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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.'"
It's spelt A S T R O T U R F.
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.
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.
... 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.
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
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)
cd on over to /Volumes/[The name of your iPod] and cp the files across.
That sort of solution might be OK for the linux fanboys - but this is Apple (and I would like my filenames preserved, rather then have weird ipod db names)
When I plug in an iPod that is not the one that is usually synced with iTunes, it would be trivial for Apple to offer a "Add these files to your itunes collection" option.
But they don't - because their corporate partners are more important then their customers wishes.
My pics.
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
Don't think for a moment that this isn't specifically designed to cultivate a fear of plugging your iPod into someone else's computer. After all, if people share music, Apple can't take a cut of the transaction.
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.
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.
its customer is RIAA, not us the people who buy & use their products.
How fashionably militant of you.
We are the customers. The RIAA is a cartel of suppliers.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Let's be honest though. With open source you can't just plug it in and it works. You have to figure out which packages you need, download those, using some updater, manage the fact that some of your dependent packages are out of date, update those, find out you killed your movie codecs doing that, reconfigure, reupdate. And finally you can see your.. oh wait that player isn't supported but you can code it yourself if you want to take the time......
Yes I'm using hyperbole here but open source does not magically 'fix' all of our problems. I still regularly struggle with getting relatively simple things in linux to do what I want when I want without having to resort to google searches to find the right path to getting it fixed.
And if you have to compile the code yourself because it's all source code.. well better hope you don't miss something in the instructions and do something out of order.
Apple does what it sets out to do. Make is so that you don't have to compile, you don't have to set options and the 90% of users who do things and want to do things the way Apple has use cased it can. Period.
As far as I can tell, it's a braindead Americanism, because in Britain, we always use the logical "I couldn't care less".
Nope. I've heard Brits get it wrong, too. It has more to do with education than nationality.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
That sort of solution might be OK for the linux fanboys - but this is Apple (and I would like my filenames preserved, rather then have weird ipod db names)
...
Heh. Just the sort of know-nothingness that Apple (and MS) depend on to keep you in their thrall.
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.
Not to mix a metaphor or anything
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
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.
Reality check - Apple has fought the RIAA pretty hard to keep iTMS prices 1)lower, and 2) uniform.
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)
I can't help it you and your friends 1) don't know how to use an iPod, and 2) are incapable of using flash drives, which are specifically made for that sort of thing. You *can* use the iPod as a drive. However, it's not the default mode because - *gasp* - the iPod is a music player!
If you're trying to use a device for a use that isn't its reason for existance, be prepared to do some legwork to figure out how to make it do what you want. An iPod isn't a replacement for a recording studio.
Ironically, Apple makes a great product intended *just for you.* It's called GarageBand. Get a laptop.
But they don't - because their corporate partners are more important then their customers wishes.
There wouldnt even BE iPods and iTunes if they didnt satisfy their corporate partners well enough. I applaud Jobs for getting much of the music industry to agree to distribute songs one-by-one digitally. If he had to have some strings attached to make it happen, so be it. If he hadnt, none of this would exist.
And now that it does, it may be up to new start-ups, hackers, and law suits (like in France) to make it less DRM-encumbered and more accessible.
And without the RIAA willing to play ball, Apple has nothing with the iPod. The design of the hardware/software interfaces and the business model revolves around having iTunes/iTMS.
Executive summary: RIAA bad, Apple in bed with RIAA for business purposes, best chance of RIAA extracting stick from ass is iTMS/Fairplay model.
Why do people keep playing this same sorry tune over and over again? First off , get it straight, it's the record companies, not the RIAA. Without the record companies "playing ball", Apple would most likely still have the #1 selling digital music player, but not the #1 online music store. The success of the iPod has almost nothing to do with the iTMS, and without licensing from the labels, Apple would still have the "seamless integration" of the iPod/iTunes.
