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Apple pulls all customer reviews from online Apple Store

appleinsider.com

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Re: Apple pulls all customer reviews from online Apple Store

#101

Post by richardhod »

gowld wrote: post #78
musicale wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No one is happy to spend $80 on a replacement MagSafe charger because the previous one frayed, so of course the listing was marred by 1-star reviews As an Apple user, I would suggest that is a legitimate complaint, as the cable cannot be replaced separately from the power brick. Fortunately when that happened to me (twice) and I brought it into an Apple store, Apple replaced the entire power adapter even though it…

Electrical tape also fixes a fraying charger.

I think that's beside the point. if you're going to spend that much for a charger and cable that should be really well designed and last a long time. Electrical tape leaves sticky residue quite easily and is pretty horrible after a not very long time.

Re: Apple pulls all customer reviews from online Apple Store

#102

Post by morsch »

derefr wrote: post #58
NeedMoreTea wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now there I can't agree. If I were a first time potential Apple buyer, outside the Apple bubble, I would absolutely want to know if Apple's own charger has a cheap cable that frays, or a video dongle can't handle certain common modes, or something is simply crap. Comparison with a third party doesn't enter into it. It might even help get a feel for how common an issue some site's major news piece actually is. Likewis…

> Comparison with a third party doesn't enter into it. Sure it does. Mathematically. See my other comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21600914 Reviews and ratings only function as a pairwise ordering . If there's only one of something in a category in a marketplace, the reviews don't have any signal to them. (Before you say "maybe the numbers don't, but the text does!"—consider a true monopoly product provi…

Interesting 1985 article about bread in the USSR: When it comes to bread, Russians don't loaf https://www.csmonitor.com/1985/0916/obread.html

Re: Apple pulls all customer reviews from online Apple Store

#103

Post by raxxorrax »

rgovostes wrote: post #7

The only thing remotely surprising here is that they lasted this long. It was frankly idiotic of them to have it there in the first place. No one is happy to spend $80 on a replacement MagSafe charger because the previous one frayed, so of course the listing was marred by 1-star reviews. The community Q&A also tends to be garbage. I understand that the average consumer is not going to have the same level of technical…

I agree that this is not a good reason to give a 1-star review, but it still conveys information to me as a potential buyer. Are there more of these reviews, is the device prone to failure?

They pose a problem for a low number of reviews, but with enough of them it can indeed be a valuable metric. You have to know how to read it though.

Re: Apple pulls all customer reviews from online Apple Store

#105

Post by MultusSalus »

carlob wrote: post #28
IAmEveryone wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple may choose form over function, but the power adaptors are a good example of how they still spent more time thinking of function than any competitor. For the typical "elongated black box" notebook charger, a cumulative sum of exactly zero effort was spent on improving it in either form or function. Meanwhile, Apple had MagSafe (which is nothing but function), the extendable prongs to wrap the cable, or the littl…

All you say was kinda true for the magsafe ones, I recently saw the adapter that comes with a new macbook air: - no little clip anymore - no long cable anymore - not the smallest Watt-for-Watt anymore (the new GaN ones are smaller) - and of course: no magsafe anymore... But I'm sure that three years from now they will have the "courage" to go back to their older superior design.

They’ve managed that courage for their keyboards now.

Re: Apple pulls all customer reviews from online Apple Store

#106

Post by scarface74 »

NeedMoreTea wrote: post #55
derefr wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think whoever originally architected the Apple Store website assumed that, because the Store carried a few third-party products on it alongside Apple's, it would end up evolving into a full marketplace where people would comparison-shop between different third-party offerings of the same product. In such a use-case, reviews and ratings would be useful. Of course, that didn't wind up happening; the Apple Store websi…

Now there I can't agree. If I were a first time potential Apple buyer, outside the Apple bubble, I would absolutely want to know if Apple's own charger has a cheap cable that frays, or a video dongle can't handle certain common modes, or something is simply crap. Comparison with a third party doesn't enter into it. It might even help get a feel for how common an issue some site's major news piece actually is. Likewis…

Apple products get so much press and so many reviews compared to their market share that it’s not hard to find detailed reviews and iFixit tear downs of everything Apple sells.

Apple’s products also cost enough that I doubt most people purchase them on a whim without research.

Re: Apple pulls all customer reviews from online Apple Store

#107

Post by Semaphor »

rgovostes wrote: post #7

The only thing remotely surprising here is that they lasted this long. It was frankly idiotic of them to have it there in the first place. No one is happy to spend $80 on a replacement MagSafe charger because the previous one frayed, so of course the listing was marred by 1-star reviews. The community Q&A also tends to be garbage. I understand that the average consumer is not going to have the same level of technical…

Community Q&A always feels like bad satire to me: Customer q: how do I do X? Customer a: sorry, I don't know.

At least on Amazon Germany this pattern is extremely common.

Re: Apple pulls all customer reviews from online Apple Store

#108

Post by y4mi »

Semaphor wrote: post #107
rgovostes wrote: post #7

The only thing remotely surprising here is that they lasted this long. It was frankly idiotic of them to have it there in the first place. No one is happy to spend $80 on a replacement MagSafe charger because the previous one frayed, so of course the listing was marred by 1-star reviews. The community Q&A also tends to be garbage. I understand that the average consumer is not going to have the same level of technical…

Community Q&A always feels like bad satire to me: Customer q: how do I do X? Customer a: sorry, I don't know. At least on Amazon Germany this pattern is extremely common.

thats caused by amazon mailing random people that bought the article when a question is asked with a message like "xyz asked a question to > you bought some time ago; >"

these people use the reply function of their email client and send back "i dont know" ... which makes amazon append this answer to the question.

Re: Apple pulls all customer reviews from online Apple Store

#109

Post by dangus »

musicale wrote: post #68
rgovostes wrote: post #7

The only thing remotely surprising here is that they lasted this long. It was frankly idiotic of them to have it there in the first place. No one is happy to spend $80 on a replacement MagSafe charger because the previous one frayed, so of course the listing was marred by 1-star reviews. The community Q&A also tends to be garbage. I understand that the average consumer is not going to have the same level of technical…

> No one is happy to spend $80 on a replacement MagSafe charger because the previous one frayed, so of course the listing was marred by 1-star reviews As an Apple user, I would suggest that is a legitimate complaint, as the cable cannot be replaced separately from the power brick. Fortunately when that happened to me (twice) and I brought it into an Apple store, Apple replaced the entire power adapter even though it…

And yet other Apple users complained about Apple moving to an open standard (USB-C) with replaceable, standard cables and a charging standard that allows for safe usage of 3rd party alternatives.

But those particular users were upset because they lost the magnetic nature of MagSafe.

When you are as big and successful as Apple, literally any decision will meet some form of backlash.

Re: Apple pulls all customer reviews from online Apple Store

#110

Post by [deleted] »

jlarocco wrote: post #40

I honestly suspect Apple's completely lost without Steve Jobs and instead of innovating and building quality products they're pivoting into a fashion symbol and trying to push their margins as high as they can and eke out as much money as possible before people realize what's going on and abandon them in favor of better, cheaper alternatives.

[deleted]
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