Thread: New Macbooks not user-upgradable any more...

Dixons group probably has the worst reputation for any chain in the uk for screwing over their customers in everyway possible, Its less irony and more a statement of where they want apple uk to go.

Its not just thailand, I told you, I escalated my issues in thailand to apple australia who have final say on thai repairs, apple in the UK and finally corporate in the UK. From personal experience thailand no worse than apple uk.

Have you considered just how broken and dysfunctional apple must be internally if you have to shout, scream and escalate what should be very simple issues to the CEO.
When you are selling a premium product, you need to sell a premium service to go with it, marketing and lock in's will only sustain you so far. Customer service is not simply marketing the 'genius' bar; its about not making your customer suffer from your problems... it needs to be something that everyone in the firm believes in.

If after decades apple has not learnt this, then emailing the boss isn't going to make any difference and to be honest the necessity of doing this tells you enough about the firm not to use it again in the future.

I disagree - the difference is how a situation is handled once I is escalated. Like I said, they can't fix it, if they don't know about it.

I compare this to my interaction with a number of other companies, including the darlings of the troll posse in some of these threads (Acer, HP, Dell), where not only has their CEO never responded (Jobs always replied), but a legitimate complaint was ignored, time and time again. This has *never* been my experience with Apple.

Obviously, YMMV, and it has - I do sometimes encounter such situations, frustrated customers like yourself, and I have always been able to make it right.

Should Apple be a perfect company - yes. Are they? Of course, not.

Nevertheless, the basic difference between a lot of other companies and Apple, is that Apple makes continued efforts to improve, while most everyone else aims for "good enough". There are only 2-3 other companies I have encountered with a similar attention to excellence, in every aspect of what they do.

^ So tell us again how much they pay you to be a corporate schill?

Originally Posted by Cthulhu

when running into issues, I always escalated directly to Steve Jobs

oh boy, that takes the cake

Originally Posted by Cthulhu

Lately I had to do the same with Tim Cook, with the same result.

and if that wasn't enough, add another layer of baiting

Originally Posted by hazz

emailing the boss isn't going to make any difference and to be honest the necessity of doing this tells you enough about the firm not to use it again in the future.

will probably be missed on Quack Quack,

Originally Posted by Koojo

^ So tell us again how much they pay you to be a corporate schill?

Right back to discussion how much of an obsessive nutcase you are, right? I mean, here you are, barely showered, but checking the thread for more obsession fodder before you've even had your first cup of coffee....

Originally Posted by Sailing into trouble

PC's are for people who it is their life!

Describes the Apple-haters well enough... ;-)

Plenty of options in the second-hand market, if you look around. Good luck.

Originally Posted by Cthulhu

I disagree - the difference is how a situation is handled once I is escalated. Like I said, they can't fix it, if they don't know about it.

I compare this to my interaction with a number of other companies, including the darlings of the troll posse in some of these threads (Acer, HP, Dell), where not only has their CEO never responded (Jobs always replied), but a legitimate complaint was ignored, time and time again. This has *never* been my experience with Apple.

Obviously, YMMV, and it has - I do sometimes encounter such situations, frustrated customers like yourself, and I have always been able to make it right.

Should Apple be a perfect company - yes. Are they? Of course, not.

Nevertheless, the basic difference between a lot of other companies and Apple, is that Apple makes continued efforts to improve, while most everyone else aims for "good enough". There are only 2-3 other companies I have encountered with a similar attention to excellence, in every aspect of what they do.

Seriously the job of the company board, is to manage the company. If they are remotely doing their jobs correctly, then people should not be escalating to the CEO or anyone in senior positions.

And to be honest I would call you out on this. Are you saying that the Apple board is so out of touch with their own company that they are unaware of their failure to comply with eu warranty laws and that they were being sued for that non compliance. This is not where premium brands should find themselves, this is where you expect to find spives like david ryan and ryan air.

Apple is not a new company it is well established, it is a well established retailer. It has had plenty of time to understand whats important to its business and their success demonstrates this. If they believed that customer service went beyond selling expensive, ineffective warranty insurance, then it would and their current success would suggest that they are right.