And also, the whole "business model" of the iTMS isn't revolutionary at all. People keep making such a big fucking deal about how it's soooooo cutting edge and innovative just because it's the first truly successful online music store, but in reality it's the exact same business model that the recording industry has been using forever: X amount of money to record company to split up as it chooses, generally keeping most for itself and giving a pittance to the person or persons who actually created the music, and Y amount of markup to the retailer (Apple) to cover overhead (storage, software development, bandwidth, credit card fees etc.) and maybe make a little bit of profit. At best what Apple has done is evolutionary, not revolutionary. The iTMS is nothing more than Amazon without any physical product.
Executive Summary:
1) Apple has no relationship with the RIAA, so will you idiots please stop saying that, Apple is in bed with the record companies, which is NOT the same thing
2) Apple derives little to no benefit from their business relationship with the record companies
3) The best chance of further entrenching and extending the current music industry model in the online world is the iTMS/Fairplay model.
fuck you.
Don't think for a moment that this isn't specifically designed to cultivate a fear of plugging your iPod into someone else's computer. After all, if people share music, Apple can't take a cut of the transaction. the RIAA will stop letting Apple run the iTMS, and we're back to where we started - having to buy entire albums to get one good track.
I agree with you, they're trying to encourage people to not copy their friends' music libraries. And yes, there are cases - the garage band with personal noodling tracks that GP mentioned - where this is completely legal. However, the vast majority of cases are people copying tracks that they don't have distribution rights for. I think it's better to slightly inconvenience the few people (and it is slight - you can copy the tracks in the Terminal, using a shell script, using Automator, using freeware utilities, etc.) in order to make the appearance of compliance to the RIAA.
The only difference between the iPod and any other MP3 player is that iPods can play music off iTunes. There's many more mp3 players out that that don't have all this DRM BS on them, and are actually much easier to use because of this. Just rip your cd's the way you regularly would, or download mp3s off irc (if the cd is copy protected, and you misplaced your shift key), and drag and drop the files on there. About as easy as you can get.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
But that just proves the point. Your inconveniencing the users who aren't 'uber computer gawds', and at the same time not really providing any real protection against pirates. It's like the CD Copy protection used by Sony, EMI, et al. It's annoys the regular users who just want to play the songs on their mp3 player, while the real pirates just use linux of disable cd autorun.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
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.
Last time I checked, Apple owned their own store on Regent Street, as do they every single one of their other stores (not even through a subsidary), so that had very much to do with Apple. That said, this kind of customer service - including transferring stuff over to the new box - shouldn't be surprising, and I think it's sad that it is. I know of only one local chain that would help out with stuff like that, and they'd likely charge you for that hour and not even know what to do with the Mac in the first place (even though they sell them).
You sound rather narrow-eyed and guilty. Even if you have a twelth month guarentee by law, you do not have the right to get a new machine on the spot, let alone does anybody have to copy your data over to the new machine.
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
I think you're missing the point. If the iPod didn't provide some semblance of copy protection, if it didn't create the appearance of protecting copyrighted music, and if Apple as a company didn't pretend to give a shit about the RIAA, then the iPod could not exist as a consumer product in the way it does today.
Nobody likes the RIAA, except for the record labels. I doubt even the people who work at Apple like them, or like having to basically cripple their hardware and software because of them. But it just doesn't make any sense, if you wanted to produce a useful product -- and useful requires that you not get sued and get an injunction placed against distributing the product, or get run out of business by billion-dollar DMCA lawsuits, groundless as they may be -- you don't go taking a baseball bat to the hornet's nest that is the RIAA.
Instead, you blow some smoke at them. Appease them, if you will. You throw some trivial copy protection on there, enough so you can say "hey, we told them not to steal music," but which makes it easy for anybody with half a brain to download Senuti (or any of the other dozen utilities that are out there) and share their music with anyone else.
It's a good compromise, and I much prefer it to the alternative, which is that they wait for the RIAA to either sue them into the ground, or use their pet politicians to pass some bullshit law requiring really onerous DRM. Because that's the alternative.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
If Apple always "pretends to be a caring, loving company", does it matter if they are genuine or "only pretending"? Either way, the customers get good service.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.