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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.
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.
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 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.
... 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.
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.
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.
Because they could care less.
How does a 7-person democracy cut a pie? Into 4 pieces.
Apple's Steve throws frisbees, not chairs.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
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.
Gee, I was confused, I thought you were talking about Apple records!
nothing
This article is simple shilling for Apple. Anyone who has actually had an encounter with Apple's customer service would know that they're exactly the same as any other manufacturer.
My experiences have been different.
A few weeks ago I needed to order a battery for my wife's laptop, a slightly older Powerbook. I had ordered one from their website, but it was the wrong one, so I called them to replace it. Well, they had a hard time figuring out which battery I needed, and so after being put on hold for 15 minutes I hung up with the intention of calling them back the next Monday (this was on a Saturday.)
Well, about 10 minutes later they called me back to tell me my battery was on its way. FedEx delivered it that coming *Monday*. I have never had a company call me back, and I think that ranks right up there with the best customer services experiences I have ever had.
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.
Now - we should be able to pool all our music together. But try doing it using iTunes - its on the verge of impossible.
Turn on your iPod's disk mode, through the preferences in iTunes. Copy your sound clips to the iPod. Bring your iPod to your friend's house and copy the sound clips off it. No problem.
Are you complaining that there's no GUI way to copy sound clips directly out of the iPod's music repository? That's like complaining there's no easy way to get at your toaster's heating coils. You're taking an appliance that does a specific job very well, and complaining that it doesn't give you a lot of options for doing something it's not intended to do. iPod is designed to sync up with the iTunes library, and I like that degree of simplicity. It's not designed to let you copy music in and out of its library by hand.
Yes, if you connect your iPod to someone else's computer and you're not paying attention, you might accidentally let the other person's iTunes replace your song library with his. I don't like the eagerness with which iTunes does this. But the fix is simple: bring your iPod back to your computer and plug it in and sync it up again.
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.
Most Apple customers never even deal with Apple customer service.
Which is, of course, the best service of all.
Apple pays very close attention to the issues that drive their support calls, and they get prioritized accordingly. The MagSafe power connector, for example, was developed because Apple knows exactly how many times they've fixed a machine because their users have damaged a laptop by snagging the power cable and dragging it off a table.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
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.
That's nothing new for me. Shortly after I got my iMac, I got a call asking if everything worked as expected and if I was happy with my purchase. Of course, I said yes, I was happy with it. Then one evening a few days later, I got another call asking if they had included all the cables in the package and if my iMac still worked OK. At first, I was flattered by this hands on customer care, but then the calls started coming every day while I was at work or late at night, sometimes three or four times a day. Was I still satisfied? Had I been looking at other brands lately? Did I think the hard drive was getting fat? I ended up selling it because it was just too high maintenance. If you're reading this, Apple, it's not you, it's me. And quit calling my friends trying to get my new number.
If you can read this sig, you're too close.
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.
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.
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."
Wusthoff kitchen knives
The BEST knives I've ever seen in my life. Way better than anything else. I hate all those cheap knives. I don't understand why someone would buy a Kai Shun - or even worse - a Henckels. I hate the Henckels fanboys...