Apple Sent Two Engineers to Customer's House to Figure Out Music Deletion Bug

[superbovine]

Of course they didn't. Because they were never there. If they were, I'm sure he would've signed a NDA because Apple engineers driving around town and going to someone's house after the dude posts a blog is downright creepy.

I used to work for one of the largest server/PC manufacturers in the world and had the job to recreate customer issue in the lab for engineering to document and fix. While job was for large scale sever infrastructure; if I had to visit a customer site to figure it an issue we never had to sign an NDA because I kept my mouth shut. The only thing you sign an NDA for is a alpha release fix or you are getting a special or early release hardware. Troubleshooting is pretty universal and isn't secret.

 

[Dr.Chroma]

Obviously they would have contacted him and gotten his permission first. The rest of your post is speculation at best, and making up lies at worst.


Speculation is what Macrumors is about, isn't it ? Half of the articles on Macrumors may or may not be accurate. Take Digitimes for example, they gave a horrible track record and yet they are consistently quoted on here. It's not like we have a direct confirmation of what really occurred from the individual who CLAIMED he inadvertently had his music deleted.

This article leaves a lot to be wondered on how everything transpired. I wouldn't say making up lies At best as you posted.

 

[iDuel]

If this is indeed true, then this level of dedication to its users is what makes Apple stand apart from other tech giants.

 

[Col4bin]

To me it feels lame or PR. Apple would better spend time on quality testing, there were way too many bugs in recent months including absolutely critical ones which brick users devices.

It does seem rather odd, almost a PR stunt, for two Apple engineers to hit the road to help a random consumer address an alleged 122GB worth of iTunes music just vanishing into thin air. I'd like to think this was 100% legit, but weary these days as Apple's public perception is taking a pounding over many recent QA issues becoming increasingly pronounced and more mainstream.

http://www.macnews.com/content/apples-quality-control-slipping

http://www.technobuffalo.com/2014/09/24/is-apple-having-major-quality-control-issues/

http://www.engadget.com/2015/01/05/is-apple-slipping/

http://www.macworld.com/article/3033825/apple-phone/apples-software-woes-problems-or-progress.html

http://siliconangle.com/blog/2015/1...emerge-that-the-ipad-pro-is-seriously-faulty/

http://www.zdnet.com/article/apple-has-a-serious-problem-with-software-quality/

 

[lra108]

Amber, the Apple Support Representative who told him the music deletion glitch was a "feature" functioning as intended, was mistaken and the company was convinced the issue wasn't user error.

The engineers spent the day at Pinkstone's house researching the issue, telling Pinkstone to use Apple Music, iTunes and his personal library as he would in the past. The next day, Tom returned to collect the data logs and cleared any evidence of him being on the laptop. Apple's engineers weren't able to recreate the problem, though Pinkstone notes that they did think the issue was a glitch that needed to be combatted

"Huh, looks like it's our fault after all...Sorry bout, you know, you losing all 122 GB of your music collection."

 

[Jakexb]

This story sounds like complete *********. Sending out 2 engineers because some dude had some of his music deleted? Really? Then they conveniently erased all trace of them being there. Oh, how cute. They must've come in black Suburbans too. Someone is definitely getting their blog hits now.

Why is this so unbelievable? Apple is going big on Apple Music, especially if there is a redesign coming at WWDC. If there is some sinister bug hanging around waiting to sour their plans, they want to find it before the big re-release. It's a little extreme, but very possible.

 

[H2SO4]

I agree. I wish that the people who just come here to talk about how much they no longer like Apple would grow up and actually switch platforms. But they won't. They don't ACTUALLY want things to be different because at present they have an excuse to endlessly complain.

Your most ridiculous post yet.
People wants things to go wrong so that they can post on a forum - right. Yes, I want all of my calendar entries to have all of their dates and times scrambled so that I can get loads of hits here on MacRumors. Get a grip man.

 

[vooke]

This is PR and nothing more. They only visited because his blog is popular..all damage control

 

[Zirel]

1. Make up a crappy blogpost complaining about Apple
2. Put a sensationalist title not iTunes, but Apple, not deleted, but stole
3. Put on Reddit
4. Get upvoted like crazy and picked up by clickbait sites, collect tons of money from traffic
5. Get Apple to go to your house, make them don't find anything, because you made that up
6. Write it up to Huffington Post, collect tons of money

This is all BS, I would bet my entire bank account that this guy is lying and is not laughing off sitting on top of ad money right now.
[doublepost=1463549333][/doublepost]

This is PR and nothing more. They only visited because his blog is popular..all damage control

His blog is not popular.

