Before I retired and closed my business, all our Apple equipment was purchased through the Apple Business division, not the local store. If something went wrong we had a hotline.
One day I recall, an Apple 30" monitor died in the middle of production for an ESPN show we were editing at around 4 p.m. and I called the business support line. We received a replacement at 8 a.m. the next morning before work began along with special packing for the dead one and Apple collected that the next day.
Has Apple closed its business division? Do professional clients now carry a Mac Pro to their local store? Really?
The business division has minimum purchase limits, and they aren't small.
If you're under the threshold, you're buying at Apple Retail or online.
So, what are those limits these days? Just curious. I would have thought the vast majority of those purchasing a new Mac Pro would be in that category.
There are a few thresholds on purchase volumes by number or by dollar, but the lowest one is $25K.
This is from Apple;
”Get AppleCare for Enterprise now.
AppleCare for Enterprise is available in volume-based price tiers starting at 1000 and 5000 covered devices. Contact Apple, an Apple Authorized Reseller, or an Authorized Carrier Partner to receive a quote for AppleCare for Enterprise.”
So you are saying that the minimum cost for AppleCare for Enterprise is $25,000.
It’s important to know this. If I spent ~$15,000 on a MacPro set up, I would want the best AppleCare support & would not be using my nearest AppleStore to support that computer.
The major problem is cost!! The MacPro and its display is too expensive for the numerous Apple stores to have one in stock and most technicians have not had the opportunity to delve into their inner workings, let alone service them. My nearest Apple Store explained that to me when I wanted to see one up close.
You’d think Apple would want them available for the public to see!!
Before I retired and closed my business, all our Apple equipment was purchased through the Apple Business division, not the local store. If something went wrong we had a hotline.
One day I recall, an Apple 30" monitor died in the middle of production for an ESPN show we were editing at around 4 p.m. and I called the business support line. We received a replacement at 8 a.m. the next morning before work began along with special packing for the dead one and Apple collected that the next day.
Has Apple closed its business division? Do professional clients now carry a Mac Pro to their local store? Really?
The business division has minimum purchase limits, and they aren't small.
If you're under the threshold, you're buying at Apple Retail or online.
So, what are those limits these days? Just curious. I would have thought the vast majority of those purchasing a new Mac Pro would be in that category.
There are a few thresholds on purchase volumes by number or by dollar, but the lowest one is $25K.
This is from Apple;
”Get AppleCare for Enterprise now.
AppleCare for Enterprise is available in volume-based price tiers starting at 1000 and 5000 covered devices. Contact Apple, an Apple Authorized Reseller, or an Authorized Carrier Partner to receive a quote for AppleCare for Enterprise.”
So you are saying that the minimum cost for AppleCare for Enterprise is $25,000.
It’s important to know this. If I spent ~$15,000 on a MacPro set up, I would want the best AppleCare support & would not be using my nearest AppleStore to support that computer.
No. what I'm saying is the threshold for buying from the business division and access to business support on a pay-per-incident basis as opposed to the regular AppleCare queue is $25K of hardware purchases. AppleCare for Enterprise has a minimum 1000-device threshold as you've posted above. Two different aspects.
You can't even see a Mac Pro unless you are at the Apple Store where there are mega-rich nearby like NYC. I live in a large city with lots of creatives. What the heck, Apple?
When you say "acting up", a bit more info would be helpful to paint a picture of the type of problem and possibly help to explain why the support was so awful. Hardware problem? Software problem? Glitchy graphics? Hesitation?
I do expect better from Apple Support, and I hope they read this article.
Our personal problem is really bad wireless communications of any sort -- Bluetooth or Wi-Fi -- which should be about the simplest thing to diagnose and figure out. However, our failure isn't really relevant to the overall story, and other folks we've spoken to have had more severe problems.
IMO if it's sporadic or a bandwidth connectivity issue, wireless comms is not the simplest thing to figure out...I dread trying to troubleshoot wireless issues.
That being said, Apple should definitely have SOPs in place for it.
Honestly the last couple times I've had to call support I was unhappy with the experience. The agents were all very friendly, but getting to the right person took a long time and I spent hours dealing with them. One problem scenario is if you need a senior specialist -- I either have to wait on hold for 1-2 hours, or have them call me back within 3 biz days. Neither is a winning solution and there is not a call-back queue, you must choose. They failed to call me back within the 3 days and I had to start over again. This is a fail.
When you say "acting up", a bit more info would be helpful to paint a picture of the type of problem and possibly help to explain why the support was so awful. Hardware problem? Software problem? Glitchy graphics? Hesitation?
I do expect better from Apple Support, and I hope they read this article.
