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Apple - Think Twice

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Re: Apple - Think Twice

#321

Post by greedo »

tatsuke95 wrote: post #141
michael_miller wrote: post #73

I can't help but think that the majority of comments here are the loud minority. Apple's products have had faults, I'll be the first to admit. But do we really think that even 5% of Apple's millions of customers are having issues with their purchases? If that were the case, we'd see class action lawsuits against the company, the NYTimes/WSJ covering Apple's shoddy manufacturing processes, and Apple's reputation takin…

> "It's a little disappointing to see these hyperbolic comments on a site I normally associate with an educated, smart, logically-thinking group of people." What's really disappointing is that there are educated, smart, logically-thinking people who refuse to believe that there is any hype behind the quality and customer service of Apple. Both are okay, but not exceptional. I'm on my second MBA. I had the 2010 model,…

All companies have hype; entire departments devoted to marketing. And of course there are people who don't want to see flaws in items they purchase; this isn't limited to Apple, as much as its critics want to espouse the idea of a Reality Distortion field. Its a known psychological phenomena that people are less critical of things they have a financial investment in.

But it gets tiresome when HN has an article that shows one users poor experience, and then the boo-birds fly down with their cries of evil Apple. I'm sorry the gent had a poor experience, and Apple should fix/replace the screen or MBP itself.

Re: Apple - Think Twice

#322

Post by Nikaido »

georgemcbay wrote: post #234
michael_miller wrote: post #73

I can't help but think that the majority of comments here are the loud minority. Apple's products have had faults, I'll be the first to admit. But do we really think that even 5% of Apple's millions of customers are having issues with their purchases? If that were the case, we'd see class action lawsuits against the company, the NYTimes/WSJ covering Apple's shoddy manufacturing processes, and Apple's reputation takin…

A lot of people probably don't even realize they have an issue, but that doesn't mean there isn't one. I'm constantly amazed when I go to a friend or family member's house and they are watching SD television content scaled up on their HDTV and the aspect ratio is all fucked and they don't even notice, or worse after you show them how to fix it they want it back the old way because they don't want to "waste" parts of…

I've had the same experience with my own family. I tried to fix their tv only to get yelled at because I was wasting the space on the screen with the black bars. They'd rather see distorted faces than black bars, over saturated colors over calibrated.. there are many in HN who put faith in customer satisfaction surveys. I don't. There are way too many people who are satisfied with their shiny pile of turds for me to put credit in their happiness with a brand.

Who would trust the average customer over an issue like screen ghosting ? Even if 99% of rMBP's owners said that they had no screen issue it still wouldn't mean anything at all. Many could actually have the issue but lack the level of perception required to notice anything.

To speak about a competitor in a different market, Samsung has been pushing their amoled crap for a long time now in the smartphone sector, and it's still the most popular brand to this day. The S3 cost as much as something like the One X, except that the S3 has a screen that is dimmer, less sharp, worse, unnatural colors and worst of all, is that amoled screens tend to severely suffer from burn in over time. People still chose the S3 over the competition in the android market, no matter how cheap its body feels (flimsy plastic vs harder plastics), no matter how bad the screen is.. I could understand the choice if the S3 was cheaper than the competition, but it's not.

Re: Apple - Think Twice

#323

Post by sasoon »

I was just about to buy MacBook Pro Retina 15, 16GB, 512GB, when I found out about this ghosting problem. I could not take the risk of getting faulty screen (I would have buy it on trip to US). I am surprised that Apple is not doing anything about it. This problem is known for months

Re: Apple - Think Twice

#324

Post by kamjam »

mullingitover wrote: post #238
kamjam wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like how you start off by saying "My first Macbook Pro", which implies you have purchased more since this initial issue?

What can I say? They're the worst laptops, except for all the others. Seriously though, the second one has been a champion and I've used it for four years straight without a hiccup. It's a wash--I don't recommend Apple hardware for everyone, but I still prefer it myself.

Wow. I would have dumped it and never used them again.

I was having a bit of a "debate" with a friend of mine who bought the new MBP a few months ago. We are both C# developers so we have no real use of the Mac features, and he was running Windows 8 in VM. His laptop cost over 3 times more than my Dell XPS, which granted is thicker and the screen is not as high res etc, all features which I did not care about to be honest. His argument was that Mac had very good hardware and would last several years. Sure, but in that same time period if my laptop broke, I could afford to buy another 2 more and still be even... MBP is a bloody nice piece of kit though! :)

Re: Apple - Think Twice

#325

Post by Nikaido »

TheCapn wrote: post #186
pirateking wrote: post #44

Had this happen to my Retina MacBook Pro too. Went to the Apple store and after some pleading was able to get them to place an order for a new one. Two weeks of glazing over staring at ghosts later I go to pick it up. They upgraded the replacement to the largest size SSD for free! It was all down hill after that. I had to transfer my data from the lemon. The Geniuses on staff were clearly unfamiliar with some of the…

I don't want this question to sound loaded and threaded with negative connotations for/against apple but why would you label the computer as "one of the best I have ever used" if one of the primary interfaces to the user is repeatedly faulty? I'm not a Mac user. My work and personal desires drive me towards Windows/Linux and I would have foregone any manufacturer that pulled that type of behavior on me (as I have wit…

> I don't want this question to sound loaded and threaded with negative connotations for/against apple but why would you label the computer as "one of the best I have ever used" if one of the primary interfaces to the user is repeatedly faulty?

