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Wow, or from the When-Apple-Became-the-Borg Department

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Re: Wow, or from the When-Apple-Became-the-Borg Department

#41

Post by scrabble »

w0utert wrote: post #23
KaiserPro wrote: post #17

Sadly this isn't news. Apple have been doing this for the last 5 years at least. I support a large fleet of Macpros (Ha, yeah "fast" and "magical" with 5 year old procs in them) Everytime an OS upgrade comes along something is silently broken. Trying to get support is a nightmare. For example when they changed which version of kerberos they used without any warning. Or changing the syntax of automount. Apple are shit…

Apple is shit, Google is shit, Microsoft is shit, and the list continues... Not trying to defend anyone here, but with so many customers, products, software versions, it's no surprise problems will occur, which are sometimes inappropriately handled. This goes for any company, Apple is no exception here. I have years of anecdotal evidence of only positive experiences with Apple products and customer service, the only…

I like Yahoo.

My ISP uses their mail service as their web mail access. Through many updates to Yahoo's web mail app, I always neglected not to update and was able to continue using my more than 10 year old mail interface, until recently when I finally decided to agree to update.

Re: Wow, or from the When-Apple-Became-the-Borg Department

#42

Post by Pxtl »

avenger123 wrote: post #38
Pxtl wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The AppleCare might explain things. They want people to pay for Apple's high-quality care and get the great Apple experience that way, not get low-quality crappy free support from a forum. So the forum is only operated out of necessity - if Apple didn't run one, somebody else would - and it can't be a support avenue because Apple must always control the quality of the experience and you have to pay Apple for that. It…

Apple's obsession with quality should not include leaving user's in a lurch. I find it surprising you are defending this forum behavior by Apple via their obsession with quality. I see it as the exact opposite. If Apple was obsessed with quality they would not leave user's hanging dry in a forum. As I can imagine, the forum is a at resort for a lot of people. At a minimum Apple should have some type of escalation pol…

Apple offers two streams for any product - "good" and "perfect".

Tech support over a forum is "cheap" or "free". So they don't do it. This behaviour is perfectly consistent with everything else Apple does, and it protects their brand image that way - with Apple, you either get The Good Stuff or it doesn't exist. Forum-based support? Doesn't exist.

Which is one of the many reasons that I don't buy Apple products. Want Apple support? Pay for Apple Care. Don't like that kind of arrangement? Don't buy Apple.

Re: Wow, or from the When-Apple-Became-the-Borg Department

#43

Post by dragontamer »

I know its a typical blog post... but this is the Lawrence Lessing. I hate to hype him up (especially since this post of his is just a "humble blog post" about one annoying issue), but Lawrence Lessing has a huge following.

Creator of Creative Commons, Rootstrikers, friend and lawyer of Aaron Swartz... Lawrence Lessing is a name that should be respected in every online community.

Again, this seems to be just one of the low-key blog posts that he makes, so don't assign it too much. But for those wondering "who the hell is this guy?"... well... you definitely should know him.

Re: Wow, or from the When-Apple-Became-the-Borg Department

#44

Post by jamesbritt »

akbiggs wrote: post #36
driverdan wrote: post #30

To those who help others on Apple, Google, or other big multinational business discussion groups / forums, why do you do so? I understand helping others with a startup's product that you like. You want it to succeed and an increased customer base will most likely lead to product improvements. But billion dollar businesses have the resources to provide support themselves. Why would you do it for them for free?

I see the point you're making here, but I feel like the motivations you're pointing at for why people post on discussion groups and forums isn't correct in most cases. At least in my experience, people tend to post helpful advice because helping people out feels good. It also provides an ego boost when people view you as an expert at something.

Right. If someone slips on ice on the sidewalk in front of a store, you don't ignore them and think, hey, the store owner is on the hook here; not my problem.

You help that person get up.

That doesn't absolve anyone of their rightful responsibilities, but it does make for a nicer world.

Re: Wow, or from the When-Apple-Became-the-Borg Department

#45

Post by wtdominey »

As others have pointed out, this isn't anything new. Apple has never been comfortable with public feedback and has pruned comments (and sometimes entire threads) from their discussions for as long as I can remember (and that's a pretty long time). Even when Apple was on-the-ropes in the mid-to-late 90s they behaved like "the Borg". Nothing has changed.

