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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.
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!
Gee, I was confused, I thought you were talking about Apple records!
nothing
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.
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.