swineone

Mike Wuerthele said:

swineone said:

williamlondon said:

swineone said:

williamlondon said:

swineone said:

The average Apple tech is much less knowledgeable and skilled than quite a few independent technicianS. I would trust e.g. Louis Rossmann with my hardware over ANY Apple technician. I mean ANY. There is no technician working at Apple that could do their job as well as Louis does. BTW: I’m an electrical engineer, I design portable electronic devices, and I’ve spent quite a few hours watching Louis’ videos. He displays impressive skills. And often he has to fix a crap job done by, guess who, Apple technicians.

Bullshit. And if he wants to become a certified repair person, I'm fine with that, but your other claims are pure bullshit.

BTW, anecdotes prove nothing

Nice argument you put there, “bullshit”. I’m fully convinced by this one magical word.

Screw the actual facts, such as that Louis Rossmann quite often fixes Macs deemed unfixable by Apple. And especially, how he performs fixes much more cheaply (never mind environmentally friendly) than Apple by replacing the few targeted components that actually failed rather than whole boards at a time as the Apple technicians do — indeed, if his fixes weren’t cheaper than Apple’s, who would be crazy to hire him rather than Apple fix their devices?

Plus, he does all of these things without proper access to repair documentation and knowledge bases, and most importantly, to the parts he needs. For those who don’t know: Apple has the awful habit of calling up an IC manufacturer and throwing their weight around to require the manufacturer to create a small variation of an existing part, with a trivial and technically unnecessary change such as swapping a couple of pins around. Then Apple won’t let the manufacturer sell the same part to anyone else but Apple or provide documentation on it. Thus, repair technicians can’t get ahold of it, and must take these parts from donor boards. This is simply the most actively user-hostile move by a company that I’ve ever seen in my life. It truly sickens me every time I think of it, especially when you consider all the (lying) marketing strategy from Apple trying to paint it as a nice, friendly company that just wants to help its customers and the environment. This one example brings all that illusion down.

Anecdotes, like exceptions, prove nothing. One man is NOT better than *ANY* Apple technician. Your argument is so ridiculous, just stop.

Really? It’s impossible for one person to be better than the best in a given set of persons?

Let’s try this. Skill = playing tennis. Set of persons = { me, my wife }. One person = Roger Federer.

Your argument is that Roger Federer can’t possibly be better than me or my wife at tennis.

Now who has the ridiculous argument again?

Like you said, repair parts that are swapped out in the field are sent to the depot for refurbishment and return to the repair part supply stream, sometimes to assist the refurbished device stream that I am about to discuss.

Entire-device swaps at the store-level are also sent to a depot for repair and assessment. Whole-devices repaired at the depot in this fashion are sent to the service swap stock, or the refurb store.

This depot refurbishment is done at the component level, by humans with equal or better skill than Rossmann's. Some will be slightly less talented, and some will be slightly more.

Don't get me wrong, I'm glad Rossmann and others like him exist. But to say that Apple doesn't have anybody in the service stream that has his level of skill is false.

I do admit the point about Rossmann was made to shock those who somehow think the lack of Apple certification is an automatic sign of incompetence (though I'm sure he'd rank quite highly within Apple if he worked there).

Getting back to the point, though. How can the end user access these technicians so they'll, like Rossmann does, fix a fried voltage regulator for a couple hundred dollars, rather than over a thousand as Apple charges for say a logic board repair?

We can't? We have to pay full price (with markup, most likely) for a logic board from Apple which they'll turn around, refurbish and resell with even more markup?

Say I took a GM car to GM, out of warranty, to fix an issue which ultimately can be ascribed to a worn-out spark plug. GM tells me "we'll have to perform a full engine swap, and by the way, that'll be $5,000, please." Then GM turns around, replaces the spark plug (at a cost of a few dozens of dollars) and resells the engine for say $4,000. An engine which by the way probably costs $2,000 or $3,000 to make. Outraged by this, you thank GM and take this to your friendly neighborhood mechanic, and they tell you "sorry. I know it's just a worn-out spark plug, which by the way is quite similar to model XYZ1337 from NGK, but GM called up NGK and told them to use an english-unit screw thread rather than a metric-unit one for no good reason, and have an agreement in place that NGK is forbidden to sell the english-unit version. Maybe you can look for an identical car in the junkyard so we can take the spark plug out of it?"

I'm the last person in the world to demand the government step in. However, I can't help but rejoice when I see Apple being forced to do the right thing, as in this situation and also the most likely break up of the App Store 30% monopoly.

williamlondon said:

swineone said:

williamlondon said:

swineone said:

The average Apple tech is much less knowledgeable and skilled than quite a few independent technicianS. I would trust e.g. Louis Rossmann with my hardware over ANY Apple technician. I mean ANY. There is no technician working at Apple that could do their job as well as Louis does. BTW: I’m an electrical engineer, I design portable electronic devices, and I’ve spent quite a few hours watching Louis’ videos. He displays impressive skills. And often he has to fix a crap job done by, guess who, Apple technicians.

Bullshit. And if he wants to become a certified repair person, I'm fine with that, but your other claims are pure bullshit.

BTW, anecdotes prove nothing

Nice argument you put there, “bullshit”. I’m fully convinced by this one magical word.

Screw the actual facts, such as that Louis Rossmann quite often fixes Macs deemed unfixable by Apple. And especially, how he performs fixes much more cheaply (never mind environmentally friendly) than Apple by replacing the few targeted components that actually failed rather than whole boards at a time as the Apple technicians do — indeed, if his fixes weren’t cheaper than Apple’s, who would be crazy to hire him rather than Apple fix their devices?

