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Apple Falls Behind Microsoft, Samsung, and Sony in New Consumer Experience Survey

In my area, the Apple store employees seem to be very friendly and helpful. Even if you just go in to check things out someone is always willing to answer questions and rush to move on to a paying customer. There is one Microsoft store in my area that happens to be two doors down from an Apple store. I have found the employees there to be the same friendly, knowledgeable people as that Apple employs. If you go in the Microsoft store, they'll even offer you a soda or a bottle of water. No complaints about either store.

Plus Microsoft has a big dual screen setup in the mall outside of their store running XBox games and there is always a crowd of people out there dancing or whatever game is on at the moment. They also have an XBox set up in store with a 75" screen with some game always available to demo.
 
Albert1000 said:
Good news for us Apple consumers. Nothing stifles innovation more than a false sense of, "We are perfect!." I bet Tim will take away some keys to the executive washroom over this.

Oh wait... we're talking about Tim Cook here. Never mind.
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I've been saying that for years now. Just look at the front page article about malware being rampant on Android and what phil Chiller has to say about it. Dude acts like your going to catch HIV from a Android device just by touching it. In reality this is not true. The head suits at Apple are told one thing and they fell into this "we have the best product on the market" trap. It's the same attitude that many people here have.
We have seen nothing ground breaking (that regular people can afford) since the iPad launched years ago. Apple could release a 5" phone tomorrow but it's still a 5" phone. The competition jumped on that bandwagon when the first Note came out almost 3 years ago.
The mastermind behind Apple is dead and Tim Cook is not a risk taker; he is not an inventor with imagination. Jobs was the puppet master and the rest of the gang were his puppets. Without Jobs there just playing it safe.

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iSee said:
I wonder what Samsung, Microsoft and Sony did to improve so much?
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All 3 have phablets while Apple does not. A coincidence I think not. Apple just does not listen to the public and would rather please itself with profits.
 
cdmoore74 said:
The mastermind behind Apple is dead and Tim Cook is not a risk taker; he is not an inventor with imagination. Jobs was the puppet master and the rest of the gang were his puppets. Without Jobs there just playing it safe.
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But, but........Apple makes the most profit. :D:D:D
 
I think the biggest issue is that Apple is becoming a victim of it's own success and the industry it created.

People always see Apple as 'higher tier'. In many ways, people became delusional of the brand. They feel that since they payed "X amount of dollars" that there will NEVER be any problems. Then they get disappointed about the device more than if the same problem happned with another brand.

Apple is becoming so big, that flaws will become more magnified. This happened with Microsoft. They became such a big OS (with Windows) that the problems seemed common and people get frustrated.

People go to the Apple Store to complain, JUST because they can. And I mean this in a way that...if your Blackberry deleted one of your contacts by mistake you probaly wouldn't whine to RIM about it unless it kept happening.

One small thing happens with an Apple product and everyone loses their minds.

I honestly think that Apple should extend warranties automatically. All iPhones have an automatic 2 year warranty and all Macs have a standard 3. I only say this because of the pricing. I think EU does a pretty good job with warranty laws.

And Apple could still push AppleCare, but more or less for accidental damage and stuff.

Customers really just care about stuff getting fixed. Nobody likes paying over $1000 for a computer just so that it craps out after a year and nothing can be done. Same goes for ANY other computer maker out there.
 
linkgx1 said:
I think the biggest issue is that Apple is becoming a victim of it's own success and the industry it created.

People always see Apple as 'higher tier'. In many ways, people became delusional of the brand. They feel that since they payed "X amount of dollars" that there will NEVER be any problems. Then they get disappointed about the device more than if the same problem happned with another brand.

Apple is becoming so big, that flaws will become more magnified. This happened with Microsoft. They became such a big OS (with Windows) that the problems seemed common and people get frustrated.

People go to the Apple Store to complain, JUST because they can. And I mean this in a way that...if your Blackberry deleted one of your contacts by mistake you probaly wouldn't whine to RIM about it unless it kept happening.

One small thing happens with an Apple product and everyone loses their minds.

I honestly think that Apple should extend warranties automatically. All iPhones have an automatic 2 year warranty and all Macs have a standard 3. I only say this because of the pricing. I think EU does a pretty good job with warranty laws.

And Apple could still push AppleCare, but more or less for accidental damage and stuff.

Customers really just care about stuff getting fixed. Nobody likes paying over $1000 for a computer just so that it craps out after a year and nothing can be done. Same goes for ANY other computer maker out there.
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I see posts like this every year and have for the past 3 years. Apple's not the failing victim you guys for whatever reason think it is, and some customer satisfaction survey means nothing. Let's not make sweeping generalizations about a company's future because some survey came out that doesn't favour it. Never seen so much FUD in my life, and it's getting increasingly desperate year after year.
 
