Hacker News Reader

Comment by _huayra_ | Hacker News Reader

It's always shocking how Apple folks adopt a reality distortion field when it comes to explaining their reasoning. Whether it's avoiding justifying the things they claim they get from Apple ("seamless device interop") or ignoring the way Apple actively treats their customers like hot garbage (see Louis Rossman's youtube channel, or the asinine arguments companies like Apple lead against right to repair and all the poor board layout and non-interchangeable parts), instead of saying a reasonable answer like "I'm willing to be ripped off because I like the shiny buttons" or "I have one specific app I use on MacOS that I haven't had the time to replicate elsewhere", it's always some kind of indignation.

If someone tells me my bargan-tier Samsung phone is slower than molasses, I'm not gonna say "yeah but I like the blue color". I'm gonna agree.

View on HN

I'm a long time Apple customer and have not noticed I was being treated like hot garbage. Their products have performed as promised with little to no hassle.

Can't say the same for their competitors (MS, Linux, Samsung, etc), whose products I've used extensively over the past 25 years. I am not a computing novice. Call it a reality distortion field if you want but I am happy.

It's quite reasonable to dislike the self-repair situation and the opaque software issue reporting. Some people value those a lot, and others less so.

I don't think Apple treats their customers like garbage though; quite the opposite. I've always had a no-bullshit customer experience - fast and easy returns & replacements, generous policies & even being able to return outside the window, no haggling about issues. E.g. a few months ago my iPad stopped charging, a replacement arrived 2 days later. Most tech companies are absolutely terrible at customer service like this.

Tech isn't perfect and will break. And by buying Apple you DO have to go through Apple when this happens, but the actual customer experience is top notch. To characterize it as being about shiny buttons is ridiculous, it's about buying peace of mind and having one less thing in your life be bullshit.

I agree, the customer support rep was very nice when he told me I had to buy a new Mac mini when my hard drive failed after 5 years. They even offered to recycle the old one if I paid $50! How nice!

Do you foresee that situation going any differently if you had experienced the same issue with a Surface Book or a Samsung laptop 5 years after you bought it? Because I don't.

If it was under 7 years old (the typical cutoff for vintage products) they should have offered the option to fix it at the Apple Store.

Could be you got stuck in an edge case or had a bad rep, which sucks. Nevertheless, they have the highest NPS / customer satisfaction scores in the industry, if we're to go by the data.

Sometimes I'm even convinced that Apple is absolutely right in squeezing their captive users of every damn penny (or grand) they can squeeze. They should charge even more. (The customer is always right, especially the addicted one).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com