The art of business vs. the business of art
Submitted by doc on Tue, 10/17/2006 - 15:08.
Yesterday I heard from an Apple enterprise customer who had recently bought 80 Macbooks. Ten of them, so far, have had to bo back for heat, shut-down or freezing problems. This customer wondered if they were taking a risk buying another 300 of the things. I told them they clearly were, and suggested holding off on the purchase — since, far as I know, Apple has not acknowledged the problem or dealt with it in a serious way.
Gotta say I'm amazed at Apple's persistent silence on this issue. The company has worked very hard, ever since Steve Jobs' return, to build a reputation for good technical support. (While Consumer Reports forbids quoting any of their editorial, I encourage people to look at what the magazine says about Apple vs. everybody else — and to draw their own conclusions.)
So why is Apple sitting on a problem that will surely launch the company's ass when it finally blows up in the mainstream media? (Which it surely will.)
Could be they haven't figured out the problem. The fact that they're still apparently shipping lemons suggests that might be the case. (Though it's hard to believe they don't have teams of engineers banging on this.)*
Could be be their legal team (or Steve) is saying its better to stay quiet and address the issue on a case-by-case basis. Clearly that's how they're addessing it; but just as clearly it's stripping their gears.
Or it could be that, deep down, Apple doesn't care much about its customers. (Logic: We make art. You appreciate and buy our art. But you don't tell us how to make our art.) In fact, I've long believed that's been part of the company's personality.
But still, what's going on right now is real bad for business. How many MacBooks aren't selling now because one in eight existing customers hates what's been happening to them?
There's only one reasonable solution, once Apple licks the technical problem: a full-scale trade-in of lemons for working machines. Anything less will fail to restore a full measure of good will.
Meanwhile, for customers who aren't locked into the Apple equipment replacement mill, I highly advise looking at the growing number of alternatives in the Linux laptop space. Your-choice-of-OS on your-choice-of-hardware is the winning free market answer in the long run. If you're in a position to make that long run shorter, give it a try. Give your IT folks a budget for testing any number of Linux distros on a variety of hardware combinations. See what works. Whatever it is, I guarantee it'll be cheap than what Apple will sell you. And you have a better chance of getting help from anywhere and everywhere — than from a single source that could (and sometimes will) let you down.
* Note: a comment below says they've addressed the issue here.
London
When they gonna stop blow everything?
London
When they gonna stop blow everything?
Subject
Sometimes
Sometimes I can't understand...
I've got it
I've got it!
Bullshit
Sorry but you are discussing bullshit
But other said
But other said that the judgement induces common sense, tertium non datur
As one clever
As one clever person said the judgement transforms tragical hedonism.
Interesting
Interesting opinion. But IMHO it's just an opinion.
My experience
I have great experience in that. So I can understand...
Anyway
Anyway I think that the author is right.
No comments
Are you sure? You must be joking. I can't believe in that
I'm so sorry
I'm so sorry. Post that you have deleted was mine.
I love the way you write
I love the way you write. It's no wonder you have so many people reading your blog.
Re:
Don't pay any attention at these stupid people.
Re: De-ja-vu
U must be reading my mind! :) I also saw somewhere this text.
Apple Technical Support
Now I have a lowered opinion of Consumer Reports too (it wasn't all that high in the first place). The fact that they don't accept ads doesn't mean that the authors of the reports don't have personal biases and I've noted that those biases often shine through the surface objectivity. If you happen to own a car or a blender that they've given top rating to it does help you feel good about yourself though.
My previous two laptops were a Compaq and an Apple iBook (before the switch to Intel). Both had problems. The Compaq at the very end of the year warranty developed a flaky display. After about five minutes on the phone Compaq had a postage-paid return box speeding my way and the machine was fixed and back to me in under a week (with my original hard drive materials intact even though I had done a backup).
My iBook started acting up right away, and after the "Genius Bar" shrugged its shoulders I turned to the Apple forums where I found others with similar problems, all being ignored. You had to be careful what you said in there though as very negative posts just got deleted. I read current threads on the overheating problems with that knowledge of that censorship in mind.