Poisonivy326 said:
I know Apple products (with the exception of the Mac pro) are all made by sweatshops in China, the same ones that churn out "crappy" Android phones and "cheap" Windows PC's. But I'm saying the general consumer and the Apple-ubers still believe the premium hype. So thus the anger when premium brand =/= premium product.
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Bit of a crap analogy really. Take something as simple as a supermarket. They may well sell three differently priced variants of the same product. All made of slightly different variations of the same recipie.
So you may have burgers at the top end of the scale made with 99% lean beef and a few bits of seasoning and preservative and at the the other end of the scale ones made with lots of fillers and recovered meat, (which includes offfal and bone).
So the same factory churns out good food and crappy food.

Why does this seem impossible to you?
 
prowlmedia said:
Samsung and Microsoft don't have any stores at all.
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Microsoft already has a bunch of stores around the entire North American continent. There are a number of them in Southern California alone. Likewise, Samsung is also starting to build their own stores. Give them enough time and they will soon have as many stores as Apple.
 
Personally, I can understand the graph on the first post.

Taking a step back, the user experience for Apple hasn't really changed, its remained reasonably steady. Which when you think about it, has been the case. The devices over the last few years have been on a fairly consistent high quality each time, and the experience of going to an Apple store has been for a last number of years a consistent experience ... i.e. you know what your going to get. There's nothing really come from the last few years that has been the all out wow factor thats going to jump the user experience upwards.

If anything, as time goes on, I think the all out "you can't change it" attitude could be a means to lowering user experience feeling. I'm not saying that Apple should let you customise to the extent of jailbreaking features, but even just being able to decide on between a few schemes of differing contrast would be great to letting the user feel their experience of a device is what they want from it (rather than being told)

Samsung now have a broad portfolio of good high-spec products with few issues of availability. These days, you want good big screen phone? You're not going to that wrong with a Samsung. So if a user wants that, then the experience rating will reflect that.

Microsoft's phone, tablet, PC and xbox portfolio is aligning to be a consistent eco-system with good integrations between each. I really like the Skydrive system and its worked well for me. If you have a PC, and want new tech to integrate well into it, the Microsoft side isn't going to go far wrong either.

Sony ... I'm not surprised by this at all. Over the last couple of years, Sony's really seems to have stepped up its game and brought some nice products to the market. The new playstation 4 eco-system, nice looking phones and tablets etc are shaping up to be quite desirable items. (Really considering a Z1 type phone next myself). Desirable items when bought and that work are going to equate to a good user experience rating and this seems bourne out in the graph.

Its not so much that other brands are significantly better than Apple, just more that they have caught up with Apple's consistency.
 
oh good...

Nothing lasts forever... What do you really expect that would happen... Apple to be on-top here indefinitely ?


Too boring... We gotta shake it up a bit.
 
Well the one thing I cannot complain about with Apple is their customer service. I DO believe it can varie from store to store, I have experienced this. But when you call them they are great, and if you go to the right store they are great, thankfully my nearest store is great :)

I put Apple customer service up there with John Lewis in the UK and it is one of the reasons you buy from them.

I have to also I say that with the PS4 launch I had read a lot of horror story's about Amazon.... People certainly were not receiving its legendary customer service.
 
nagromme said:
I'm not sure what narrow slice of "exprience" this is supposed to be, but it fails the sniff test. I'll take this with major salt, as my Android-loving, Apple-hating friends curse at their flagship Android phones trying to do simple things and tolerating major problems like a lack of software updates.

As for retail, my experience there has remained astonishingly good, whether for shopping or Genius Bar.
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I've been a Mac owner for decades and I've been a huge fan of the iPhone. I hate iOS 7. I have it on an iPhone 5.

My biggest complaint is the new user interface. I hate the skinny font. I hate the solid white background with skinny numbers on top of it. It's much harder to see. I prefer the bold font for the keyboard, etc. It's just very ugly, IMHO - looks like a cartoon. But functionally, it's harder for me to see it.

The voicemail doesn't play in speaker mode when I first play the voicemail even though the speaker button is highlighted (that highlight they use is too faint and hard to see).

When I put my iPhone 5 up to my face to listen to a voicemail, the screen doesn't go off and my ear makes it switch to another feature. I have to hold it away from my head.

Apps crash a lot more often now.

My iPhone 5 has recently done the same thing my iPhone 4 did - break. The top button needs to be pressed 5 or 6 times, hard, before it locks the screen. The bottom home button works intermittently too.

Overall, the iPhone 4 and 5 don't work very well as phones. I honestly get a lot of dropped calls. I'm comparing this experience to my experience with an iPhone 3GS I owned on the same AT&T network living at the same house. The 3GS was a much better phone.