But from my perspective, IT equipment comes with a design life of 5 years. And in that respect it is reasonable for me to expect equipment, particularly when its sold at a premium price, should have a high probability of being reliable and presentable after the regress of 5 years use. Apple clearly don't, so where does that leave me, when I come to this years new laptop?

Originally Posted by hazz

Seriously the job of the company board, is to manage the company.

I think you are confusing executive management with the board, two different beasts

Daffy has the ear of Apple's CEO?

Fucking hell, Comical Cthulhu!

You don't seriously think anyone believes you, do you?

You are more deluded than I thought.

^Sorry but whilst the apple world might run on 2-3 year design lives, you will find the standard design life is 5 years for std IT equipment, and longer for infrastructure equipment.

Almost all equipment is specified with mtbf figures to give an idea of the reliability of the equipment during its design life, which also needs to be specified. you will find that 5 year design lives are standard in the IT industry with long ones being specified for infrastructure such as high end network equipment.

Originally Posted by Cthulhu

both were obvious mistakes that could have been simply addressed beforehand, but weren't, and required costly after the fact addressing.

Its highly unlikely that these were mistakes, they just decided that this was not something they needed to be bothered with. It is unusual for a company to be prosecuted for this kind of behaviour if it admits fault and takes corrective action as soon as the non compliance is pointed out to them. That they did not comply until after they lost the case regarding non compliance with eu consumer protection laws and then went to appeal..... hints at a lot.

If their equipment was reliable, then offering a 2 year warrant should cost them very little. After all its very reasonable to expect something that costs between 1-2000 pounds to have a very high probability of working for 2 years.
Their actions tell you all you need to know about how much that second year of warranty is going to take out of their profits, enough for a very media savvy company to take the resulting bad publicity.

Originally Posted by Cthulhu

You are lone and unique in expecting 5 year lifespans from any equipment

daffy you chump , stop making sh1t up in an attempt to support your argument

2-3 year lifespan ? do you think all companies are similar to your failed start-up ?

I consider those to be mistakes - flaws, faults, grievous oversights, arrogant assumptions... Call it what you will; mistakes is shorter and more descriptive, and as these situations (and PR backfires) had been 100% avoidable, evermore unforgivable for a company like Apple, IMO.

They do a lot of things right, but they clearly fuck up, sometimes for the mstavoidable details.

While you are correct that infrastructure equipment is sourced and budgeted for a longer term, I disagree about desktop equipment, which is usually acquired through leases, which last usually for 2-3 years, which is the average equipment upgrade cycle. I don't personally agree with equipment leasing, but that is how it's done by USA corporations.

Private industry might operate smarter, in fact I'm sure they do.

Originally Posted by hazz

If their equipment was reliable, then offering a 2 year warrant should cost them very little.

again you are a confusing apple with a computer manufacturing company, it's not, it's a jewelry distributor, they don't build anything, they just design pretty shit, order them and distribute them to retail outlets

Originally Posted by Cthulhu

I consider those to be mistakes - flaws, faults, grievous oversights, arrogant assumptions... Call it what you will; mistakes is shorter and more descriptive, and as these situations (and PR backfires) had been 100% avoidable, evermore unforgivable for a company like Apple, IMO.

You mean the thai definition of mistake or accidence. something that the americans would call 'wilful negligence'

^
Its more of a marketing firm that makes home electronics, just like away porche were a hedge fund that happened to make cars. When you consider that microsoft make more money from the sale of a pc sold with an one licence, than all of the other companies involved in the construction of the PC. what apple have done is quite clever, by controlling the hardware, software and selling of their stuff they ensure that far more money comes their way than any other intel based computer manufacture. its emulation what sun, hp and ibm did with their enterprise customers.

Originally Posted by hazz

Originally Posted by Cthulhu

I consider those to be mistakes - flaws, faults, grievous oversights, arrogant assumptions... Call it what you will; mistakes is shorter and more descriptive, and as these situations (and PR backfires) had been 100% avoidable, evermore unforgivable for a company like Apple, IMO.

You mean the thai definition of mistake or accidence. something that the americans would call 'wilful negligence'

Harsh words, but certainly apropos... Like I said, in those instances, 100% avoidable. It was just dumb ignorance of market realities that turned around and bit them, justifiably.

