Why I'm Ditching Apple Products
Claire Taylor
Co-founder The Story Mill. Business storytelling for communications that move people to make decisions and take action
I’ve been a huge fan of Apple products for some years now. I got the full set – Mac Book Air, the iPhone, the iPad and before that, the iPod.
These products are beautifully designed and fun to use.
But I’m switching to a PC. Honestly, I'm heartbroken. And, here’s why.
Apple makes amazing products. But Apple is product orientated - not customer orientated.
Failing to be customer orientated these days is short-sighted because customers create the brand story.
What does Apple's lack of customer focus look like?
Everything is dandy with your Apple products until something goes wrong.
When things don't work you're in trouble because Apple runs its service in a 'computer says no' fashion. They drive you nuts - well they did me. You feel like you're being stonewalled with bricks of CAN'T.
Here’s my experience;
My lovely Mac Book Air is almost four years old. Around Christmas, it started losing power extraordinarily quickly so it has to be plugged in all the time. A click on the battery condition icon flagged that it was exhausted and needed to be replaced now.
Mac Book Air's are sealed units so you can't just order a battery and pop it in yourself. But Apple will replace your battery at one of the ingenious Genius Bars. It’s not cheap but batteries die and for around ￡120 they’ll get your Mac Book Air all juiced up again.
I’m fine with that.
I called Apple and the person I spoke with made an appointment for me at the nearest Apple store. Off we go to get the battery replaced. Tra-la-la.
The genius at the Genius Bar runs full diagnostics on the laptop (takes a while - tap, tap, tap). Then he sucks in his lips and declares – the battery needs to be replaced.
No s**t Sherlock – I’m thinking.
But, great news! There’s a Mac Book Air battery in the store. My eyes light up.
Ah no! Too soon.
Genius can’t replace the battery today. Heart-sink moment.
He needs the laptop for several days.
Seriously? How hard can it be to replace a battery?
Like most folk, I work on my laptop all the time so I decide to book it in later - when I have a break from work and can let it go for a few of days.
A month later and I’m taking a few days away so it’s the perfect time to let Apple have the laptop to replace the battery.
I call Apple and get through to technical support who, despite me quoting the repair number, ask lots of inane questions. Eventually, I ask to be put through to the store.
That’s not an automatic thing like you'd expect. I’m left hanging on the phone (tap, tap, tap) while she gets permission to transfer my call.
Thankfully, at last, I’m put through to the store. I give the reference number and ask to make an appointment.
Oh no – we CAN’T just order a battery and make an appointment, I’m told.
"As it's been over a month since we saw your laptop, you have to come into the store so we can run all the diagnostics again. Then, we'll order the battery and make another appointment for you to leave your laptop for several days to have the battery replaced. "
"Why more diagnostics?" I ask.
"You did the diagnostics a month ago. What else do you think has gone wrong with the laptop in a month? The battery indicator is still saying replace now and nothing else has changed."
There’s no logic to what I’m hearing or if there is, it’s not being articulated. "We CAN’T," is all I'm told. Sounds like computer says no.
Naturally, I assume that the young lad that I’m speaking with is new and untrained. We might need to go to a higher authority to find sense, so I ask for a store manager.
Another chap comes on the line and declares he’s a manager.
His spiel is exactly the same as the first. I can't believe what I'm hearing.
Customer service is the last thing on his mind.
Sticking with a moronic process that seems ridiculously unnecessary and wastes everyone's time is paramount.
Needless to say, I got no joy. Without engaging in Apple's charade they won't replace the battery.
Later we email the business manager for the store and he offers us a flicker of sense.
Our hopes are quenched almost immediately.
He comes back to say - they're right!
We have to go through the nonsensical rigmarole of diagnostics again.
Are these robots I wonder? All programmed to spew out the same story?
When it comes to service - the staff seem to be stuck inside a box and not allowed to use their common sense. They've been trained to focus on cookie-cutter processes no matter how silly rather than listening, empathising and making sensible decisions.
Is their intransigence a ploy to get me back into the store so that I get seduced by a shiny new laptop and buy one there and then?
