losethos, you're dead. just thought you should know.
Wow, or from the When-Apple-Became-the-Borg Department
81–90 of 90 posts
Re: Wow, or from the When-Apple-Became-the-Borg Department
#82Google has a better approach here. In their forums, they will promote power users to semi-moderators. These people then, drunk on the (useless) power bestowed upon them by Google, do their best to fend off and send into nirvana actual problems, or just shower askers with pointless routine stuff (reinstall, turn it off and on again) until they give up.
If you buy a consumer electronics device from Google this is what you'd expect though. Apple users are promised to never have to think for themselves again. Apparently it takes Geniuses to do that, available at your nearest over priced retail center.
It's pretty depressing to admit that yeah, I buy google products despite their customer service, not because of it.
I deeply dislike it when companies attitude to helping their customer is sending them in a loop through a series of FAQ pages without an actual human you can talk to within a thousand miles.
Re: Wow, or from the When-Apple-Became-the-Borg Department
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I can see why Apple opts not to participate As Lessig notes, they're engaging actively in censorship. That's certainly their right, but it's not the same thing as not participating.
Requiring that posts stay on topic isn't censorship. Terms of Service are Terms of Service. There are lots and lots of other Apple/Mac/iPhone forums around the web.
> Requiring that posts stay on topic isn't censorship.
Censorship is exactly what it is. I understand it's an emotionally or ethically charged term for some, but there is no doubt about what they're doing:
"to examine in order to suppress or delete anything considered objectionable"
We all understand that there are terms of service. They're enforcing them via censorship. Whether it's the censorship or the ToS that the censorship is meant to serve which are particularly objectionable is a pretty uninteresting argument.
Re: Wow, or from the When-Apple-Became-the-Borg Department
#84losethos, you're dead. just thought you should know.
He knows. Check out his comment history to see why he is.
Re: Wow, or from the When-Apple-Became-the-Borg Department
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I can see why Apple opts not to participate As Lessig notes, they're engaging actively in censorship. That's certainly their right, but it's not the same thing as not participating.
Requiring that posts stay on topic isn't censorship. Terms of Service are Terms of Service. There are lots and lots of other Apple/Mac/iPhone forums around the web.
It's totally within the terms of service as far as I can see, since it is on topic.
Exercising your warranty rights is a perfectly valid solution to a technical problem.
It's always been common to suggest to people that they try restarting their devices to fix a problem or going as far as reinstalling the software in question. When neither of those work, replacing the device if it is non-functional is the next step and exercising your warranty rights is a legit way to implement that technical fix.
Re: Wow, or from the When-Apple-Became-the-Borg Department
#86Sadly 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…
It also happens in Apple's (paid) developer support bug tracker. When a new OS X release broke something that killed some 40 products at a company I used to work for, they simply made the bug report "private" so that others couldn't see it. Some of the products that they broke had to be rewritten to use a completely different technology, the breakage was so bad. Google....has its own issues, but at least doesn't dele…
This… doesn’t ring true, considering that Apple’s bug tracker isn’t public at all — bug reports are not publicly visible or searchable, only the submitter and Apple can see them. That’s why openradar.me exists in the first place. So the claim that Apple "made the bug report "private" so that others couldn't see it” fails the smell test.
Re: Wow, or from the When-Apple-Became-the-Borg Department
#87Am I the only one that sees this forum as a honeypot to suck useful posts into a location that apple can curate and prune away anything they deem likely to be detrimental?
I understand that they have a support offering they want people to buy, but it seems to me that creating official forums that never get official responses and removing posts that espouse actions that, while not beneficial to Apple, are legal and to help customers, Apple are holding paid for usefulness of their devices ransom.
That may seem like a fairly uncharitable view, but their actions in this instance don't seem particularly charitable either.
Re: Wow, or from the When-Apple-Became-the-Borg Department
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
It also happens in Apple's (paid) developer support bug tracker. When a new OS X release broke something that killed some 40 products at a company I used to work for, they simply made the bug report "private" so that others couldn't see it. Some of the products that they broke had to be rewritten to use a completely different technology, the breakage was so bad. Google....has its own issues, but at least doesn't dele…
This… doesn’t ring true, considering that Apple’s bug tracker isn’t public at all — bug reports are not publicly visible or searchable, only the submitter and Apple can see them. That’s why openradar.me exists in the first place. So the claim that Apple "made the bug report "private" so that others couldn't see it” fails the smell test.
That's what the Apple developer I was working with told me; he implied that he had submitted the report, and that it was "hidden" later. Maybe the discussion on the report was hidden?
Re: Wow, or from the When-Apple-Became-the-Borg Department
#89Blaming regulations for your decision to get a crappier warranty or SLA than you could demand elsewhere is like blaming your car manufacturer for the availability and price of fuel.
It's more like the car manufacturer is providing updates and bug fixes for your car, which then renders your windshield wipers or some other significant feature useless, and this problem occurs for a large number of users, then attempting to use the support forums provided by the manufacturer only to find the manufacturer not only does not respond to posts but also deletes useful posts, and also does not provide an e…
I'm talking about the absurdity of expecting explicitly-disclaimed benefits to just rain from the sky because you bought something.
It's cheap because they waive these responsibilities, it would be/is more expensive to have them not waived, that's just how it is.
There are also a few manufacturers of smartphones who guarantee against this sort of thing.
Also, the only way to maximize profits is to satisfy the customer: they offer the devices at a consumer price which is enticing to a mass market who may or may not have these issues, rather than expecting everyone to have these issues all the time, and pricing it to accommodate that. This is exactly what consumers want, cheap phones that at least typically do what is expected of them.
Re: Wow, or from the When-Apple-Became-the-Borg Department
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you buy a consumer electronics device from Google this is what you'd expect though. Apple users are promised to never have to think for themselves again. Apparently it takes Geniuses to do that, available at your nearest over priced retail center.
It's pretty depressing to admit that yeah, I buy google products despite their customer service, not because of it. I deeply dislike it when companies attitude to helping their customer is sending them in a loop through a series of FAQ pages without an actual human you can talk to within a thousand miles.
...or within 10,000 miles, in Google's case.