Our personal problem is really bad wireless communications of any sort -- Bluetooth or Wi-Fi -- which should be about the simplest thing to diagnose and figure out. However, our failure isn't really relevant to the overall story, and other folks we've spoken to have had more severe problems.
IMO if it's sporadic or a bandwidth connectivity issue, wireless comms is not the simplest thing to figure out...I dread trying to troubleshoot wireless issues.
That being said, Apple should definitely have SOPs in place for it.
Honestly the last couple times I've had to call support I was unhappy with the experience. The agents were all very friendly, but getting to the right person took a long time and I spent hours dealing with them. One problem scenario is if you need a senior specialist -- I either have to wait on hold for 1-2 hours, or have them call me back within 3 biz days. Neither is a winning solution and there is not a call-back queue, you must choose. They failed to call me back within the 3 days and I had to start over again. This is a fail.
Apple procedure for troubleshooting this in literally any other machine:
1) In the store, replace the OS. If symptoms persist, then... 2) Replace the motherboard or module.
This isn't a 14-step process like anything else is. It is literally, two steps.
I wonder where a customer would stand if they said that they wanted the return the MP due to the fact that it was not fit for the purpose for which it was bought. Here in the UK you would have a very strong case. I think that all stores should at least have one unit available to swop, in cases like this. Even if the swap MP is not the same spec, at least the customer could get going again and repair/service would then be a lot more convenient.
Call me what you want but nothing about Apple “service” impresses me over the last 5 years or so. The idea that Apple has competent people in the stores and service centers is really a hold over from what people got a decade ago. For the most part Apple can’t support its own hardware beyond simple fixes. Service / support screw ups are why I have a Linux box on my desk right now.
All of this is especially distressing when hardware prices have sky rocketed beyond all reason. Why people defend Apples pricing is beyond me, the value isn’t there anymore. Back in 2008 when I got into Macs again the Apple Tax was bearable. These days between the initial high costs and the screwing you get if something is out of warranty going Apple is just stupid. People need to wake up the Apple of old is gone.
When you say "acting up", a bit more info would be helpful to paint a picture of the type of problem and possibly help to explain why the support was so awful. Hardware problem? Software problem? Glitchy graphics? Hesitation?
I do expect better from Apple Support, and I hope they read this article.
Our personal problem is really bad wireless communications of any sort -- Bluetooth or Wi-Fi -- which should be about the simplest thing to diagnose and figure out. However, our failure isn't really relevant to the overall story, and other folks we've spoken to have had more severe problems.
IMO if it's sporadic or a bandwidth connectivity issue, wireless comms is not the simplest thing to figure out...I dread trying to troubleshoot wireless issues.
That being said, Apple should definitely have SOPs in place for it.
Honestly the last couple times I've had to call support I was unhappy with the experience. The agents were all very friendly, but getting to the right person took a long time and I spent hours dealing with them. One problem scenario is if you need a senior specialist -- I either have to wait on hold for 1-2 hours, or have them call me back within 3 biz days. Neither is a winning solution and there is not a call-back queue, you must choose. They failed to call me back within the 3 days and I had to start over again. This is a fail.
Apple procedure for troubleshooting this in literally any other machine:
1) In the store, replace the OS. If symptoms persist, then... 2) Replace the motherboard or module.
This isn't a 14-step process like anything else is. It is literally, two steps.
watch out for #2 if you are out of warrant. The charge on motherboards is worse than retail for entire computers from other vendors.
When you say "acting up", a bit more info would be helpful to paint a picture of the type of problem and possibly help to explain why the support was so awful. Hardware problem? Software problem? Glitchy graphics? Hesitation?
I do expect better from Apple Support, and I hope they read this article.
Our personal problem is really bad wireless communications of any sort -- Bluetooth or Wi-Fi -- which should be about the simplest thing to diagnose and figure out. However, our failure isn't really relevant to the overall story, and other folks we've spoken to have had more severe problems.
IMO if it's sporadic or a bandwidth connectivity issue, wireless comms is not the simplest thing to figure out...I dread trying to troubleshoot wireless issues.
That being said, Apple should definitely have SOPs in place for it.
Honestly the last couple times I've had to call support I was unhappy with the experience. The agents were all very friendly, but getting to the right person took a long time and I spent hours dealing with them. One problem scenario is if you need a senior specialist -- I either have to wait on hold for 1-2 hours, or have them call me back within 3 biz days. Neither is a winning solution and there is not a call-back queue, you must choose. They failed to call me back within the 3 days and I had to start over again. This is a fail.
Apple procedure for troubleshooting this in literally any other machine:
1) In the store, replace the OS. If symptoms persist, then... 2) Replace the motherboard or module.