Showing they care would be much more enticing.
So I've decided, it's time for a new laptop and to explore the latest PCs.
Believe me, I was seriously p**sed.
Afterwards, I had an aha moment.
Apple is product orientated.
Style and process are more important to them than happy customers. The people I spoke with in the store had minimal concern for finding a way to fix my problem with the least hassle.
Like most people, I haven’t got time to waste on another unnecessary diagnostic trip to the Apple store and two further trips to leave the laptop and then collect it. Who does?
Apple has become arrogant and that's never a good sign. Brand arrogance is a form of complacency.
As consumers, we have the power to share our stories and vote with our feet.
For any company that thinks they’re creating their brand story through an advert or a marketing brochure – that’s a myth.
A brand story only starts with adverts and brochures. A brand's story is being created and shaped all the time by the experiences that customers have with the products and services and the people they tell about them.
So that's my story and it's why I'm ditching Apple products.
I'd love to hear about your experiences with Apple and any recommendations on a great PC product that offers the lightness and power of the Mac Book Air? I'm sure there are plenty.
If you held on for the ride and got to here - thank you. Please COMMENT and SHARE on LINKEDIN, FACEBOOK & TWITTER.
About the Author:
Claire Taylor is a co-founder of The Story Mill and author of The Tao of Storytelling.
About The Story Mill:
At The Story Mill, we believe that every business problem can be resolved by connecting people. We help organisations to build better chemistry, be that in leadership, within teams or selling to your customers. We work with live, written, visual and video storytelling.
Download your copy of The 12 Secrets to Influencing With Story you can do that here now.
All images from Shutterstock
Engineer Electronics
7 年I have had a number of hardware issues with my units all built between 2011 and 2014, however these are not quality issues. I am generally very impressed with the build standard, the robustness of the units and reliability. The problems I have had are more to how hard I push these units. The customer support has been totally inadequate and I have wasted a lot of time explaining the problems to them sending machines away and having appointments at Apple Stores. I find their staff very impersonal just like androids, maybe their working for the wrong firm. All giving you the stock company answer. I believe Apple isn't really interested in its professional computer customer anymore as it constitutes such a small part of their business now compared to social and fashion users of their mobile devices. Have you noticed, rather like how game software gets fixed quickly as the word spreads quickly so does Apple's mobile device issues. Have you ever had anything fixed from an OSx bug report! The thing that annoys me is that we professional users practically saved Apple from extinction in the 1990s. I haven't bought a new model Apple computer since the Retina model MBPs were released as they don't have the connectivity I need and you can't up grade them. I have bought Apple refurbished Uni-body MBPs and Mac Minis as I can have the hard drives and RAM upgraded. On a bench test my oldest working machine is MBP 8.1 (2011) with 16Gb of RAM and dual rotatory and SSD Harddrive out performers even the newest MBP for the same outlay. However the thing that has made my mind up is Apple Store not willing to even look at my oldest machine as they said the hardware is no longer supported, but the problem is with the SMC (System Management Controller) firmware. Here's the problem. Since buying my last refurbished MBP 9.1 I noticed it was running hot and the automatic fan control wasn't speeding fan up to compensate. It got so hot the case was almost too hot to handle. I turned it off and got another machine and did some searching around on the inter web. There was a lot of reports of recent fan problems but seemed to be mainly on new Retina units. I made some enquiries with Apple Customer Support, but they denied any reported issues even existed with the afore mentioned models. Made some suggestions none of which had any affect. I found some useful apps to show the temperature and adjust the fan speeds, see smcFanControl and CPU LED. Over the next few weeks I found this problem started to spread to all my other machines, and what ever I did I couldn't get it to work even after reloading machines as new with basic functions and software installed or a complete older Time Machine reinstall. Making further contact with Apple Customer Support I explained what I had done and they finally suggested I take one of the affected machines to a store next time I was near one and they were run a full systems report. Eventually I found myself working in Bristol so having ordered some Apple items I needed for the client I went to the store where they refused even to look at it. I had a newer machine back