You missed the point that while they are very good at marketing, they also make some excellent products, do some awesome engineering, and also have some regular products (like their wifi routers). A classic example of their engineering what the first iPhone, which it turned out no competitor took seriously as no one believed such a product, particularly with battery life, could be made, at the time. Such underestimating Apple was RIM's downfall, for example.

Overestimating its own products has been RIM's downfall, the same with Nokia who have suddenly realised Symbian no longer cuts it.

Originally Posted by Butterfly

again you are a confusing apple with a computer manufacturing company, it's not, it's a jewelry distributor, they don't build anything, they just design pretty shit, order them and distribute them to poofs

Fixed that for you.

Originally Posted by harrybarracuda

Overestimating its own products has been RIM's downfall, the same with Nokia who have suddenly realised Symbian no longer cuts it.

digital, compaq, sun, sperry, rodine, microplis, tandem, amega, altari. there is nothing like being a market leader to breed self distractive arrogance in a company

Originally Posted by hazz

digital, compaq, sun, sperry, rodine, microplis, tandem, amega, altari. there is nothing like being a market leader to breed self distractive arrogance in a company

Indeed.

We've learned and struggled for a few years here figuring out how to make a decent phone. PC guys are not going to just figure this out. They're not going to just walk in. -Ed Colligan, Ex-Palm CEO, 16 Nov 2006

There's no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance. It's a $500 subsidized item. They may make a lot of money. But if you actually take a look at the 1.3 billion phones that get sold, I'd prefer to have our software in 60% or 70% or 80% of them, than I would to have 2% or 3%, which is what Apple might get. -Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO and zoologist, 30 April 2007

Bye Bye BlackBerry. How Long Will Apple Last? - Forbes

Bye Bye BlackBerry. How Long Will Apple Last?

Just five years ago, “BlackBerry” was virtually synonymous with “smartphones.” It was well on its way to becoming a generic trademark, like Kleenex or Band-Aid, that would seemingly forever be associated with its entire sector. “For many, the Blackberry is a must-have gadget, a wireless hand-held computer that can send e-mail and make phone calls,” noted a 2005 NPR story on the “CrackBerry,” as some BlackBerry addicts referred to the device. (Incidentally, the story compared the BlackBerry to the Palm Treo, an equally popular device at the time.)

Today, however, Research In Motion Ltd. (RIM), the maker of BlackBerry smartphones, is a financial basket case that has come to symbolize just how turbulent life in the modern digital economy can be. On Thursday, RIM announced that it was laying off top execs as revenues continued to plummet and the firm’s stock price hit its lowest mark since 2003. Industry analysts are lowering their projections for the firm and wondering if any corporate suitor—Microsoft is commonly mentioned—might be willing to step in and save the day by taking over the company.

As a New York Times headline from earlier this year noted, “The BlackBerry [is] Trying to Avoid the Hall of Fallen Giants,” joining the infamous ranks of the Sony Walkman, the Palm Pilot, the Atari 2600 gaming console, and the Polaroid instant camera. The article noted that “Over the last year, RIM’s share price has plunged 75 percent. The company once commanded more than half of the American smartphone market. Today it has 10 percent.” Both metrics continue their downhill slide.

If RIM can’t pull a rabbit out of the hat, the BlackBerry will become the latest case study exemplifying just how fast “information empires” can rise and fall in today’s rapidly evolving information technology marketplace. I’ve devoted numerous installments of this column to documenting how Joseph Schumpeter’s “perennial gales of creative destruction” are blowing harder than ever in today’s tech economy and laying waste to those who don’t innovate fast enough.

Nowhere is that more true than in the mobile phone handset and operating system marketplace, which has undergone continuous change over the past 15 years and is still evolving rapidly. Like the BlackBerry, Palm smartphones were also wildly popular for a brief time and brought many innovations to the marketplace, but the company underwent many ownership and management changes and rapidly faded from the scene. After buying Palm in 2010, HP announced it would use its webOS platform in a variety of new products. That effort failed, however, and HP instead announced it would transition webOS to an open source software development mode.