There are some positives with iOS 7, like finally being able to select all and mark unread in the mail. I also like the little utilities screen that pops up at the bottom.

I have Mavericks and I like it a lot. I have it on a 2008 Mac Pro.

My opinion of Apple also went down having experienced Final Cut Pro X from its initial release. It's embarrassing. I could make a very long post about it. I just got 10.1 and it's better, but still won't do something iMovie does - scroll the timeline while playing. That's a real joke. You also can't take advantage of multiple monitors by moving any palette you want over to the other monitor. You literally have to click on Audio or Video any time you want to switch between those parameters because the palettes can't be separated, something Adobe Photoshop 1.0 could do back in the 1980s. This is a big reason lots of editors think FCP X isn't a "real" editing app.
 
KdParker said:
Agreed, and the same will be said about i0S7+ as time moves forward.

There was the same outcry when Windows 8 first came out, but people adjusted.
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Not exactly. Windows 8.1 addressed the major complaints about Windows 8--and was well-received. Apple doesn't generally behave like that. If you don't like iOS 7.... perhaps it is not for you.


Michael
 
iSee said:
I wonder what Samsung, Microsoft and Sony did to improve so much?
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New products! Price, Support etc..

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Going to an Apple Store is enough for anyone to give a negative rating.

Crowded mess! Geniuses trailing one customer for a long time making others wait. etc etc...
 
MiesVanDerRobot said:
No one can understand the graph on the first post. There's not even a legend to tell you what it represents. It's not a graph, it's a picture disguised as a graph.
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It's a customer service graph that rates experiences between 70% and 95% over the last two years. With 95% and 85% being considered excellent, 85% to 75% being considered good, and 75% and lower being considered okay. Since all of the companies polled score at or above the okay range, there's no need for the graph to account for anything lower.

The only thing that isn't directly obvious is how the graph assigns scores. On a quick glance, I'd probably say it accounts for the number of people who had overall good things to say about the companies in question. In other words, if Amazon scored a 91% on the graph, then that probably means that 91% of the people polled had a positive experience with the company.

Yeah, it's a little vague as to what the numbers mean exactly, but it's not that hard to read.
 
Someyoungguy said:
Curious - how are you "beaming" to your Apple TV from your Moto G? And how are you syncing with iTunes? These were two problems I couldn't solve with my GS4 (Keis was a POS on my Mac and The Missing Sync was $50; I never imagined there was Airplay support).
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sucks that this one got buried. I am wondering the same thing as to how he did it. I have a Synology NAS and I know their apps offer AirPlay.

I would love to try other products but have yet to find something that works as well as the Apple ecosystem. I know contacts, calendars can be done with Google but what about Microsoft? Can you share a grocery list with another family member *as easily* using one of them?

Where they really have me is sharing media. My set up;

NAS -> MacMini -> Home Sharing to AppleTV (or iDevice AirPlay to AppleTV)

Is Google / Android -> Chromecast as good?
Windows Phone or Desktop -> Xbox?
How about a Sony phone to a PS4 or a Samsung Phone to a Samsung TV?

What about sharing photos with the family? Nothing is easier than a shared Photostream on an AppleTV at every relative's house.

To me, that is the next front in the battle and every time I try to step out of the Apple way, it's not as elegant (read as simple) of an experience.
 
Android who? said:
So Windows 8 is still a hundred steps backwards and you should have upgraded your wife's MacBook up from 2 gigs of RAM to 4.
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This is unarguable logic. :rolleyes:

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MortarionX said:
Well then, why are you here? You and some other goblins present in this thread must live boring lives indeed.
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Making an observation about how these threads generally play out qualifies me as a "goblin"? I always find it amusing when others accuse a poster of having a boring/no life. What does that even mean? Because I took the time to read an article on a site that I enjoy reading and took 30 seconds to post a response I must just sit in a dark room the other 23 hours 59 minutes and 30 seconds of the day?
 
Renzatic said:
They're fairly specific questions, though.
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That's one thing they are not remotely.

You have to answer the questions yourself to see how pointless they are.

How enjoyable were they to do business with?
How easy were they to do business with?
How effective were they at meeting your needs?

The first 2 question roll into the same one. If it's easy it's enjoyable and if enjoyable it's probably easy. The are in fact all co-dependant questions. The 3rd question is basically a boolean yes / no - They either did or they didn't and utterly dependant on the first 2.

I've worked in Marketing and advertising for 20 years and this report, is complete rubbish. Forrester like many research companies exist to sell reports, most of which are spurious to say the least as the data can be skewed.

I am not pro Apple service in a lot of ways - It took 3 emails and 2 visits to get a 2 Mac pro quotes which is insane when you are spending $18K

Amazon's online service is win/win - I suspect they get 100% for everything UNLESS something doesn't turn up on time
 
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