They are likely independent contractors who are restricted in how far they can go with providing help. Apple likely informed the contractor that no IC should provide hacks or anything executing code or links to certain websites. I was part of a similar program and got penalized so much for it.
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Doubtful. Using Google to search up any common Mac question leads back to the Apple website which in turn leads to the Apple Community page.
Macrumors is just some random web forum in most people's minds. The more risk adverse non-techies may look at other venues outside of Apple forums but for most, the Apple forums may as well the start and potential finish to all their searching.
I hardly visit their forums because im constantly logged out even tho i click the “keep me logged in” option every time. Or is it “trust this site”
Anyway. Its annoying.
Anyway. Its annoying.
well what a "luxury" to be able to have the time to sit around and copy/paste vague non-descript replies in a horribly designed message forum.
Rob, I was a MS MVP for the better part of the aughts and there were significant perks. Free MS software, discounted hardware, even some free 3rd party software. It's been too long to remember the details but I distinctly recall that maintaining my MVP was worth the effort each year.
When searching for the fix for any Apple software problem I include "-support.apple.com" in the search to specifically exclude the useless and irrelevant noise that is the lifeblood of that wasteful community.
No, not contractors as they/we really didn’t get paid, I’ve spent some time there.
It’s basically not too much different from MacRumors where it’s just folks typing to folks (and some of those folks WILL remind you). I don’t think it’s ever been the one-stop location to get problems resolved. They HAVE always been more highly moderated, though, because, unlike other forums, they don’t have ads. While some forums may relish in a user posting “You’re stupid if you got more than 8 gigs of RAM” because that guarantees lots of ad views/revenues. Posts or users with posts like that have no value to those support forums, so they’re removed. And, the users, understanding that, usually do moderate their own language.
One reason I could never work in sales. There are times-a-plenty where making the most amount of $$ for yourself and the business involves screwing over the customer, not helping themI only go there occasionally and have noticed the highest ranked people give answers that are deferent to Apple and usually blame the user in some way.
There was a story a while back about a woman who posted on how to save photos from a broken iPhone. She runs a repair shop where she can work on the actual board. Apple had said the data was lost, and she wasn't even allowed to tell people it was possible to recover their photos.
'Apple can't help': How a molecular biologist trained stay-at-home moms to recover lost iPhone photos | CBC News
A group of independent repair technicians are challenging Apple’s approach to data recovery from water-damaged iPhones.www.cbc.ca
When I worked for a contractor of Apple's doing Apple Sales Online (apple.com and the Apple 800 number), I got screamed at by a supervisor when I told a customer they could upgrade their MacBook's HDD after purchase.
If people don't remember, both MacBooks and MacBook Pros had notoriously easy upgrades for HDDs. In fact, one MacBook even had a latch that opened up the bay for the battery an HDD and had the instructions for replacing the HDD engraved on it.
I showed my supervisor the manual that comes with the MacBook that gave step by step instructions on how to replace the drive (the good old days).
And she just responded that wasn't their policy. I was expected to lie.
The same with this person trying to help people recover their photos.
Edit: Not for nothing, but the levels and perks on Apple's page of going up the ranks immediately made me think of Scientology's Bridge to Total Freedom, especially given that you get points for being a narc (reporting other people's posts).
Most of the questions that I’ve ever looked up on Apple Support have ended in ‘it’s not possible’ for hardware or ‘you can’t do that’ for software. A lot of the time it was possible to do what I wanted, but Apple themselves didn’t support it. So yeah, not particularly useful for anything past System Preferences. Lol
I used to participate on the support forums, however the growing number of people who would reply first, with canned responses (often without actually understanding the users problem) became a real frustration for me.
Many times when someone else helped the original poster, these same people would attempt to take credit for helping them solve the issue. Just was a bigger reason why I stayed active here on MacRumors.
Worried this program will further promote such behavior in the apple system. But oh well.
Many times when someone else helped the original poster, these same people would attempt to take credit for helping them solve the issue. Just was a bigger reason why I stayed active here on MacRumors.
Worried this program will further promote such behavior in the apple system. But oh well.
Actually, Independent Contractors can participate alongside regular forum participants. I was on a IA on MS community and responded to questions alongside regular forum participants who were not recruited. As someone noted, there are participants who start with specific greetings and introduction before answering the question. We had to do that too.No, not contractors as they/we really didn’t get paid, I’ve spent some time there.
Well, MS offered (offers) a LOT more perks; most importantly, sometimes even annual meetings in mediterran country beaches like Croatia, or in Cambridge University etc, costing MS a LOT.
Apple only seem to offer virtual stuff, which costs Apple nothing (apart from the admin costs of keeping up an internet forum - that is, almost nothing).
Apple's perks just can't be compared to what MS offers. Or, at least, offered back when I was an MVP myself; dunno what they offer right now as the category I was an MVP in has long been discontinued.
Exactly. The same happened to me when I dared to criticize the iPad's capabilities compared to that of a fully-fledged Mac, stating that should one want to have a real creator machine, a Mac is a much better choice than the iPad. (This was in 2012 or 2013; that is, way before the late 2015 release of the Pro with the pen, which is still sorely missing on Macs.) I got attacked by an MVP there, who called me a liar. (And, again, he could NOT think of the Apple Pencil as a real advantage over anything Mac.)
The high-ranked people there are, I'd say, mostly Apple apologists defending the company blindly. They're like, say, Rene Ritchie. Or even worse - at least Ritchie doesn't call people liar / attack them, he's "just" an Apple apologist.
I was a MS MVP amongst other things with Microsoft and it was very very cool. I got a lot of things that you just can't buy anywhere. I am curious as to what this actually is. What is a "white-glove experience" to them? Are they paying for flights and hotels to events?
Looks like Apple is trying to groom non-employees to be non-paid Apple support online. No, thank you.
Yeah, and I can understand how that’d be a thing for other communities, but Apple Discussions specifically, at the time, had employees that were moderators (and mostly silent moderators as they never had to do “warnings” or anything like that. If a user/post was outside ToS, they were just handled) and users, that was it. And, anyone looking at my posts would see I used specific greetings and posted the same information, too. As, in many cases on my chosen topic, I had already written up the answer they were looking for. Why create a one off different greeting when the same one that worked previously sufficed?
I knew there’s was a reason I stayed away from that place. Communication felt quite stiff there, and intuition is good.
Never liked the place much, and it was a looong time ago I was there.
Sounds scary that Apple are into using people in that way.
THAT bad feeling I didn’t have when I was there, so it must have gone downhill quite a lot over at least last decade or so. Meanwhile Apple have expanded QUITE a lot, not very high ethics.
Never liked the place much, and it was a looong time ago I was there.
Sounds scary that Apple are into using people in that way.
THAT bad feeling I didn’t have when I was there, so it must have gone downhill quite a lot over at least last decade or so. Meanwhile Apple have expanded QUITE a lot, not very high ethics.
Right now, if you go here
discussions.apple.com
And click “Sign in” you get a 502 bad gateway.
(update, fixed just as quick as I posted LOL)
Official Apple Support Community
Find answers with millions of other Apple users in our vibrant community. Search discussions or ask a question about your product.
(update, fixed just as quick as I posted LOL)
Apple "support community" is a dump of steaming … and rats collecting 'points'.
I can't see this helping at all.
I can't see this helping at all.
Oh, you most certainly can.
Quite soundly if history serves me correctly…