In my case I think a class action lawsuit was in the works when Apple suddenly issued a recall on the iBook even though they were well out of warranty. Mine came back with everything but the case and screen replaced. It has worked fine since, but I switched to Linux and found that it does routine web browsing and file editing tasks with the same snappiness that you would have to have one of the last Powerbooks, or the current Intel boxes to match running OS X.
Even though the company didn't deserve it, I got a newer Powerbook after my bad experience and haven't had any troubles with it. They are great machines when they "just work". I decided not to follow Apple into the land of Intel boxes though. I consider Intel a step down from the PowerPC (benchmarks aren't everything as Apple used to realize) and I'm seriously thinking about making the upcoming PS3 my next Linux box. There is something about running the same hardware as used in huge supercomputer clusters that appeals to me.
When the Powerbook wears out I'll consider what to replace it with, but I was surprised to see an ad from Sam's club for a $700 dual processor AMD 64-bit machine complete with a gig of memory. Why anyone would need more than this for a laptop I can't imagine. Maybe there will even be another PowerPC laptop vendor by the time I need one, and I really don't care whether the machine wins a beauty contest or not.
Apple Customer Support
My daughter and I have had legendarily bad experience with the tech support in the Apple Store. Finally I blogged about it,(http://blog.stealthmode.com)and someone must have seen it, because the next time we went to the Burlingame Apple Store they treated us like royalty. It's a real bummer that you have to prod people so hard to give ordinary customer support.
Don't think someone read your blog
You state "I have had legendarily bad experience with the tech support in the Apple Store" is a bunch of baloney. First off, there is very little "legendary" about anyone's service other than what my Mac's Dictionary states and is most appropriate to your comment: "legend-a traditional story sometimes popularly regarded as historical but unauthenticated". Pretty accurate to your story. And to your blog, probably NO one read your blog and to think someone responded to your blog where there are tons of them out there and you get treated "like royalty" is no different. Please, get over yourself and act like an adult instead of a whiny child. Besides, when was the last time your walked into a store to tell the clerk/manager/technical support of the great job that they did on the problem you created and they fixed it for free? Oh, that's right, you paid for it with your money and you didn't even read the Help files. Now the real question: where do you work? May I come to see if you would treat ME any different with a similar problem? Hmm? The last comment, I heard someone state it interestingly: would you work for you? or in this case, would you complain to yourself?
I have heard complaints
I have heard complaints about unresolved product failures in some of their other products. For one product, customers were talking about suing over the easy scratability, they said apple knew about it and shipped anyway. I need my products to work, so this company policy put me off apple products.
Apples or Lemons?
I have to say if I'd bought 80 units and had a failure rate of 1 in 8 I'd be working my way up the Apple hierarchy looking for a resolution pronto.
Using this case as an indicator of bigger problems isn't really valid, is it? You'd have to know how many Macbooks had been sold worldwide to see if this is a material problem. According to Apple a definable number of units were incorrectly assembled and they are dealing with them on a case by case basis. I'm lead to believe that in most cases the units are being replaced. If it were a recurring problem - in the case cited by you 8 units - and of the 8 replacements another failed for the same reason as the others, then this would be a cause for concern.
Apple's policy is essenially of doing rather more than they need to - there are many reports of Apple goods being replaced even when out of warranty, although I've yet to experience this problem in more than 10 years of purchasing and using Apple equipment. if you stand close to the trees the problems look big, standing further away adds perspective.
Macbook Pro
We've become a Mac house and have generally had success with all our older stuff including the PowerBooks. However we bought a Pro model to get the Intel option and have had many problems with the machine. We're small so had to visit the Apple store in Newton, MA where they send the machine away for repairs. We got it back with a erased disk (they neglected to let us know they would be erasing our data) and the same freezing and performance problems.
The machine is a little memory lean so we are going to bump it up to 1GB and see if that helps. Overall I'd have to say the Apple support experience was poor. It compares well to DHell but what doesn't!
Linux-based Laptops
My company specializes in laptops which run Linux. We pick the hardware, then fine-tune the major distributions to support it well.
