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Comment by jammygit | Hacker News Reader

I hear this about Apple support a lot lately. 10 years ago, I heard only good stories. Has something changed?

Yes.

10 years ago, an 'Apple Genius' was a relatively skilled role, and was permitted decision making discretion.

In 2011 Apple Store employees went on a strike, and due to the skilled labor nature of the role, Apple was not able to quickly hire replacements. Apple had to cede to some labor demands.

Ever since 2011, Apple has been putting a TON of energy into removing the skill from the Genius position.

1- Removal of troubleshooting from the role. Almost ALL genius work is now following a flow chart on the iPad, without involvement of the brain. People that have been hired in the past few years have no understanding of what is going on beyond the iPad workflow.

2- Removal of discretion from the role. A genius's ability to help you is now based on advocacy. Meaning, if they feel sympathy for you, all they can do is ask their manager to make an exception.

3- reducing the scope of the role. Stores have been reconfigured in a way that makes figuring out whats going on more difficult, and reduces the ability to find a workspace or access tools.

4- probably incidental but the scope of repairs possible has decreased, too. When your choice is to replace the screen, top half, or bottom half of the laptop there isn't much to think about aside from where the screws are.

> Ever since 2011, Apple has been putting a TON of energy into removing the skill from the Genius position.

I'm not sure exactly what you're saying. Is your point that Apple's response to organized labor was to try to make sure that those employees are easily replaceable in the future? That sounds tremendously counterproductive. Though perhaps it's the exact sort of shortsightedness we should expect from large corporations today.

Yes. Apple, like any major US corporation, is in a fundamentally adversarial position vs their employees. The corporation seeks maximum profit at the expense of the worker and the workers seek a decent living. However, the need to extract wealth from the worker to further enrich the richest is of a greater need to a corporation than the wellbeing of the workers.

This is not unique to Apple by any means.

Thanks for sharing this information. This is pretty much consistent with my experience from visiting Apple Stores for repairing my MBP.

I'm especially enraged by 2: You visit the store with a broken machine costing upwards 3K (including the Apple Care plan) and you have to put up a little play to make yourself likeable to the genius. This is not serious customer service. I expect my case to be examined seriously, without prejudice and without me having to outguess how Apple works to get the service I've already paid for.

I'm also curious on whether Apple encourages geniuses to be unfriendly via incentives/counter-incentives. E.g. would the genius get a sale bonus if they get me to buy a new computer/tablet/phone after our consultation? Would a genius be penalized if they approve more free repairs than what some sort of AI algorithm predicted?

PS. If you have a source to cite (so I can share it elsewhere), that would be most welcome.

Yes, 10 years ago Apple was undergoing massive growth and establishing itself as a premium consumer brand where customer service was a differentiator.

Their revenue is levelling off now as the markets they're in mature and they need to continue profit growth. They do this by raising prices (see the iPhone 6,7,8,X dance) and reduce their costs to expand their margin. Lowering repair costs is now a key part of their strategy in a way that it wasn't 10 years ago.

Not only that but iPhones are generally more durable now than when they first launched in 2007 allowing Apple to justify their need to raise prices.

A more durable phone reduces the incentive to upgrade to a newer device every 18-24 months like was the case with iPhones from 10 years ago — like the iPhone 3GS — it offered a compelling reason to upgrade because it was released with much faster hardware specs than the iPhone 3G before it.

The pace of hardware improvements: 2G -> 3G -> 4G cellular speeds; camera pixel count increases; faster processors etc, has reduced considerably.

I found that the screen in the newer 2018 ipad pros get scratched easily compared to ipad 3. Haven't dropped the ipad pros yet, not sure whether the screen will survive, but have dropped the ipad 3 multiple times and the screen was much durable.

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