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Yes, it is the software. But it's also the hardware. I like that my MacBook has a nice look, and only the ports that matter. I see PC computers all the time, NEW ONES, that still have PS/2 ports and Serial ports and Parallel ports. An overabundance of ports that most people won't need. Not that everyone won't need them, but this is the 21st century. It took long enough to convince them to dump floppies.

My MacBook has nice clean lines, sleek, doesn't have a hundred blinking blue LED's right in the field of vision like my Dad's tablet that would distract the hell out of me, and as little buttons as needed. Even the BOTTOM of the unit is amazingly clean.

Comparing my dad's PC laptop, and others I've seen, to any Mac laptop made in the last 10 years, it's like a world of difference. The bottom of my MacBook (The white kind) has four nice rubber feet, three screws in a triangle, nice looking grey copyright information, a hardly noticable button and array of LED's for the battery and a flush with the case latch for the battery.

Hell, even the bottom and hidden sides of Apple's desktops are clean. Even though nobody looks there. And the insides. The Mac Pro's are amazingly organized.

Couple a clean hardware interface with a clean software interface and it makes me happy to be a Mac user for 9 years now.

Art743 wrote:

Random User wrote:

Wow. First post on the forums and it is a completely disparaging one.

Can't say I don't agree on several of your points but still.

Anyways, welcome to the forums!

But still what?

He is right. I have been caught several times, and have posted several times with no supportive response. maybe Apple would listen if they thought we took ourselves seriously.... No, probably not.

I've said it before, and I'll say it here again. I love my Mac, but I hate (and I really mean HATE) the way Apple treats us as customers. And this includes the Mac stores, where everyone is condescendingly nice, as long as you act the way they want. (A waiting appointment list for a "Genius Bar" where there is no one being served? etc, etc.) Maybe I am sensitive because I was an independent very high end electronics retailer for almost 30 years.

All ranting aside, why can't apple have the courtesy to put some obvious features we want in the system, or at least respond to questions?

An edit to put it another way. My Mac (probably because I have a Pro) is a pleasure, and does most of what i want. But the discovery as a mac owner of the relationship between Apple and the mac community has been a crushing disappointment.

At some point, you have start to wonder, Art, if you are just sensitive to something they are doing.  Because the rest of the world is quite thrilled with Apple customer service.  This has been the case for years, in nearly every publication that reports on these things:

Apple is ranked No. 18 on BusinessWeek's The Customer Service Elite, but led the PC industry in customer satisfaction in part to due to the service offered at the company's Genius Bars.

Bat - prove this is about Kool-Aid and not reality:  post some links of Apple doing as bad as claimed by Art in customer satisfaction surveys.

Good luck.

PS - Apple ranked #21 on BW's 2008 list.  Don't believe 2009 is out yet.  Weird - they don't seem to be dropping like a rock, if I believe all of your and Art's bs.

Last edited by Kool-Aid Guzzler (2009-03-15 8:30 am)

Pariah wrote:

Given the amount the "Apple Tax" has grown to I would expect nothing short of absolutely superb customer service.

I expect that, as well as superb products.

Kool-Aid Guzzler wrote:

Pariah wrote:

Given the amount the "Apple Tax" has grown to I would expect nothing short of absolutely superb customer service.

I expect that, as well as superb products.

Ya, but that ship set sail quite awhile ago.

robco wrote:

In defense of tech support, often people think they're "technical" and really only know just enough to get themselves in trouble. When I've done tech support, I found that's often the case. People lie all the time too...

While I have encountered a few helpful people in tech support, normally the only help they can offer me before the "reformat" suggestion is stuff I've already tried.

robco wrote:

There are some bad tech support folks out there, no doubt about that. But considering how little most are paid, you're not going to get the best of the best. People demand the best customer service imaginable, they just don't want to pay for it. Apple's seems to be better than most - but Geniuses actually make decent money and get benefits and are trained by Apple in person.

You're also getting higher end, higher quality materials used in construction, not to mention the cost of engineering a different OS - costs that Dell and HP don't have to bear. Apple's making green machines now, not waiting until later.

Ultimately it comes down to the essence of free market capitalism - if you feel Apple isn't offering sufficient value for the money, don't buy from them. Comparing Apple's offerings to similarly priced alternatives, I personally think they do. Many folks disagree.

mrreet2001 wrote:

robco wrote:

There are some bad tech support folks out there, no doubt about that. But considering how little most are paid, you're not going to get the best of the best. People demand the best customer service imaginable, they just don't want to pay for it. Apple's seems to be better than most - but Geniuses actually make decent money and get benefits and are trained by Apple in person.

You're also getting higher end, higher quality materials used in construction, not to mention the cost of engineering a different OS - costs that Dell and HP don't have to bear. Apple's making green machines now, not waiting until later.

Ultimately it comes down to the essence of free market capitalism - if you feel Apple isn't offering sufficient value for the money, don't buy from them. Comparing Apple's offerings to similarly priced alternatives, I personally think they do. Many folks disagree.

x3

x4

robco wrote:

In defense of tech support, often people think they're "technical" and really only know just enough to get themselves in trouble. When I've done tech support, I found that's often the case. People lie all the time too...