Because mac users tend to put the weight and thinness of the machine over anything else and since the rMBP is the thinnest and lightest 15" laptop it makes it the "best". Hell, Apple is doing the "thin/small and light" thing even with their "desktop" machines like the iMac and Mac Mini.

Mac and PC users just have different set of priorities. I used to own macs but I fully went back to the PC because being able to handle repairs myself in a timely manner is much more important than the niceties of OS X for me, particularly with desktop machines. The mac mini is not good enough for me, and the iMac is exactly what I don't want, if anything fails in the computer I want to be able to replace the part in five minutes and be done with it. That and the fact that the screen tends to outlive my computers in usefulness, I replace them less often than the parts of my desktop PC so buying a computer attached to the screen feels offensive to me.

The Mac Pro could've been an alternative but.. 2600 euros for a computer that is outdated in every single way out of the box is not attractive. Its GPU used to be a mid-range gamer card, used to, because it's not even mid-range in 2012, it's low end. If you build your own computer a GPU with that kind of performance will cost about ~100 to 150 euros, which is not acceptable for a 2600 eur computer. The rest (cpu, ram) is decent but still doesn't really warrant the price tag. It was good when it first launched.. that's about it.

Re: Apple - Think Twice

#326

Post by clarky07 »

freehunter wrote: post #267
clarky07 wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a problem with the phone. Apple offered a free solution, put a case on it. If you don't like that solution, what do you want them to do about it? Re-engineer the phone just for you and give you a replacement? It's not like this was a 1-off problem, like Joe's phone was defective so we replace Joe's phone. EVERY phone was made the same with this problem. You can't just "fix it" for Joe. It isn't a matter of custo…

You're missing the point. Just because there's one problem with the iPhone, no matter how many people it affects, doesn't mean it's automatically a bad choice if every other feature is what you're looking for in a smartphone. If the antenna makes a phone 90/100 but every other phone is still at best 80/100, does switching platforms make sense? It's still a valid issue to complain about, but not enough to make the dec…

I think you're missing my point. What do you want Apple to do about it? They gave everyone a free case with which it works fine. It wasn't a quality issue, it was a design issue. These are different things. No amount of QA will fix a design issue.

What possible other response from a customer service perspective could you want here?

Re: Apple - Think Twice

#327

Post by jmcdonald-ut »

joe_the_user wrote: post #286
kevinalexbrown wrote: post #150

My perspective here is in no way Apple-specific, but I was reminded of something quite interesting in this story: if you pass a test and you still have problems, it probably means the test isn't good enough. Worse, passing a test doesn't magically change the state of the world and make these problems disappear. Turning to the customer and explaining, "there is no problem because you passed the test" does not alter th…

I strongly suspect that the testing mania you get on all the technical support lines comes from a mania by companies to control/pressure their customer support people and those people more or less passing along this pressure. "You have to prove you have a problem here because I've got a lot of people I have to help". The last technical support call I had for a Windows network problem (which I had isolated to the OS b…

I used to work phone support for a large auction site (your first thought is probably correct). I can confirm this notion or idea. We were given generic things that the customer could try to fix the problem. You know "Clear cache and cookies", etc.

If the issue persisted and we could not reproduce the problems on our own machine we weren't allowed to push trouble tickets to our QA team. For a lot of the lower tech users, I suspect issues were on their end. However I often got users who obviously knew what they were doing, and it was frustrating that there wasn't more we could do.

Re: Apple - Think Twice

#328

Post by wmf »

robomartin wrote: post #193

As this article pertains to screen issues how about we discuss this a little bit rather than engaging in senseless rants? The "ghosting" issue the article highlights is a known problem with certain types of LCD screens. With a caveat I'll say that LG LCD panels are known for these kinds of issues much more so than Samsung's. The caveat is that ALL OEM LCD manufacturers have issues, all of them. The other very importa…

So the real test is whether Apple is still buying these known-"bad" LG panels. Anybody got a recently-manufactured rMBP with LG in it?

Re: Apple - Think Twice

#329

Post by zwischenzug »

My perception of Apple has pretty much been like this guy's for 10 years now, ever since I shelled out 250GBP on a 20G iPod whose battery ran out just over a year later.

I went to an Apple store and asked whether I could have the battery replaced, presumably for a price. "Just buy a new one, man!" was the response.

I'd taken a gamble buying the iPod (I didn't have much money at the time), was prepared to pay to replace the replaceable part. The sheer arrogance and condescension of the response, and the assumption that Apple consumers had money to burn made my blood boil. I haven't bought anything Apple since.

Re: Apple - Think Twice

#330

Post by astrodust »

vacri wrote: post #305
astrodust wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it people get all frothing at the mouth angry about Apple's mistakes when they just shrug indifferently the mis-steps of other companies? I haven't heard people losing their shit because their $4,000 Sony laptop webcam isn't as amazing as Sony promised.

Are you seriously saying you've never heard any of the voluminous complaints about Dell over the years?

If you're talking about small-time bitching in forums, then probably, but when's the last time someone's blog post about a defect on their Dell is considered newsworthy?
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