This isn't a 14-step process like anything else is. It is literally, two steps.
watch out for #2 if you are out of warrant. The charge on motherboards is worse than retail for entire computers from other vendors.
Given that the Mac Pro is only a few months old, we're in the clear in this regard.
When you say "acting up", a bit more info would be helpful to paint a picture of the type of problem and possibly help to explain why the support was so awful. Hardware problem? Software problem? Glitchy graphics? Hesitation?
I do expect better from Apple Support, and I hope they read this article.
Our personal problem is really bad wireless communications of any sort -- Bluetooth or Wi-Fi -- which should be about the simplest thing to diagnose and figure out. However, our failure isn't really relevant to the overall story, and other folks we've spoken to have had more severe problems.
IMO if it's sporadic or a bandwidth connectivity issue, wireless comms is not the simplest thing to figure out...I dread trying to troubleshoot wireless issues.
That being said, Apple should definitely have SOPs in place for it.
Honestly the last couple times I've had to call support I was unhappy with the experience. The agents were all very friendly, but getting to the right person took a long time and I spent hours dealing with them. One problem scenario is if you need a senior specialist -- I either have to wait on hold for 1-2 hours, or have them call me back within 3 biz days. Neither is a winning solution and there is not a call-back queue, you must choose. They failed to call me back within the 3 days and I had to start over again. This is a fail.
I've had this experience as well. They need to train the level 1 specialists better and not always rely on a senior specialist to fix things. Perhaps they're overwhelmed because of this and cannot call back (kind of a bad excuse yes but still). It just seems like all the level 1 specialists are there for are the very easiest of things and if it gets past have you turned it off and back on again its well we need to connect to you a senior specialist to help resolve this.
I agree with those who believe that Apple has gotten too big. I don't necessarily think it has to be broken up, but it does need to be better managed. Sometimes it feels like they've lost control of the company because it's so large, no one knows what the rest of the company is doing.
This would be unacceptable for any of Apple's products, but it's particularly unacceptable for a machine that starts at $6000 and then climbs into the stratosphere. If they have to have a separate team for the Pro, that's fine, but it shouldn't be hard to access them and they should know what they're doing.
In the (distant) past, my family had always received GREAT service from Apple. My daughter had a MacBook that her infant daughter mostly destroyed by pushing the screen back and breaking the hinge. The machine worked, but the screen had to be supported. Apple said it wasn't worth fixing. But then the video card stopped working. So my daughter brought it in just to have the video card fixed. When she got the thing back, the entire thing was completely fixed and she called me up in tears because she thought she was going to be charged something like $1300. The actual charge? $0. It was like getting a brand new machine.
My son-in-law had a G4 tower. The power supply kept going for some reason. He said to Apple after the third time that if it happened again, he'd like the machine replaced. It did happen again. But by that time it had been replaced by the G5 tower. That's what Apple gave him. Fantastic.
There were a few other incidences like that, but I no longer remember the details. But it gave such good feelings of support, it made one feel that they'd be an Apple customer for life. But I don't think any of those things would happen today.
I have a late 2016 MacBook Pro. The battery needs replacement. Apple wants $450. I think that's ridiculous. I hate Windows, but this just might be my last Mac. I can't stand the fact that I can't replace the battery, storage or memory like I could in my previous MBP (late 2008). And Apple has gotten really sloppy with OS updates that break things for no apparent reason. That never used to happen in the past. In the past, I could always say, "it just worked".
Probably in late 2001, I had cable installed along with a cable modem. I remember that we plugged the internet cable into the Mac, I went to the appropriate configuration screen, clicked one button and everything worked. The installer said, "no, it won't work yet -- I have to do X, Y, Z". I said, "Look, it's working". He said, "Holy crap, I'm buying a Mac!" Today it's not so easy. I constantly have to unplug and plug back in USB-A cable that are on adapters or even USB-C cables that have USB-A on the other end. These are the kinds of things that Apple used to do really well. I don't know what's going on at Apple, but what I picture in my mind is a bunch of unsupervised developers.
Call me what you want but nothing about Apple “service” impresses me over the last 5 years or so. The idea that Apple has competent people in the stores and service centers is really a hold over from what people got a decade ago. For the most part Apple can’t support its own hardware beyond simple fixes. Service / support screw ups are why I have a Linux box on my desk right now.
All of this is especially distressing when hardware prices have sky rocketed beyond all reason. Why people defend Apples pricing is beyond me, the value isn’t there anymore. Back in 2008 when I got into Macs again the Apple Tax was bearable. These days between the initial high costs and the screwing you get if something is out of warranty going Apple is just stupid. People need to wake up the Apple of old is gone.