Plus, he does all of these things without proper access to repair documentation and knowledge bases, and most importantly, to the parts he needs. For those who don’t know: Apple has the awful habit of calling up an IC manufacturer and throwing their weight around to require the manufacturer to create a small variation of an existing part, with a trivial and technically unnecessary change such as swapping a couple of pins around. Then Apple won’t let the manufacturer sell the same part to anyone else but Apple or provide documentation on it. Thus, repair technicians can’t get ahold of it, and must take these parts from donor boards. This is simply the most actively user-hostile move by a company that I’ve ever seen in my life. It truly sickens me every time I think of it, especially when you consider all the (lying) marketing strategy from Apple trying to paint it as a nice, friendly company that just wants to help its customers and the environment. This one example brings all that illusion down.

Anecdotes, like exceptions, prove nothing. One man is NOT better than *ANY* Apple technician. Your argument is so ridiculous, just stop.

Really? It’s impossible for one person to be better than the best in a given set of persons?

Let’s try this. Skill = playing tennis. Set of persons = { me, my wife }. One person = Roger Federer.

Your argument is that Roger Federer can’t possibly be better than me or my wife at tennis.

Now who has the ridiculous argument again?

avon b7 said:

Beats said:

swineone said:

The average Apple tech is much less knowledgeable and skilled than quite a few independent technicianS. I would trust e.g. Louis Rossmann with my hardware over ANY Apple technician. I mean ANY. There is no technician working at Apple that could do their job as well as Louis does. BTW: I’m an electrical engineer, I design portable electronic devices, and I’ve spent quite a few hours watching Louis’ videos. He displays impressive skills. And often he has to fix a crap job done by, guess who, Apple technicians.

That man is an idiot. I wouldn’t let him touch any of my Apple devices.

Apple can at least take the blame if they fu** up. I’ve had Apple employees just hand me a refurbished device no questions asked when I’ve dropped my devices and broken them. Great customer service and no bashing original Apple products to promote some spyware cheap knockoff. 

What makes him an idiot? He is basing his opinion on experience and you can choose to agree or disagree with him but it's very hard to argue against what he's saying when he's giving you example after example of real world issues.

Your Apple employees offering you refurbished devices is ONLY in warranty. You'd probably sing a different tune if you presented the same cases out of warranty! 

Precisely. It’s so convenient for Apple that they’ll only perform full part swaps (say a top case, or the full display and enclosure, or the worst of all, the logic board). While it’s under warranty, great — if Apple wants to condemn a fully working logic board with one fried voltage regulator worth a few cents at their loss, fine by me. When it’s no longer under warranty, they’ll conveniently quote a price that’s worth as much as the computer itself on the second hand market, so the customer will just give up and conveniently buy a shiny new Mac.

Some people are easily bribed, as this shows, by some show of “great customer service” while under warranty — and by the way, that failed logic board of yours, do you think Apple just throws it in the trash? They’ll send it to an employee which will perform a component-level repair quite like what Louis does, and then sell it as refurbished. But they’ll sure charge the full cost of the replaced part out of warranty to you, even though they’ll fix your broken one and later resell it as refurbished.

Louis Rossmann will just do what’s nice and fair: charge you the actual cost of fixing the issue (and obviously his time to diagnose it, and supporting costs to keep his business alive — still much less than what Apple will charge you for a full part swap.)

williamlondon said:

swineone said:

The average Apple tech is much less knowledgeable and skilled than quite a few independent technicianS. I would trust e.g. Louis Rossmann with my hardware over ANY Apple technician. I mean ANY. There is no technician working at Apple that could do their job as well as Louis does. BTW: I’m an electrical engineer, I design portable electronic devices, and I’ve spent quite a few hours watching Louis’ videos. He displays impressive skills. And often he has to fix a crap job done by, guess who, Apple technicians.

Bullshit. And if he wants to become a certified repair person, I'm fine with that, but your other claims are pure bullshit.

BTW, anecdotes prove nothing

Nice argument you put there, “bullshit”. I’m fully convinced by this one magical word.

Screw the actual facts, such as that Louis Rossmann quite often fixes Macs deemed unfixable by Apple. And especially, how he performs fixes much more cheaply (never mind environmentally friendly) than Apple by replacing the few targeted components that actually failed rather than whole boards at a time as the Apple technicians do — indeed, if his fixes weren’t cheaper than Apple’s, who would be crazy to hire him rather than Apple fix their devices?

Plus, he does all of these things without proper access to repair documentation and knowledge bases, and most importantly, to the parts he needs. For those who don’t know: Apple has the awful habit of calling up an IC manufacturer and throwing their weight around to require the manufacturer to create a small variation of an existing part, with a trivial and technically unnecessary change such as swapping a couple of pins around. Then Apple won’t let the manufacturer sell the same part to anyone else but Apple or provide documentation on it. Thus, repair technicians can’t get ahold of it, and must take these parts from donor boards. This is simply the most actively user-hostile move by a company that I’ve ever seen in my life. It truly sickens me every time I think of it, especially when you consider all the (lying) marketing strategy from Apple trying to paint it as a nice, friendly company that just wants to help its customers and the environment. This one example brings all that illusion down.

sflocal said:

MplsP said:

OMG! We'd better stay out of New York - all the phones are going to start exploding because of dangerous repairs! /s

No... what will happen is those sketchy repair shops using crappy batteries for iPhones end up exploding, and then everyone blaming Apple.  That's what will happen.

Right, like they don’t do that already. If Apple was really worried about the safety of its users, it would sell genuine batteries to their party techs, knowing that people would go to these techs regardless. But since Apple only cares about the bottom line, they’re fighting this. And look, they really should worry about the bottom line, that’s the point of s company. Just don’t be such hypocrites about it. Apple only cares about you as much as they can shake cash out of you. Sorry, that’s the truth, regardless of the touchy-feels rehearsed to death lines you see on keynotes,