With more than half-billion* customers giving away technical support for all products for all customers regardless of how old the product is would probably not end well. However, I do think it could be in Apple's best interest to extend technical support to 1 year from their current 90 days without AppleCare.
* assumption
I quite like that idea. And offer a three year AppleCare for the iPad, five year for the Mac. Keep the iPhone at two years.
Yes, often it takes 90 days to get properly up an running. Specially for someone new to Apple. It is stingy at best for a company that prides itself above all on the customer experience.
On a different note - I just had some dealings with iTunes support due to some iTunes Match / Apple ID issues. What a terrible experience! Like so often happens with online support I got several longwinded emails pointing out the importance for the support staff to see my problem resolved (all auto generated bullshit) and no matter how many times I explained the issue which really was not all that complicated it was very obvious that my emails were not read, and definitely not understood. Very un-Apple like and very disappointing.
Can I help? I know a thing or two about iTunes Match.
But I thought all Apple owners are of higher intelligence, and Apple devices are über easy to use.
While it's true that Apple users in general are more likely to be smarter, better educated and more talented than others, like Android users for example, there will of course always be a few bad Apples to be found. That is to be expected when there are hundreds of millions of users.
And Apple devices are easy to use, are you claiming otherwise?
Good point, it should be a lot easier to set up screen sharing than it currently is. Especially if the person at the other end has a router blocking incoming connections, hasn't turned on screen sharing, etc...
Yes, both ways. I have been frustrated by tedious crappy intransigent support and on the other hand I have been trapped in a seemingly endless cycle of trying to help someone who as time goes on I have grown to intensely dislike due to their frustrating lack of ability and technical ineptitude. Support is hugely time consuming and must be one of the most frustrating jobs on earth. When you consider phone support people usually cannot see the screen they are trying to support and have to deal with click happy incompetent and often semi incoherent pissed off clients it is probably a wonder they are as good as they usually are.
As a Mac user for more than 2 decades, I can only think of once where I called Apple. It was issues with an HP 5500 printer I bought with a Mac in 2003 at the local Apple Store, OSX 10.2 or 10.3
Apple tech support was useless, and they directed me to HP, who couldn't solve the problem after an hour on the phone. At least HP called me back the next day and said they couldn't solve the problem after several hours of testing.
What was this big problem? 10.2 or 10.3 and the HP 5500 drivers couldn't even print a photo centered vertically and horizontally on a 8.5x11 paper. WOW.
Another issue is the Genius Bar and some of the floor sales people.
I found (via Macintouch) a KB article where Apple told retail to replace white and black MacBook palm rests and lower casing for cracks within 3 years, even without extended AppleCare. The genius could not find anything related, so I gave Hine the KB article #, then they promptly fixed 2 MacBooks within 2 hours.. Why couldn't they find that KB article?
Even worse, one of the floor or one to one guys told my 70 year old mother to use a blank admin password. How stupid!
To top off stupidity: The senior (age, skill, and the boss) law partner at my friends firm took a dead MBP to the local Apple store. Apple claimed it was dead, they couldn't fix it, and convinced him to buy a new MBP retina. My friend brought me the dead MBP, we swapped the drive for an SSD, put the old drive in a USB Dock. We could access the old data and the SSD works fine in the same MBP. Apple pissed of a loyal customer by not spending the 10 minutes that I spent to figure out everything still worked.
Sorry for the rant, but since I biased with computer knowledge,, I think most Apple support sucks.
While it's true that Apple users in general are more likely to be smarter, better educated and more talented than others, like Android users for example, there will of course always be a few bad Apples to be found. That is to be expected when there are hundreds of millions of users.
And Apple devices are easy to use, are you claiming otherwise?
Whilst I liked your honest and accurate portrayal of Apple users, I enjoyed your reference to those who upset the applecart especially.
This is great! Have been suggesting paid, quick chat support to Apple for years - over a decade, in fact - and it seems I was (of course) not the only one on both sides on the Apple-Customers border to think that's a good idea.
What's some 20 bucks compared to searching the web for hours, browsing forums, trying to resolve an irritating issue yourself... when in a hurry.
Being able to just log in with an Apple ID, paying $20 (or even more in order to get past queues), would be faster, but sure, one can look up some serial numbers, too.
Now, let's test if it really works (or if one just gets young adults who quote manuals like parrots).
This is a bad idea. If your product is in warranty, then support should be free. It really is as simple as that...
After entering their device’s serial number in Apple’s support portal, customers whose AppleCare coverage has lapsed are now notified that they may be asked to pay a new $19 fee during the chat session…
Comments
I quite like that idea. And offer a three year AppleCare for the iPad, five year for the Mac. Keep the iPhone at two years.
Can I help? I know a thing or two about iTunes Match.
But I thought all Apple owners are of higher intelligence, and Apple devices are über easy to use.
While it's true that Apple users in general are more likely to be smarter, better educated and more talented than others, like Android users for example, there will of course always be a few bad Apples to be found. That is to be expected when there are hundreds of millions of users.
And Apple devices are easy to use, are you claiming otherwise?
I believe this only applies to out of warranty.
As a Mac user for more than 2 decades, I can only think of once where I called Apple. It was issues with an HP 5500 printer I bought with a Mac in 2003 at the local Apple Store, OSX 10.2 or 10.3
Apple tech support was useless, and they directed me to HP, who couldn't solve the problem after an hour on the phone. At least HP called me back the next day and said they couldn't solve the problem after several hours of testing.
What was this big problem? 10.2 or 10.3 and the HP 5500 drivers couldn't even print a photo centered vertically and horizontally on a 8.5x11 paper. WOW.
Another issue is the Genius Bar and some of the floor sales people.
I found (via Macintouch) a KB article where Apple told retail to replace white and black MacBook palm rests and lower casing for cracks within 3 years, even without extended AppleCare. The genius could not find anything related, so I gave Hine the KB article #, then they promptly fixed 2 MacBooks within 2 hours.. Why couldn't they find that KB article?
Even worse, one of the floor or one to one guys told my 70 year old mother to use a blank admin password. How stupid!
To top off stupidity:
The senior (age, skill, and the boss) law partner at my friends firm took a dead MBP to the local Apple store. Apple claimed it was dead, they couldn't fix it, and convinced him to buy a new MBP retina. My friend brought me the dead MBP, we swapped the drive for an SSD, put the old drive in a USB Dock. We could access the old data and the SSD works fine in the same MBP. Apple pissed of a loyal customer by not spending the 10 minutes that I spent to figure out everything still worked.
Sorry for the rant, but since I biased with computer knowledge,, I think most Apple support sucks.
Whilst I liked your honest and accurate portrayal of Apple users, I enjoyed your reference to those who upset the applecart especially.
What's some 20 bucks compared to searching the web for hours, browsing forums, trying to resolve an irritating issue yourself... when in a hurry.
Being able to just log in with an Apple ID, paying $20 (or even more in order to get past queues), would be faster, but sure, one can look up some serial numbers, too.
Now, let's test if it really works (or if one just gets young adults who quote manuals like parrots).