Why Everyone Loves Apple 770
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.'"
Spelling error (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Spelling error (Score:3)
This is a blatant bit of contentless Astroturfing.
Re:Spelling error (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Spelling error (Score:5, Funny)
I keed, I keed.
Re:Spelling error (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Spelling error (Score:3, Funny)
"Could care less" (Score:2, Informative)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:"Could care less" (Score:3, Interesting)
I think that stems from people saying "could've" instead of "could have". "Could've" sounds almost exactly like "could of", so someone who has never seen it written hears it the wrong way, and walla.
Note: "walla" is another example of this phenomenon, in place of the french "voila".
Re:"Could care less" (Score:3, Insightful)
Best customer service (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Best customer service (Score:3, Informative)
The jury is still out for me on their service. I went back one saturday early morning with a dead Mighty Mouse. You'd think they wouldn't quible about replacing a £35 mouse but they told me to go to the Genius Bar. I went str
Re:Best customer service (Score:3, Informative)
On the other hand, at the Palo Alto store (just a few blocks from Steve's house) I've exchanged entire iPods beyond their no-questions re
Re:Best customer service (Score:3, Informative)
The standard deal is a 1 year warranty with global repair or replace (except for iMac and PowerMac which have only onsite repair or replace), 90 days phone tech support and 14 days return and refund for any reason at all. AppleCare plans extend the warranty and phone support to 3 years, for about £100.
Re:Best customer service (Score:3, Informative)
Like most machines Macs have a 1-year warranty by default with the option to purchase an extended warranty. But you don't seem to understand warranty repairs. When you bri
Re:Idiot - that was the store (Score:4, Insightful)
Last time I checked, Apple owned their own store on Regent Street [apple.com], 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).
Re:Best customer service (Score:5, Insightful)
From a GeekSquad Agent (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Best customer service (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Best customer service (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:Best customer service (Score:3, Interesting)
Th
Re:Best customer service, or basic consumer rights (Score:3, Informative)
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 a
Re:Best customer service, or basic consumer rights (Score:3, Funny)
Face it, man. Nobody wants to look at your crack.
it's so simple (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Tripe (Score:2, Insightful)
Apple's success clearly lies in marketing its products, which is wh
Re:Tripe (Score:2)
Re:Tripe (Score:2)
As for shipping costs: Depending on where you live, there are retail outlets. If you happen to live outside of a major centre, that is your issue, not theirs.
Re:Tripe (Score:2)
Your other points are valid, but why in the world would you think that the screen would have a warranty? Unless you take it out of the box and your screen is broken, I can't imagine any circumstance when a damaged screen wouldn't be your own fault. It's not like a screen is some sort of complex mechanism that should have a warranty against faulty parts causing problems -- it's just a piece of plastic. If it's broken, it's your fault, not theirs
Why Everyone Loves Apple (Score:3, Insightful)
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
Re: Why Everyone Loves Apple (Score:4, Funny)
the attitude of Mac fanatics have really spoiled the Apple brand for me
I know what you're saying. Like, other people's relentless urge to drink water and eat food has driven me toApple is in the image and style biz. (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:Apple is in the image and style biz. (Score:3, Informative)
Think about it this way- how many fads have you seen come and go within a year? 6 months? 3 months? Now think about the fact that the iPod is in its 5th or 6th generation (too lazy to look it up exactly right now) and has
Re:Tripe (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Tripe (Score:5, Funny)
Interesting statement (Score:2, Insightful)
Well, I'm rather worried about those that couldn't.
Apple loves their customers cash. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Exactly, thank you (Score:3, Insightful)
What Apple has is amazing and is not easy to get. Its no
Apple is pretty good (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Apple loves their customers cash. (Score:3, Informative)
This is a joke, right? You have just described every "other" computer/software company in the world. Now, with Apple, you can go get help for free *gasp!* yes, for free at a genius bar near you for any little thing your heart desires (iPod, Software, Hardware, etc...). Do that at your local Dell mall kiosk and watch me in the corner la
Re:Apple loves their customers cash. (Score:3, Informative)
Apple's service is not that great. (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
I should also add... (Score:2)
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.
Re:Apple's service is not that great. (Score:3, Informative)
As for iPods, Apple has a 90 day warranty that covers almost everything (things like screens and power supplies are no
For a responsible opposing viewpoint... (Score:2, Interesting)
http://world.std.com/~swmcd/steven/rants/mac.html [std.com]
For the love of God... (Score:5, Insightful)
Please allow me to utter a short yelp of annoyance.
Re:For the love of God... (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes. Most Americans can't be bothered with learning the English language. They consistently justify it with statements like "Oh, you know what I meant!"
