs you to upgrade it (or secure it... ). I wouldn't be surprised to see a security update to the problem above from Apple at some point... and I've already sent the URL to Apple as a Safari bug. Not to bad in my opinion.
While I'm sure I'm feeding a troll...
why the fuck are you expecting Apple to provide you with technical support for Real Player?
or if you use something like CDDB when ripping - most of my CDs were ripped using CDex in windows, which queried freedb before ripping.