Mmm. I originally got into Macs because my wife was a designer when I met her, and she used an iBook (2002 ish). I played with it from time to time. It was nicely made, with care and attention to detail. OS 9 was not my favourite though. When we came back to Japan, I found the box of her iBook, and in the box was non other than an OSX sample disk. Well, I just had to give that a go. I was hooked from that point on. It was a different beast, and started me down the Apple road... First I bought a G5 iMac, which was sorely under powered. While a nice machine, I was disappointed when I realised how slow it actually was in terms of cost performance. I had believed all of Apple's marketing (do any of you remember their 2005 website? How amazing and forward thinking the Power PC was? I was still using a windows box at the office, but kept looking at Apple's laptops. I really liked the keyboards on the Power Macs. When the first Intel MacBook Pro came out in 2006, I snapped one right up. it was, shall we say, magic. The Mac had soul. I never felt tired using that machine. The keyboard was the most comfortable keyboard I had (and have had) on any laptop. The only problem it ever really had was the battery expanding (2008?). I took it to the Mac Store in Ginza, spoke to a Genius, in English no less, and they replaced the battery free of charge. I could not believe it. Just wow! (unfortunately the replacement did the same thing after about two years). I still have the machine, and fire it up from time to time just for kicks. The screen colours have shifted a lot, but fortunately using a colour calibrator it can be sorted out.
My 2013 MacBook is still my daily driver. It too had a battery expansion episode about two years ago. Apple replaced it (along with the keyboard as they do) for a reasonably low fee, and service was quick and friendly. No real complaints there. I do find the Apple store increasingly difficult to navigate though - where can I pay for this? Look for someone, who then points you to someone else, who then tells you to stand 'here' and then eventually someone comes along with their portable payment processor (I know that's not the right term, I forget). Years ago almost anyone could process the payment. It felt like a breeze of fresh air. Not like now.
Bought a Mac Pro in 2009, and flashed it with 2010 firmware to install a 6 core 3.2GHz XEON which was quite a bit faster. Considering it was identical hardware, I felt a bit annoyed that I had trick the Pro into updating itself. I think this is the point around when I began to have doubts about Apple. There was just a feeling that things were not quite as they should be. That did not stop me buying a 2010, 2013 and 2018 MacBook Pro, various iPads and every second iPhone (I've got to the point now I do not want to change my phone for at least 6 years - we'll just have to see if I can get the carrier to give me a decent rate).
Increasingly though there is something amiss. I know Apple has no soul, it never really did (well, perhaps in its infancy it did), it's just a massive massive corporation. But, Apple's products used to have a certain warmth to them, soul even. They were personable. Things feel more and more sterile now. It's the only term I can think of that succinctly paints a picture of how Apple seem to be becoming. The joy of simply using a computer to get things done with efficiency and without fuss, with a little elegance and finesse is slowly being strangled to death.
Is the Apple of old really gone?
PS Yes, prices have certainly sky rocketed, even adjusted for inflation they make little sense. Then again, as this topic was about service, and specifically the new Mac Pro - I am still confounded as to why Apple put silly overpriced Intel parts into a machine when AMDs CPUs (which I am absolutely quite sure they had sample copies of early on - there is code in OSX specific to AMD CPUs after all) completely destroy Intel's CPUs. It is, how shall I put it, not logically clear or understandable. I've looked into this at depth, and I cannot find a real reason, other than perhaps some corporate agreement.
Before I retired and closed my business, all our Apple equipment was purchased through the Apple Business division, not the local store. If something went wrong we had a hotline.
One day I recall, an Apple 30" monitor died in the middle of production for an ESPN show we were editing at around 4 p.m. and I called the business support line. We received a replacement at 8 a.m. the next morning before work began along with special packing for the dead one and Apple collected that the next day.
Has Apple closed its business division? Do professional clients now carry a Mac Pro to their local store? Really?
The business division has minimum purchase limits, and they aren't small.
If you're under the threshold, you're buying at Apple Retail or online.
I think the warranty options for business devices from HP, Dell and Lenovo offers are miles ahead of Apple. They offer up to 5 years w/ onsite service and with no minimum order or purchase limits. I think that devices as expensive as Apple devices should have to option for onsite service. That's something Apple could learn from HP, Dell and Lenovo.
“The fact a Genius attempted to power the Mac Pro via a USB-C power brick shines a glaring light on how poorly equipped the rank and file are to handle Mac Pro support cases that come in.”
This is just ludicrous. No computer tech should EVER think this is remotely possible. Would they try that with an iMac Pro? It’s utterly inexcusable that this is the level of tech comprehension on offer at an Apple “Genius” support desk. That’s not a tech “genius”. It’s a person with very little actual practical understanding of computers outside the scripts they memorized to get a job at an Apple Store. It’s offensively bad on the part of Apple Store management. Not only does it make Apple look bad, it puts an otherwise well-meaning employee in the crosshairs of pissed-off customers.