Hence my idea of a corporate card of some sort -- something you can show them at the stores that says "yes this guy knows his smurf and drops loads of cash off to us" 

Tech support does get the short end of the stick, but it is quite annoying when you frequent a particular Apple store all the time and they still don't understand that you actually do know "your smurf".

I'm actually going to try and get our head IT guy, myself and the business consultant from my store to meet, so Apple can better understand where were coming from and what we do.  We almost need a custom version of Keynote to operate peacefully in our meeting room "system".

-mark

AIOs and laptops require a lot of design expertise. A tower is a tower - but even then Apple has a far superior design. Not just using Al, which is lighter and stronger, but even the plastic is more durable polycarbonate. I'd pit my first gen MB against almost any PC laptop wrt durability. About the only ones that come close are ThinkPads and ToughBooks. Apple also uses lead-free, PVC-free..., etc. to be more green. This tends to cost more.

But in the areas where Apple does the most sales volume - laptops - their superior industrial design is very much a factor. You can't just buy a laptop case, mobo, etc. and slap it all together. It takes real design and engineering expertise. Sure, the 9400m is a standard chipset, as are the Intel CPUs, network chip, USB controller, etc. But the new battery tech in the 17" MBP? Not so much. The design and layout? That's all Apple. They even took the time to shrink down the DisplayPort so it didn't take up so much space (honestly, why couldn't it have been that small in the first place?). They invented FireWire. When was the last time you've seen Dell do anything remotely original? They're just now copying the backlit keyboard. The ThinkPads used to have some innovation (touch nipple, butterfly keyboard) when they were made by IBM, but now Lenovo pretty much just cashes in on the name. Many of the features on notebooks wouldn't even be around if Apple wasn't making laptops. That's part of the reason why Intel was so happy to get Apple as a customer, they want to split the Wintel moniker and be involved in new innovative designs and approaches.

Again, if these things are worth the extra money to you, that's fine. Don't buy from Apple. It really is just that simple.

Mr. T wrote:

robco wrote:

They even took the time to shrink down the DisplayPort so it didn't take up so much space (honestly, why couldn't it have been that small in the first place?)

Actually, NVIDIA did that.

And it may cause problems at very high res, capacitance effects perhaps. There were reports of issues with 30" displays of all makes not long ago; I asked if anyone had heard if they'd been resolved. No one answered.

Connectors as small as DP don't usually need further shrinkage. Apple had to offer their implementation free to entice anyone else to use it, but I don't think anyone has... small may be chic, but I'll take reliability over chic anyday. (Smaller also tends to be weaker, less durable).

Mr. T wrote:

A lot of boutique manufacturers are using carbon fiber, which is a much higher-end construction material than Aluminum or polycarbonate.

Indeed they are and their offerings are how much more inexpensive than Apples? Oh right...

You'd lose against my netbook.  And to argue the point of generality, consider the MBA's hinge failure, Apple's frequent run-ins with Mr. Heat Meiser, the failing graphics on the new high-end MacBook.

And your netbook would get its ass handed to it doing anything requiring lots of processing power, not to mention using the tiny display and tiny keyboard isn't pleasant for most. Netbooks are nice and have their place, but they are not laptops and comparing them to laptops isn't really relevant. I certainly wouldn't want to work all day on a netbook.

Do you know what a ToughBook is?

Yes I do. The only reason it is as or more durable than an Apple laptop is because it was designed for extreme conditions. But before you run to the extreme end of the argument, Panasonic does make a "Business Rugged" line of ToughBooks. They're also rather pricey.

That doesn't make it better.

Indeed not. Apple takes design risks that don't always work out. The Cube was a disaster, the first flat-panel iMacs didn't do so well, the hinges on the TiBooks (and the paint). As with any company, every success comes with some failures. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, that sort of thing. That's why the old rule of never buy Rev/A of an Apple product is still sound.

In any event, when was the last time you saw Dell or HP release something new, something different?

Actually, NVIDIA did that.

Yay for NVidia then. Though if they did it, why is Apple licensing the design? It's also their fault that MBPs are failing and need to have chips replaced.

If you want the fastest, most inexpensive computer, Apple doesn't make it. If you want fast and inexpensive, there are plenty of manufacturers from which to choose. The point being that everyone has different requirements. Yours and mine are obviously different. I think Apple offers a good value and that's OK. You don't and that's OK too. I can buy from Apple, you can buy from someone else. I'll be OK with the fact that I might not have the fastest CPU or graphics I could have because the other pros are worth the higher cost - to me anyway. I wouldn't want something bigger and heavier just to get more speed. I've had classmates and co-workers bring in Dell/HP/Toshiba laptops and they look and feel cheap (with horrible keyboards) - even the "high end" ones. They spent less, they have faster CPUs and GPUs, I just don't think they're better laptops. You may judge on a different set of criteria and disagree. In that case, get a Lenovo or Dell and be happy with it. I just don't see the point then of coming to a Mac forum simply to complain that Apple's computers just aren't good enough. Buy from someone else that makes faster and less expensive machines and be happy with that choice.

Last edited by robco (2009-03-17 10:06 am)

I was looking at monitor reviews on Cnet the other day and out of curiosity I searched for monitors with Displayport on board.
There was exactly one in the popular 22in size. Apple says displayport is the next big thing.
Looks to me like it may be another dead at birth Apple monitor connector.