Re: Wow, or from the When-Apple-Became-the-Borg Department

#46

Post by jewbacca »

conception wrote: post #3

I'm not sure how this is a particularly different policy from any mega-corporation. I've never seen any great support on online forums from the company in question. If you're having a wi-fi problem, follow the company's support potocol, which in this case is probably go to the genius bar and get it fixed. Where you'll probably have a better experience than if you tried to get help for a competing product. I wish comp…

I know it's a profoundly different area of the industry, but it's reasonably common practice in videogames (PC gaming, at least) for official spokespeople, even designers, and very occasionally developers, to engage with the community, on at least the general zeitgeist of its concerns.

ex: http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/blizztracker/

And even in more "traditional" and supposedly conservative industries... I could find some references for you but I don't think I'd need to given how widely-covered some of these have been, of the customer support PR coups that have been achieved over social media in general (primarily Twitter and Reddit; at least in my personal experience). It is obviously less structured than an archived, time-ordered, hierarchical, and easily-searchable forum designed for permanence, and I don't have the slightest sense of the proportion of customer issues that go /un/-addressed in this manner.

But viewed through this lens... customer support is public politics. It's totally understandable that Apple would want to both maintain their image of aloofness from non-visionary matters, and deliberately avoid validating the existence of problems with their products in a public forum, which would also contradict a decades-long and painstakingly-crafted image. But it's also totally okay if the community or some segment of it makes a stink in the hopes of shifting the PR calculation.

Re: Wow, or from the When-Apple-Became-the-Borg Department

#47

Post by chime »

driverdan wrote: post #30

To those who help others on Apple, Google, or other big multinational business discussion groups / forums, why do you do so? I understand helping others with a startup's product that you like. You want it to succeed and an increased customer base will most likely lead to product improvements. But billion dollar businesses have the resources to provide support themselves. Why would you do it for them for free?

I've helped on these forums when I've had a similar problem and finally managed to get it working on my own. In that case, sharing what worked for me takes 2 mins but can help make someone's day. Same reason people post on Usetnet, StackOverflow and even here on HN I guess. It's not about giving free support to a company's customers. It's about helping out someone in trouble.

Re: Wow, or from the When-Apple-Became-the-Borg Department

#48

Post by [deleted] »

bambax wrote: post #16

Why isn't there a forum for Apple products not controlled by Apple? Shouldn't there be a stackexchange site for this? Lawrence Lessing needs to ask Joel Spolsky about this. Edit: as mentioned below, the site already exists. So people need to be using it instead of an Apple forum where the most useful posts get deleted by The Firm...

[deleted]

Re: Wow, or from the When-Apple-Became-the-Borg Department

#49

Post by usaphp »

Pxtl wrote: post #42
avenger123 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple's obsession with quality should not include leaving user's in a lurch. I find it surprising you are defending this forum behavior by Apple via their obsession with quality. I see it as the exact opposite. If Apple was obsessed with quality they would not leave user's hanging dry in a forum. As I can imagine, the forum is a at resort for a lot of people. At a minimum Apple should have some type of escalation pol…

Apple offers two streams for any product - "good" and "perfect". Tech support over a forum is "cheap" or "free". So they don't do it. This behaviour is perfectly consistent with everything else Apple does, and it protects their brand image that way - with Apple, you either get The Good Stuff or it doesn't exist. Forum-based support? Doesn't exist. Which is one of the many reasons that I don't buy Apple products. Want…

> Which is one of the many reasons that I don't buy Apple products. Want Apple support? Pay for Apple Care. Don't like that kind of arrangement? Don't buy Apple.

Can you give me an example of another big company that offers better support then Apple does? From your comment it looks like you are on Android, so according to you - you can just call Google directly and ask a question if your android phone got a wifi issue?

Re: Wow, or from the When-Apple-Became-the-Borg Department

#50

Post by Pxtl »

usaphp wrote: post #49
Pxtl wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple offers two streams for any product - "good" and "perfect". Tech support over a forum is "cheap" or "free". So they don't do it. This behaviour is perfectly consistent with everything else Apple does, and it protects their brand image that way - with Apple, you either get The Good Stuff or it doesn't exist. Forum-based support? Doesn't exist. Which is one of the many reasons that I don't buy Apple products. Want…

> Which is one of the many reasons that I don't buy Apple products. Want Apple support? Pay for Apple Care. Don't like that kind of arrangement? Don't buy Apple. Can you give me an example of another big company that offers better support then Apple does? From your comment it looks like you are on Android, so according to you - you can just call Google directly and ask a question if your android phone got a wifi issu…

That's the exact opposite of my point.

Apple offers the best. I totally agree, Apple does the best. You just have to pay for it.

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