The last time I checked, we haven't had any laptop overheating problems, and we certainly care about supporting our customers.
To avoid being overt blog spam, I won't include links to our website, unless it's OK with Doc. (I'll check back here later today for a yes/no)
-Travis Reitter
Power of the Penguin
Please drop me a line about your Linux laptops too:
johnDOTsealsATgmailDOTcom
I was a Mac guy from the early days. Finally by the late 90's I switched to Windows and Linux.
But now I was going to buy a new Macbook Pro. Went so far as to get an Apple Credit card for the 90 days same as cash deal. Started reading about the overheating issues and I backed out. I just cancelled the card too. Apple has lost at least one sale because of this.
I'd love to switch back to Apple but they gotta show me more than this.
Linux laptops
Love to hear more about what you're up to (unless you're who I think you might be, in which case I have one of your ThinkPads :-) ).
Write me at doc AT searls.com.
Thanks!
They Did Acknowledge the Problem
In fact there's a knowledge base article on it.
September 1 article
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=304308
Re: "contempt" for customers
Your previous writings citing Apple's "contempt" for customers raise an interesting point.
First, as to the current issue, I think that probably a combination of a) haven't quite figured it out and b) legal team are responsible. Every time there is a problem, Apple is slow to respond. When they do finally get around to it, they usually do a good job of rectifying it.
Conclusion: I'm not saying they do or don't care about their customer's needs. I'm just saying they have a frustratingly slow (to customers, anyway) methodology for fixing production issues. Having been on the receiving end of a production issue with the original eMac about 6 years ago, I've been through it myself. Frankly, it wasn't difficult to do a little online research, educate myself to the common thinking about the problem, and then take it to Apple (with knowledge in hand) and get it rectified quickly.
As always, an educated consumer gets better treatment than an uneducated one. And as always (with ANY sophisticated product, computers to cars) - you probably shouldn't buy a first-off-the-production line unit unless you're prepared for the increased likelihood of a design flaw. Everyone knows that the last model year of a car is going to be much more reliable than the first model year - they've worked out all the bugs.
Regarding your previous article, though:
You cite Apple holding their customer's desires "in contempt" when working on new ideas and products.
Actually, I always viewed it as the opposite. Apple has an incredible knack for taking an IDEA, and then executing it in a way that they feel will be useful and desirable to customers. But this is accomplished through avoiding "design-by-focus group" - which accomplishes somethiing like the "Homer-mobile" from the Simpsons (or something like Windows): attempting to squeeze in every conceivable feature and desire of any small minority of customers and ending up with a Frankenstein-like assemblage. It moves, it may even walk, but it isn't going to be pretty or graceful or intelligent or well-liked.
In this way, Apple cuts to the heart of what MOST people NEED the product to do, and adds in some cool things that MOST people will find appealing. The rest stays on the cutting room floor, so to speak.
Often, this means that there are many layers of complexity and fine-tuning that some customers (especially power users like me or you) want, but cannot get. But even this is almost always achievable, whether through plug-ins, Applescripting, or third party utilities. But the fact is, for MOST users, the trade-off is superb.
And honestly, if you had asked 1,000 people in the middle of the year 2000 to design an MP3 player, and you took their suggestions and compiled the most popular results, they wouldn't add up to an iPod. Because MOST people aren't designers (like Jon Ive) or programmers or interface experts. They don't probably KNOW what they want until they see it.
Anyway, just another perspective on these things. Sorry for the wordiness!
- Blucaso
Types of customers
As one who has used Windows, Linux, and Mac for years, I still find Macs the easiest to use and fix. Regarding Apple customers, have you ever taken a poll of what types of customers come in the door? 80% of them are average and well groomed in manners and friendliness toward others, 10% are bitchy right off the bat and blame the company for mostly their problems, and the last 5% are down right jerks and nothing but bully kids as adults that want something for nothing. Oh, and BTW, when was the last time you had a lawyer looking over your shoulder while you were doing your job so they could find evidence to file a class action lawsuit against your company? Would you work at a place like this?