I agree with those who believe that Apple has gotten too big. I don't necessarily think it has to be broken up, but it does need to be better managed. Sometimes it feels like they've lost control of the company because it's so large, no one knows what the rest of the company is doing.
This would be unacceptable for any of Apple's products, but it's particularly unacceptable for a machine that starts at $6000 and then climbs into the stratosphere. If they have to have a separate team for the Pro, that's fine, but it shouldn't be hard to access them and they should know what they're doing.
In the (distant) past, my family had always received GREAT service from Apple. My daughter had a MacBook that her infant daughter mostly destroyed by pushing the screen back and breaking the hinge. The machine worked, but the screen had to be supported. Apple said it wasn't worth fixing. But then the video card stopped working. So my daughter brought it in just to have the video card fixed. When she got the thing back, the entire thing was completely fixed and she called me up in tears because she thought she was going to be charged something like $1300. The actual charge? $0. It was like getting a brand new machine.
My son-in-law had a G4 tower. The power supply kept going for some reason. He said to Apple after the third time that if it happened again, he'd like the machine replaced. It did happen again. But by that time it had been replaced by the G5 tower. That's what Apple gave him. Fantastic.
There were a few other incidences like that, but I no longer remember the details. But it gave such good feelings of support, it made one feel that they'd be an Apple customer for life. But I don't think any of those things would happen today.
I have a late 2016 MacBook Pro. The battery needs replacement. Apple wants $450. I think that's ridiculous. I hate Windows, but this just might be my last Mac. I can't stand the fact that I can't replace the battery, storage or memory like I could in my previous MBP (late 2008). And Apple has gotten really sloppy with OS updates that break things for no apparent reason. That never used to happen in the past. In the past, I could always say, "it just worked".
Probably in late 2001, I had cable installed along with a cable modem. I remember that we plugged the internet cable into the Mac, I went to the appropriate configuration screen, clicked one button and everything worked. The installer said, "no, it won't work yet -- I have to do X, Y, Z". I said, "Look, it's working". He said, "Holy crap, I'm buying a Mac!" Today it's not so easy. I constantly have to unplug and plug back in USB-A cable that are on adapters or even USB-C cables that have USB-A on the other end. These are the kinds of things that Apple used to do really well. I don't know what's going on at Apple, but what I picture in my mind is a bunch of unsupervised developers.
Hi Zoetmb, seems we were writing our posts along similar lines. Do they really want $450? Wow. My 2013 MBP had a battery replacement around a year or so ago, well out of Apple care, and it cost around ¥20,000 which at the time was very roughly $200.
I very much feel your 'it just worked' sentiment. For me, the very simple reason for buying a Mac (after becoming enamoured with Macs in the beginning) came down to - I open it, I do work, I close it. Not: I open it, there's an update installing and the battery is about to die, or, something has crashed and is not working, or this software is no longer bla bla bla, please reinstall, or, I'm about to do a presentation, pop up pop up bla bla has just installed (way to go Microsoft) etc. (all our business computers are Windows based, I've seen it all, lived it all, if Windows disappeared I would not shed a tear). I'm the only one that uses a Mac every day (I paid for it). That said, Windows is OK just not trustworthy. If you want your workers to be able to just get work done, I don't see why anyone would actually WANT their staff to use it. The Linux crowd has been hollering for decades that Linux is here. It still isn't, but it sure is getting close. Try Manjaro Linux, their install comes with a decent office suite that you would normally have to pay for (not Open office, something else which appears to be a lot better) and with various skins and other things, you can actually get pretty close to OSX now. Am I allowed to mention this kind of thing on an Apple forum? Not sure. I can explain further if you want.
Developers - I am one myself, though I don't write software specifically for Macs. I have a lot of other roles, and am stretched a bit, but do what I can. Writing code can be like going down a rabbit hole (Alice in Wonderland style). You come up for air every couple of weeks, and see what's happening in the world, and then you dive back in. Your mind is full of code, remembering where everything is in the current software you are working on. Can't tell you what I did the other day, or what I had for lunch, but I can tell you where anything is in a system. That's how bad it can get as a developer when you have to work work work. When you switch projects, or work on something else (like building a physical server, install fiber networks or some other such slightly more rewarding less etherial work) you start remembering what you did yesterday, or what you had for breakfast. I don't doubt the developers at Apple are forever down that Rabbit hole, probably being constantly whipped into getting this or that done by their supervisors. This not done yet? Never mind, we will pass that on to the other team. We want you to focus on this instead... meanwhile the other team probably have a similar situation, never quite get to the thing that was not properly finished - and if they ever do, they don't really know where everything is like the original developer. While you certainly can learn where everything is, it takes significant time (especially if you are unfamiliar with it) reading through code is almost like slowly loading the software into your own brain, eventually you get to a point where you can just work, and not have to think where is this or where is that. But it occupies real space, so other things have to take a back seat.
