No company is perfect. Apple makes mistakes. But in my perception they deal well with their mistakes and are not shy to admit.
Apple screwed me. My 2007 Macbook Pro died due to issues with the nVidia graphics chip desoldering itself. Again they went down the deny forever route, another law suit, and finally they quietly posted a recall notice on their web site that I missed the deadline on by a few days.
That's the point he makes in this video. People pay $2k+ and still have to pay for repairs of greatly designed and poorly engineered products. Seriously, that's a commonly known practice called rip-off. I simply cannot understand people's minds defending Apple's engineering. It's an incomprehensible cognitive dissonance.
Apple designs great products, sure, why not. But when engineering decisions have to take a seat behind design decisions? The fanboys see just the great product and irrationally defend any criticism on bad engineering. Sorry, that's just silly.
When products are super-designed to the extent that excellent (thus very expensive) engineering is required to make them last longer, Apple does an excellent job keeping the engineering budget low. While keeping the design strategy constant: thinner, lighter, finer.
At some point Apple hits a breaking point (those in the videos). Their handling of the problems is highly questionable, because they chose design over good and lasting engineering and refuse to take the responsibility. Apple products are throw-away products nowadays. Yet they refuse to admit even that (they built even a recycling robot for their devices!).
Well, there's always the relative amount of value they get out of Apple's products vs the amount of how much Apple screwed them.
The balance can still come out positive. I've used Windows for 25+ years, Macs for 15 or so, Linux for 18-19 years -- and still use those things everyday (Linux professionally and for home use).
The productivity I get out of an OS X box trumps having to pay $300 to have some faulty part replaced that Apple should have replaced themselves anyway for a $3.5K laptop (which has happened to me a couple of times in the 15+ years I've used Apple laptops).
That said, I do both programming in UNIX like environment, and video editing, and write music (as a hobby) with DAWs and such. Someone who just needs a terminal or Word or just Premiere etc might be able to get by with another platform.
And of course I've been burned by IBM BS hard disks (and HDs from many other manufactures), AMD CPUs, and tons of other brands and third party products.
I just think it's crazy how much public subsidy went into creating Apple, and yet they're still seeking tax havens like Ireland
socialize the losses, privatize the profits i guess
all the stuff you're supposed to pay taxes for...
Dell e.g. has 100 different models each year -- each representing a small sliver of the overall units sold. So if a problem surfaces with one, it doesn't matter as much to as many customers.
Plus, other companies don't push the envelope and move to new technologies as fast, or use as specialized parts. They just throw some off the shelve components as is in their branded box -- with Apple half of the box components is custom.
So Dell does a much better job at mitigating failure. Sounds like Apple has a lot to learn here.
> Plus, other companies don't push the envelope and move to new technologies as fast, or use as specialized parts. They just throw some off the shelve components as is in their branded box -- with Apple half of the box components is custom.
Specialized parts are a liability, not an asset. How do you replace a broken component that only Apple makes, which they refuse to sell separately?
Or, you know, it's a tradeoff for a more streamline product line, that's less confusing to users, and can pack more for more general cases.
>Specialized parts are a liability, not an asset. How do you replace a broken component that only Apple makes, which they refuse to sell separately?
It's almost as if that is also a tradeoff, between having unique features that others don't and more control of integration, vs the ability to replace commodity parts.
What part of the idea of tradeoffs don't people understand?
As for whether people agree to said tradeoffs, well, being the #1 company is units and profit in the world, means people want what's on offer.
P.S. Not to mention that in fact in the past Apple was even more exclusive with their parts (e.g. PowerPC vs Intel).
My selection bias, for example, is the opposite.
I had my iMac 27” repaired three times in 2013 for a SINGLE faulty pixel. Under Apple Care (which was less than 10% the cost of the machine when I bought it), a technician was coming to my place with a new screen and replace it on the spot. Amazing service. Unfortunately I kept on getting a screen replacement with faulty pixel (apparently not so rare in such a big screen, plus the replacement part was probably reconditioned) so the technician kept on coming from 200km away with a new part. In the end it took three shots to get the replacement right. I’ve read how much each intervention cost to Apple in the repair bills he technician would leave to me as a receipt: 700$ each (560€). Never paid a dime. Make it times three and you’ll find out Apple spent almost as much as the cost of my iMac to get the repair right.