You state it correctly with most companies: Every time there is a problem, Apple is slow to respond. When they do finally get around to it, they usually do a good job of rectifying it.
Like I heard a mother once complain to an Apple store employee about her daughter's iPod and asked the Mac Specialist if there were more problems with iPods, not realizing that 3 problems out of 100 versus 300 out of 10,000 is more problems, but still only 3% defect rate.
The matter of contempt
FWIW, I have enormous respect for Apple in many of its exceptional respects. I regard Steve Jobs as a genius and I thank him every day for making the world, in many important ways, a better place.
That said, I do believe a flip side of Steve's artistic genius is a disregard (contempt may seem to strong a word, unless you're on the receiving end of it) for the common, the ordinary, the mass-markety (iPod successes withstanding). He and his crew love to make and sell exceptionally beautiful and usable and original stuff. But they're not exactly engaging. This is a highly glossy, branded, ivory-towerish company.
How many blogs by Apple employees are there? Given whatever the low number is, how conversational is that?
Note that I don't make these remarks critically. I'm being an observer here. And a respectful one.
I know many great artists and musicians who are equally unmoved by input from their audience, their customers, anybody other than their own genius, their own muses. This is not a Bad Thing. It's just a personality trait. And maybe, for the purpose of their art, a good one.
All that said, the MacBook lemon problem is not one Apple has addressed well.
Apple Consumers in Contempt
Instead of Apple being quick to release a product (since I've seen first-gen. Apple hardware fail time and time again), why don't they test their products for a longer period of time before selling them to the public? I'm sure their intent is good and on a business standpoint, they've got to meet their supply and demand. The point is, if first-gen. products are a reoccuring problem, why not fix it next time instead of at the expense, time, and energy of the consumer.
On another note, and I don't mean for this to be a copout, but what about Apple's college market (since we are talking about buying mass quantities of macbooks and schools will be doing just that)? Apple new there was a huge problem surfacing within their new line of macbooks as far back as July of 2006 (if you don't believe me, look at the thousands of posts within the Apple support discussions forums, then look at when they were posted). This is just a theory, and if I'm wrong then my upmost apologies to a wonderful company. But it seems to me that Apple knew about these problems yet continued to produce and sell macbooks even in August for their new college market getting ready for the fall semester.
What makes me angry are all those college kids out there that spent their last dime on a macbook. Most of these students hadn't even owned a mac before. Apple wanted to dominate their college market. On a business standpoint, they did just that. But what is so successful about stressing out the consumer that is helping your company thrive? So what should Apple have done? That's easy. They should have fixed the problem that the knew about before continuing to sell faulty machines. Eventually, these machines will be sent back to them to be fixed anyway. Why didn't they recall the notebooks to be fixed? I think it was because they didn't want to miss their newfound income. To me, that's a greedy way to run a business.
isn't greed
I don't think greed has anything to do with it.
Certainly they knew in July - they do watch the forums. But if you think it's easy to find a problem that's random in nature, then you've got another think coming.
There are at least three areas that one must examine when looking for the solution to a random problem. I've been in tech support for ten years, so I do have some experience here.
First, you've got third party software.
Second you've got your own software.
Third, you have hardware.
To compound the issue, you have no idea, going into your diagnostic regime, what causes the problem, you don't know how often it happens, and you don't know whether the machine you're testing is going to exhibit the problem.
As a desktop tech, I've just gotta find out what causes it, software or hardware, and if it's hardware, work with manufacturer tech support to isolate the failing part.
But Apple's problem here is more complex; they've gotta find the exact cause and eliminate it from the production line. Additionally, they have products to sell, and it wasn't a large number of units exhibiting the problem. So their solution of dealing with individual customers on a case by case basis is the right way to go. You don't want to just close off production based upon a small percentage of failed units.
Yes, it took too long for them to even acknowledge the issue. But this has always been Apple's response, and I don't see it changing soon. But once acknowledged, they usually fix things, often with outright replacements.
I do think your article was a bit on the hard side, especially since you didn't really look to see if the problem really had been acknowledged. That knowledge base article has been there for a while...