I doubt the developers are unsupervised, but I do think that OSX is getting ever bigger and bigger. It is UNIX, but sometimes does not seem to fully follow the UNIX philosophy (which in essence, and slightly simplified is: each component is small, has one main role, and does that role exceptionally well; can be interconnected with other components which can then together perform some useful function). Instead, things are getting large, and complicated, and services are often overlapping (more than one thing can do the same thing). Apple seems more and more intent on locking hardware down (you can no longer remove a drive from one broken computer, put it in a functioning one and carry on, as one example. That's not terribly useful. More and more things are becoming like this) and to that end seem focused on other things, rather than, how can we help people get things done.
I'm waiting for Apple to do what once the Feds should have done already and break Apple Inc up into pieces. Each piece would perform and innovate the way Apple did before it became a titan. This is a classic case of a corporation which has extended itself too far under the same management and the cracks are showing. The iPhone has one competitor and fortunately for Apple Samsung does not have the foothold it probably should have in the US. I'm pretty sure most people reading this remember a time when Apple was thrilling to watch. Their products wowed us. The iPhone has become a product like the original iMac, stuck in a form factor for years on end and relying on new colors to distinguish the year's model from the last. Most of what Apple launches today is highly flawed and desperate to repeat another companies lead in that market. If it were not for it's "monopoly" iOS/iPhone products and services like Apple Music, Apple TV+ would have died on the vine. Speaking of vines, if you know anything about plants you know that pruning now and then keeps the plant healthy and producing a new crop. Apple it's time to prune back and make something sweet again.
The original iMac form factor was on sale for less than four years, from May, 1998 to January, 2001 when the flat panel ("daisy") design was introduced. That was replaced with the chunky, white all-in-one in August of 2004, and then the thick aluminum body in August, 2007. Thick aluminum body plus black bezel, if you consider that different, in October, 2009. Thin aluminum body in October, 2012 — only then did the design "stagnate" — if you don't include the introduction of the Retina 5K version in October, 2014 as innovation. I do, and I still happily use a 2017 iMac.
For most of those yers, the PC industry was still selling beige boxes; now, they have black boxes and some black all-in-ones.
What made Apple was that it did have a soul. A happy face even when you booted it up.
Now it’s a soulless insidious monster with insidious schemes And a single thought - moar profits at any cost.
How long can they milk their customers without feeding them anything inspired - now that the bean-counters run the ship. That’s the only real question.
Sorry to hear about your experience - it’s disheartening that a trillion dollar company won’t send you a stand for your $6000 display or give you reasonable tech support for your $10,000 computer.
Reminiscent of the ‘Derelict‘ show in Zoolander - monitor leaning against a wall and a busted Mac...
Comments
”Get AppleCare for Enterprise now.
AppleCare for Enterprise is available in volume-based price tiers starting at 1000 and 5000 covered devices. Contact Apple, an Apple Authorized Reseller, or an Authorized Carrier Partner to receive a quote for AppleCare for Enterprise.”
So you are saying that the minimum cost for AppleCare for Enterprise is $25,000.
It’s important to know this. If I spent ~$15,000 on a MacPro set up, I would want the best AppleCare support & would not be using my nearest AppleStore to support that computer.
That being said, Apple should definitely have SOPs in place for it.
Honestly the last couple times I've had to call support I was unhappy with the experience. The agents were all very friendly, but getting to the right person took a long time and I spent hours dealing with them. One problem scenario is if you need a senior specialist -- I either have to wait on hold for 1-2 hours, or have them call me back within 3 biz days. Neither is a winning solution and there is not a call-back queue, you must choose. They failed to call me back within the 3 days and I had to start over again. This is a fail.
1) In the store, replace the OS. If symptoms persist, then...
2) Replace the motherboard or module.
This isn't a 14-step process like anything else is. It is literally, two steps.
Here in the UK you would have a very strong case.
I think that all stores should at least have one unit available to swop, in cases like this.
Even if the swap MP is not the same spec, at least the customer could get going again and repair/service would then be a lot more convenient.
I've had this experience as well. They need to train the level 1 specialists better and not always rely on a senior specialist to fix things. Perhaps they're overwhelmed because of this and cannot call back (kind of a bad excuse yes but still). It just seems like all the level 1 specialists are there for are the very easiest of things and if it gets past have you turned it off and back on again its well we need to connect to you a senior specialist to help resolve this.