Microsoft also had a huge lead in licensing its Windows Mobile OS to high-end smartphone handset makers until Apple and Android disrupted its business. It’s hard to believe now, but just a few years ago the idea of Apple or Google being serious contenders in the smartphone business was greeted with derision, even scorn. Consider some of the pessimistic predictions that preceded Apple’s entry into the smartphone business:

In December 2006, Palm CEO Ed Colligan summarily dismissed the idea that a traditional personal computing company could compete in the smartphone business. “We’ve learned and struggled for a few years here figuring out how to make a decent phone,” he said. “PC guys are not going to just figure this out. They’re not going to just walk in.”

In January 2007, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer laughed off the prospect of an expensive smartphone without a keyboard having a chance in the marketplace as follows: “Five hundred dollars? Fully subsidized? With a plan? I said that’s the most expensive phone in the world and it doesn’t appeal to business customers because it doesn’t have a keyboard, which makes it not a very good e-mail machine.”
In March 2007, computing industry pundit John C. Dvorak argued that “Apple should pull the plug on the iPhone” since “There is no likelihood that Apple can be successful in a business this competitive.” Dvorak believed the mobile handset business was already locked up by the era’s major players. “This is not an emerging business. In fact it’s gone so far that it’s in the process of consolidation with probably two players dominating everything, Nokia Corp. and Motorola Inc.”
This serves as a classic example of those with a static snapshot mentality disregarding the potential for new entry and technological disruption. Today, less than five years after these predictions were made, Nokia’s profits and market share have plummeted and a struggling Motorola was purchased by Google last summer. Meanwhile, Palm appears dead and Microsoft is struggling to win back all the market share it has lost to Apple and Google in this arena.

“The violence with which new platforms have displaced incumbent mobile vendor fortunes continues to surprise,” says wireless industry analyst Horace Dediu. He notes that Nokia’s Symbian platform went from 47% share to 16% in three years, Microsoft’s phone platforms went from 12% to 1%, RIM’s went from 17% to 12%, and other platforms went from 21% to zero. Meanwhile, over a two year period, Google’s Android OS went from zero to 48% and Apple’s iOS went from 2% to 19%.

In a marketplace this dynamic it’s worth asking: How long will it be before Apple and Google’s Android meet a similar fate? That question sounds ludicrous now considering their respective fortunes and current co-Kings of the Hill status. But posing the same question about BlackBerry just a few years ago would have also evoked howls of laughter.

No one is laughing now, however, especially not RIM execs or their shareholders.

^ nobody is laughing because they underestimated the stupidity of consumers

now it's payback time

Originally Posted by Butterfly

^ nobody is laughing because they underestimated the stupidity of consumers

It's more like they were *banking* on the stupidity of consumers - and didn't expect:

- Apple to innovate a rabbit out of their hat.
- Consumers to actually gravitate to a better product

and most important of all:

- were unable to develop and market a better product.

Now, in all honesty, Palm had the potential at a competing product, with webOS and their pebble shaped phones - too bad they lost focus by irrationally starting a fight and wasting resources with Apple over hijacking the USB specs to make their device pretend to be an iPod. They should have just licensed DoubleTwist and made a deal with Amazon over music content... instead, they spent a year on a stupid cat/mouse game which they ultimately lost, and which lost them tons of goodwill from customers -- not to mention ultimately producing a shitty product (the workmanship of their phones and tablest was crap, webOS was actually a pretty damn nice product). The fact that Rubinstein could not leverage the resources from hp, but just retired pretty much summarizes why Palm failed.

RIM - there's really no hope. Lazaridis and Balsilie took care of damaging RIM in such a manner that it is impossible for RIM to recover. If they are lucky, they will be bought, on the cheap, and gutted.

Nokia - they are on life-support and barely being propped up by a vain hope that the Microsoft alliance will save them... in all likelihood, that hope was ust torpedo'd by Ballmer's Surface wet-dream.

Which ultimately just leaves .... Apple and Google.

... and if Apple's strategy of financial attrition pays off over the next 3-5 years, Android will be relegated to be a niche player before long (while tools will keep claiming huge *shipping* numbers or some such nonsense...)

Originally Posted by Cthulhu

... and if Apple's strategy of financial attrition

you mean patent trolling - that strategy will fail as more Judges realise they are being taken for luddite fools

apple has just realised it needs to start writing software for IOS , but it may well be too far behind

angry birds will not keep itards amused for ever