at work that is still under warrantee with same problem but whilst driving back it became apparent what's going on. If you read Apple's latest news in particular on the iMAC Pro they make a big thing of their cooling algorithm, well what's the quickest way to kill off older MBP, make them run hot. Being an electronic engineer I know only to well the relationship between MTBF (Mean Time Between Failure) and ambient or running temperature. Well if you can remove the feedback between the sensors and fan speed drive then this will considerably reduce the life of the components the fans were designed to cool. As this link is in the SMC code then next time there was an upgrade then slip it in. Not very nice and very difficult to prove, why it didn't occur to me before I don't know as I've been in meetings where certain persons have complained that equipment is lasting too long in the field. They have requesting if builtin obsolesce can be designed in such as 'x' thousand button presses before bits of functions stop working. To check I found a friend that hadn't up dated his MBP for a long time due to the age of his design software and feared it wouldn't work on newer OSx. We got some heavy processing going and the auto fan control did work, but it did allow it to get quite a lot hotter than I expected. He did say that he had noticed recently that the machine at times did seem to run slow, which I also found on my machines would indicate the internal temperature was getting too high, but at least his auto fan control did work and once it was running did regulate around 50oC. I loaded both smcFanControl and CPU LED on to his machine, after turning the whole unit off to cool down I restarted the test. This time I set the smcFanControl speed above the machines bootup speed and as the temperature rose the Mac's own auto fan speed control took over and this is what I was looking for, to see if the added app had interfered with the MBP own control. Obviously not! The owner is very please as he now finds the machine doesn't slow down and he can push it hard with conference. Hope this has been useful. One last tip, if you are having problems with hardware that is out of warrantee or wish to make some upgrades. Tty MacUpgrades (nee Second Chance PCs) near Cambridge. They do a lot of repairs for the Sanger Centre near by where they decode the human genome and are nearly exclusively Apple users. I have used them and find they are very helpful as well as being polite, a contrast from the aforementioned Genius Bar staff. As a hardware and firmware designer I do like Apples hardware especially prior to the Retina devices, I run several Windows operating systems within a Virtual Machine on my Macs as some of the test and control software is only available for DOS. I find some things easier to do in Windows so Apple does have it faults. Surely with such a good hardware platform there must be a group of developers out there that could reuse old Mac Laptops to run under straight UNIX, LINUX or and open source OSx???????? Good Luck, Ashley Kool
Living and breathing EduTech
7 年Apple employees are trained not to say "can't" and there is no better service available for repairs than going to the store to get it fixed by the company that manufactures them. Even though the service is better than any other computer manafacturer already, high-demand business customers can buy a "joint venture membership" which means front of the queue, no appointment necessary for the Genius Bar, and a replacement laptop while yours is being repaired. Apple is absolutely customer focused and you'll never find a more valuable employee than someone who has spent time working for Apple.
Agree with JD on this one, that's really the key question. For me, having a suite of apple products makes my life easier and quick to produce a whole range of media. However that's due to the type of work I do, so it's on a case by case basis. As for service, my experience at the Apple Store in Bristol cribbs has been one the key reasons I have stuck with apple rather than leave despite the temptation when it comes to price! Before getting my first MacBook i had a Sony vaio that would omit fairly serious shocks. I was told it was a known problem but didn't present a serious danger so I just had to put up with it. I've had my latest MacBook for 3 years and it still boots up like it's fresh out the box. I've never managed to get a pc to get through 2 years before the inevitable slow down. So i'm afraid until there's a real contender, I'm staying put but if anyone can share a story of a great alternative set up, that would be great to hear.
Author: The Modern Learning Ecosystem | CLO | Technologist | Keynote Speaker | Advisor | Ex-Disney | Enabling the Frontline Workforce
7 年But which type of device best helps you get your work done?
Author | Designer | Speaker | Social Design | Learning | Strategy | Program & Project Management
7 年Heh. Dell tech had to come to my house 3x before they finally gave up and replaced the hard drive on my work laptop... what we told them was needed from the start.