This would be unacceptable for any of Apple's products, but it's particularly unacceptable for a machine that starts at $6000 and then climbs into the stratosphere. If they have to have a separate team for the Pro, that's fine, but it shouldn't be hard to access them and they should know what they're doing.
In the (distant) past, my family had always received GREAT service from Apple. My daughter had a MacBook that her infant daughter mostly destroyed by pushing the screen back and breaking the hinge. The machine worked, but the screen had to be supported. Apple said it wasn't worth fixing. But then the video card stopped working. So my daughter brought it in just to have the video card fixed. When she got the thing back, the entire thing was completely fixed and she called me up in tears because she thought she was going to be charged something like $1300. The actual charge? $0. It was like getting a brand new machine.
My son-in-law had a G4 tower. The power supply kept going for some reason. He said to Apple after the third time that if it happened again, he'd like the machine replaced. It did happen again. But by that time it had been replaced by the G5 tower. That's what Apple gave him. Fantastic.
There were a few other incidences like that, but I no longer remember the details. But it gave such good feelings of support, it made one feel that they'd be an Apple customer for life. But I don't think any of those things would happen today.
I have a late 2016 MacBook Pro. The battery needs replacement. Apple wants $450. I think that's ridiculous. I hate Windows, but this just might be my last Mac. I can't stand the fact that I can't replace the battery, storage or memory like I could in my previous MBP (late 2008). And Apple has gotten really sloppy with OS updates that break things for no apparent reason. That never used to happen in the past. In the past, I could always say, "it just worked".
Probably in late 2001, I had cable installed along with a cable modem. I remember that we plugged the internet cable into the Mac, I went to the appropriate configuration screen, clicked one button and everything worked. The installer said, "no, it won't work yet -- I have to do X, Y, Z". I said, "Look, it's working". He said, "Holy crap, I'm buying a Mac!" Today it's not so easy. I constantly have to unplug and plug back in USB-A cable that are on adapters or even USB-C cables that have USB-A on the other end. These are the kinds of things that Apple used to do really well. I don't know what's going on at Apple, but what I picture in my mind is a bunch of unsupervised developers.
Mmm. I originally got into Macs because my wife was a designer when I met her, and she used an iBook (2002 ish). I played with it from time to time. It was nicely made, with care and attention to detail. OS 9 was not my favourite though. When we came back to Japan, I found the box of her iBook, and in the box was non other than an OSX sample disk. Well, I just had to give that a go. I was hooked from that point on. It was a different beast, and started me down the Apple road... First I bought a G5 iMac, which was sorely under powered. While a nice machine, I was disappointed when I realised how slow it actually was in terms of cost performance. I had believed all of Apple's marketing (do any of you remember their 2005 website? How amazing and forward thinking the Power PC was?
I was still using a windows box at the office, but kept looking at Apple's laptops. I really liked the keyboards on the Power Macs. When the first Intel MacBook Pro came out in 2006, I snapped one right up. it was, shall we say, magic. The Mac had soul. I never felt tired using that machine. The keyboard was the most comfortable keyboard I had (and have had) on any laptop. The only problem it ever really had was the battery expanding (2008?). I took it to the Mac Store in Ginza, spoke to a Genius, in English no less, and they replaced the battery free of charge. I could not believe it. Just wow! (unfortunately the replacement did the same thing after about two years). I still have the machine, and fire it up from time to time just for kicks. The screen colours have shifted a lot, but fortunately using a colour calibrator it can be sorted out.
My 2013 MacBook is still my daily driver. It too had a battery expansion episode about two years ago. Apple replaced it (along with the keyboard as they do) for a reasonably low fee, and service was quick and friendly. No real complaints there. I do find the Apple store increasingly difficult to navigate though - where can I pay for this? Look for someone, who then points you to someone else, who then tells you to stand 'here' and then eventually someone comes along with their portable payment processor (I know that's not the right term, I forget). Years ago almost anyone could process the payment. It felt like a breeze of fresh air. Not like now.
Bought a Mac Pro in 2009, and flashed it with 2010 firmware to install a 6 core 3.2GHz XEON which was quite a bit faster. Considering it was identical hardware, I felt a bit annoyed that I had trick the Pro into updating itself.
I think this is the point around when I began to have doubts about Apple. There was just a feeling that things were not quite as they should be. That did not stop me buying a 2010, 2013 and 2018 MacBook Pro, various iPads and every second iPhone (I've got to the point now I do not want to change my phone for at least 6 years - we'll just have to see if I can get the carrier to give me a decent rate).