Re:For the love of God... (Score:3, Funny)
Everyone?!? (Score:2)
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 k
copying success (Score:2)
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.
Absolutely True (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Not service, but experience (Score:2)
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.
Customers Service at Apple is awful! (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Customer service is actually quite confusing (Score:2)
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
Pear (Score:2)
Customer Service was out to lunch (Score:4, Insightful)
Why? It's simple: (Score:5, Funny)
Trademark (Score:5, Funny)
That meay be true in US but.. (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
People like the *idea* of Apple (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:People like the *idea* of Apple (Score:5, Funny)
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...
Re:People like the *idea* of Apple (Score:4, Interesting)
Quality, not Customer Service (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Why people really love Apple... (Score:5, Insightful)
No, this is why people *don't* like Apple (Score:3, Insightful)
And don't be shocked when you get a bunch of different answers. Different people do things for different reasons...successful com
Fluff (Score:3, Insightful)
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
Apple vs. Gateway (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:How I Hate Corporate Fanboys (Score:3, Insightful)
The best way to shovel money into the shareholders' pockets is to make the customer so happy with the product that they have no reason to go elsewhere. Apple has done a great job with that. That the customer ends up so happy with the product is admittedly a side effect of the business model, but it's not to be ignored.
PLEASE get it out of your thick s
Apple's support is terrible! (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Crack (Score:3, Interesting)
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
For every complex question... (Score:3, Insightful)
(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.)
Yeah, I don't buy this... (Score:3, Interesting)
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 [zappos.com], where we really do have excellent customer service. I shit you not.
Their record is rather mixed. (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:Language nazi (Score:5, Funny)
Because they could care less.
Re:Language nazi (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Apple's Customer service is great. (Score:4, Informative)
Really, portable music players that use lossy codecs are only designed to play finished songs. If you want to record bits of solo work and glue them together, you should save them in a lossless format such as .aif, and copy them across to your fellow group members by putting them onto a portable drive (such as the iPod can be, but there are better ones that aren't also music players) as regular files rather than as songs they should play.
Unless you just want to listen to each other's noodlings as they are, without futher modification, in which case, you can put your iPod in any computer running OS X, close iTunes back down when it automatically pops up, go into the Terminal, cd on over to /Volumes/[The name of your iPod] and cp the files across.
Re:Apple's Customer service is great. (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:Apple's Customer service is great. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Apple's Customer service is great. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Apple's Customer service is great. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Apple's Customer service is great. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Apple's Customer service is great. (Score:5, Insightful)
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
Re:Apple's Customer service is great. (Score:3, Funny)
Has anyone ever used zsh?
Re:Apple's Customer service is great. (Score:3, Insightful)
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 mak
Re:Apple's Customer service is great. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Apple's Customer service is great. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Apple's Customer service is great. (Score:3, Interesting)
Of course there are companies (like Tascam) that market low-budget multitrackers with lossless recording, but the tradeoff is that there wasn't enough money left to include good A/D converters and the
Holy "Missed the Point" Batman (Score:3)
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.
Re:Hence the HUGE Marketshare (Score:3, Insightful)
Why is there so much ado about market share? How much market share does BMW or Mercedes Benz have? How about Jaguar etc.? Apple is a huge company and is making more profits that the Dells of this world. I just had an iPod die after about ten months. I was told that they would send me a new one and I should return the dead one. I had a brand new one delivered to me in two days. I put the dead one in the supplied return envelope a
Exactly - it is about customer service (Score:4, Insightful)
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
Re:Apple's Customer service is great. (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Apple's Customer service is great. (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm an audio engineer - I've got a few dozen tracks on my iPod th
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Apple's Customer service is great. (Score:4, Funny)
Gosh! Fashionably militant? I'm not sure what you mean, but it sounds exciting.
We are the customers. The RIAA is a cartel of suppliers.
Oh - right, thanks for clearing that up. God I was stupid for getting them the wrong way round. Or perhaps I was making a point and you're just more literal minded then the rest of the human race.
Re:Apple's Customer service is great. (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:Apple's Customer service is great. (Score:4, Informative)
You should be modded down, because this is user error... on your part. You will be prompted by iTunes which will say (paraphrased), "This iPod is synched with a different iTunes, would you like to erase this iPod and use this new iTunes to synch with?" You then have the option to click "No". If you want to grab music from othe people's iTunes, just set your iPod to manually update, and you can grab music from 100 different iTunes. If you wish to give your friends your music, just plop the actual mp3's onto your iPod as data and give it to them. Your entire beef is due to you not knowing how to use your iPod.
Mod him down, now...
Re:Thank you!!! (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes I'm using hyperbole here but open source does not magica
Re:Thank you!!! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Apple's Customer service is great. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)