In 2016 my ex-gf the screen of my iPhone by dropping a mignon of vodka on it from the kitchen shelf. Screen was destroyed completely and I feared for the repairability of the phone itself. I brought it the Apple Store in Berlin for a regular paid screen or phone replacement. The Genius stopped me as I was telling him what happened and inspected the phone: “do you see this half-moon thing inside the front camera? It’s an hardware problem and we have a replacement program for that. Your phone is eligible for free replcement”. 10 minutes after I walked out with a brand new (reconditioned) iPhone, as If I chose the full replacement, without forking out a single dime. I told about the replacement program to all my friend with an iPhone 6s or 6. I think at least three of them got a new phone out of an old one, no matter how used or fucked up their phone was. One of them had dropped it and the phone screen was barely holdin together as well.
Does this make me an Apple shill?
Most of those amazing services story are from US, few from EU.
repair: 700$ subsidized cost by Apple: 700$ Grand Total: 0
The consumer gets complete transparency and has a proof of work in his hands. Nothing to do with an Apple decision. And even if it were, how would that be bad?
Of course, things would be different if they actually itemized what they bought, from where, at what price, what the technician's wage was, and so on.
L.R. is probably especially disappointed by the luxury price. But apart from that, I'm sure all other manufacturers are as bad as Apple to deal with failures. Actually, I'd bet a dollar that most of them don't give a crap.. (the nvidia gpu problem affected everybody, and they all refused to repair most machines). Their machine are either covered a bit, and a replaced quickly or people just fall off warranty and will by another packardbell~ machine on deal at the mall.
We'd have to see how the pro lines are handled (I never had a pro hp and dell machine so I cant say, but it's possible they're quicker to repair it.[1]
On the other hand, Apple has the magic touch... and it's not all fluff, it's only partly fluff, and still above the magic threshold, that's why people still root for them.
The vertical integration is felt when you use it, it's so much leaner than most windows machines. They give you a little piece of tech art, and not some plastic gizmo. They catter to a lot of details other manufacturers don't. Kinda like mercedes vs tesla. Lots of people complained about bits of comfort that are surely not important, but this is the extra mile that people are paying for.
I knew a guy who was anti apple (walled garden, proprietary etc), he touched an ipad and grunted, asked him why he was angry, "it's so much better than everything else" he said sadly. I was playing with motorola flagship android 3 tablet that was released quite some time after the ipad IIRC, yet everything lagged even for basic camera usage.. Users notice that quickly.
[1] also, having dismantled a few printers, I've seen how pro lines have way more thoughtful design. It's paradoxically a much cheaper product to make, because it needs fewer parts and are so easy to fix.
Did you watch the video in full? The examples of Apple screwing its customers are numerous.
And also because of the whole, first such device of its class available, Android took a year to even emerge, first to create a huge app market that's not crap (like Windows mobile of yore, Palm, and Java ME apps), and so on things...
I think a lot of people by Apple products because when their device fails they can take it back to a store run by the same people who manufactured and sold it to them to get it serviced.
In fact, many get an ok repair for a trivial problem being charged a fortune, while just as many simply dont, because apple stores have very strict rules what they're allowed to repair and what not.
my wife had a sim card stuck in her iphone 4 or 5 once. they took the phone, returned after 20 minutes and said they couldnt fix it and offered a ridiculous discount if she'd buy a new iphone instead. she declined and we took it to some shady local repair shop. the guy took it into his back office and returned after 5 minutes with the card removed. charged 25 bucks.
and i get why people compare apple to religion. that fucking apple store was built like a temple, you had these superior 'geniuses' running around, an overly fancy waiting area. i see how it gives apple fans their fix making them willing to pay anything. it was the first and only time i set foot in one of their stores.