Increasingly though there is something amiss. I know Apple has no soul, it never really did (well, perhaps in its infancy it did), it's just a massive massive corporation. But, Apple's products used to have a certain warmth to them, soul even. They were personable. Things feel more and more sterile now. It's the only term I can think of that succinctly paints a picture of how Apple seem to be becoming. The joy of simply using a computer to get things done with efficiency and without fuss, with a little elegance and finesse is slowly being strangled to death.
Is the Apple of old really gone?
PS Yes, prices have certainly sky rocketed, even adjusted for inflation they make little sense. Then again, as this topic was about service, and specifically the new Mac Pro - I am still confounded as to why Apple put silly overpriced Intel parts into a machine when AMDs CPUs (which I am absolutely quite sure they had sample copies of early on - there is code in OSX specific to AMD CPUs after all) completely destroy Intel's CPUs. It is, how shall I put it, not logically clear or understandable. I've looked into this at depth, and I cannot find a real reason, other than perhaps some corporate agreement.
This is just ludicrous. No computer tech should EVER think this is remotely possible. Would they try that with an iMac Pro? It’s utterly inexcusable that this is the level of tech comprehension on offer at an Apple “Genius” support desk. That’s not a tech “genius”. It’s a person with very little actual practical understanding of computers outside the scripts they memorized to get a job at an Apple Store. It’s offensively bad on the part of Apple Store management. Not only does it make Apple look bad, it puts an otherwise well-meaning employee in the crosshairs of pissed-off customers.
Do they really want $450? Wow. My 2013 MBP had a battery replacement around a year or so ago, well out of Apple care, and it cost around ¥20,000 which at the time was very roughly $200.
I very much feel your 'it just worked' sentiment. For me, the very simple reason for buying a Mac (after becoming enamoured with Macs in the beginning) came down to - I open it, I do work, I close it. Not: I open it, there's an update installing and the battery is about to die, or, something has crashed and is not working, or this software is no longer bla bla bla, please reinstall, or, I'm about to do a presentation, pop up pop up bla bla has just installed (way to go Microsoft) etc. (all our business computers are Windows based, I've seen it all, lived it all, if Windows disappeared I would not shed a tear). I'm the only one that uses a Mac every day (I paid for it). That said, Windows is OK just not trustworthy. If you want your workers to be able to just get work done, I don't see why anyone would actually WANT their staff to use it.
The Linux crowd has been hollering for decades that Linux is here. It still isn't, but it sure is getting close. Try Manjaro Linux, their install comes with a decent office suite that you would normally have to pay for (not Open office, something else which appears to be a lot better) and with various skins and other things, you can actually get pretty close to OSX now. Am I allowed to mention this kind of thing on an Apple forum? Not sure. I can explain further if you want.
Developers - I am one myself, though I don't write software specifically for Macs. I have a lot of other roles, and am stretched a bit, but do what I can. Writing code can be like going down a rabbit hole (Alice in Wonderland style). You come up for air every couple of weeks, and see what's happening in the world, and then you dive back in. Your mind is full of code, remembering where everything is in the current software you are working on. Can't tell you what I did the other day, or what I had for lunch, but I can tell you where anything is in a system. That's how bad it can get as a developer when you have to work work work. When you switch projects, or work on something else (like building a physical server, install fiber networks or some other such slightly more rewarding less etherial work) you start remembering what you did yesterday, or what you had for breakfast. I don't doubt the developers at Apple are forever down that Rabbit hole, probably being constantly whipped into getting this or that done by their supervisors. This not done yet? Never mind, we will pass that on to the other team. We want you to focus on this instead... meanwhile the other team probably have a similar situation, never quite get to the thing that was not properly finished - and if they ever do, they don't really know where everything is like the original developer. While you certainly can learn where everything is, it takes significant time (especially if you are unfamiliar with it) reading through code is almost like slowly loading the software into your own brain, eventually you get to a point where you can just work, and not have to think where is this or where is that. But it occupies real space, so other things have to take a back seat.
I doubt the developers are unsupervised, but I do think that OSX is getting ever bigger and bigger. It is UNIX, but sometimes does not seem to fully follow the UNIX philosophy (which in essence, and slightly simplified is: each component is small, has one main role, and does that role exceptionally well; can be interconnected with other components which can then together perform some useful function). Instead, things are getting large, and complicated, and services are often overlapping (more than one thing can do the same thing). Apple seems more and more intent on locking hardware down (you can no longer remove a drive from one broken computer, put it in a functioning one and carry on, as one example. That's not terribly useful. More and more things are becoming like this) and to that end seem focused on other things, rather than, how can we help people get things done.
Sorry to hear about your experience - it’s disheartening that a trillion dollar company won’t send you a stand for your $6000 display or give you reasonable tech support for your $10,000 computer.