 

[Millah]

Obviously they would have contacted him and gotten his permission first. The rest of your post is speculation at best, and making up lies at worst.
[doublepost=1463543443][/doublepost]

I agree. I wish that the people who just come here to talk about how much they no longer like Apple would grow up and actually switch platforms. But they won't. They don't ACTUALLY want things to be different because at present they have an excuse to endlessly complain.

Welcome to Macrumors in 2016. That's how it is here now, enjoy your visit. I'm not the type to say "things are different now," but the community and user base has gone downhill here ever since 2010ish.

Yea, there's always been people criticizing every little thing about Apple and their products, just go and visit the thread for the original iPod unveil, you could replace "Steve Jobs" with Tim Cook in some of the negative comments from then and it would sound just like today's trolls. The difference is the ratio, endless negativity and snark has overtaken the friendlier community aspect that used to exist when Apple was a much smaller company.

 

[Mactendo]

just go and visit the thread for the original iPod unveil, you could replace "Steve Jobs" with Tim Cook in some of the negative comments from then

Or visit the thread for the iPhone unveil and check out comments: amazing, breathtaking, fantastic.

 

[hubchau]

Why do people always assume Apple needs to hide something or is ill-intentioned?

I work in a software company as a tester. Despite all the tests we do, sometimes we can't just cover some extreme workflows because not everybody uses our software the way we think they do.
And in some cases, when customers complain about some bugs that we can replicate on our own test machines, we have to get on site to understand everything and get all the data around a specific issue. And we don't do it to collect some internal/private data, we do it to fix the damn bug.

So maybe, just maybe, cut apple some slack and let them do their work the best they can without always assuming they are evil.

 

[emm386]

Very nice move by Apple! Finally some positive PR for and by them!

 

[MH01]

From a software point of view this makes no sense, check the code , the parts were a delete can occur. Replicate the users hardware/software

Sure sounds like nice service, but also shows they can't work out how thier software works.

Sending people out is basically saying , we do not believe you, show us .

Good for PR. Yes

 

[dixido]

Even macrumors users can ruin this story. The negativity is truly a pain in this site.

On topic: this is phenomenal. The guy lost loads of data and Apple saw that, sympathized and took responsibly. More companies should be like this. Google. Sam, Microsoft, keep your eyes open.

You are certainly right that negativity is spreading here, but you can't deny it is for good reasons. Apple's recent development is not pleasant to follow for us long time Apple users.

 

[splitpea]

Nice. Next maybe they can send an engineer to my home to figure out the 5-year-old mail bug that causes email manually marked as junk to be added to the previous senders list instead so that that sender is never spam filtered again. Or the one that lost all my Notes data in a sync.

 

[JohnApples]

Even macrumors users can ruin this story. The negativity is truly a pain in this site.

On topic: this is phenomenal. The guy lost loads of data and Apple saw that, sympathized and took responsibly. More companies should be like this. Google. Sam, Microsoft, keep your eyes open.

If they can put a negative spin on an article about Apple raising money for donations, they can put one on anything.

If later this year an article read: "Apple to give away free Beats headphones to all customers thanks to record sales!" we would still have people saying: "Wow Apple, thanks for the free sh***y headphones ." Or "Apple's getting desperate to try and convince people to like them again." Or "How about instead of giving us free headphones, you work on fixing Maps/Wi-fi issues/Apple Music/etc."

 

[AntonLee]

Even macrumors users can ruin this story. The negativity is truly a pain in this site.

On topic: this is phenomenal. The guy lost loads of data and Apple saw that, sympathized and took responsibly. More companies should be like this. Google. Sam, Microsoft, keep your eyes open.

I doubt the guy lost a single thing

 

[M. Gustave]

Gimme a break, this never happened.

And I see Macrumors continues to hammer the "glitch" theme. Is this part of your stylebook now?

"Any instance of Apple acknowledging user reports of problems is to be reported as Apple 'admitting' there is a 'glitch'."

 

[kas23]

Or visit the thread for the iPhone unveil and check out comments: amazing, breathtaking, fantastic.

You forgot "magical". No wait, that was the iPad unveil.

 

[rdlink]

Why do people always assume Apple needs to hide something or is ill-intentioned?

I work in a software company as a tester. Despite all the tests we do, sometimes we can't just cover some extreme workflows because not everybody uses our software the way we think they do.
And in some cases, when customers complain about some bugs that we can replicate on our own test machines, we have to get on site to understand everything and get all the data around a specific issue. And we don't do it to collect some internal/private data, we don't it to fix the damn bug.

So maybe, just maybe, cut apple some slack and let them do their work the best they can without always assuming they are evil.

Are you insane for posting such a logical, well informed message on a Macrumors forum?

 

[gnipgnop]

It's certainly ironic that Pinkstone is now saying that it's not very likely that the "glitch" will occur again. That's a very different tone from his original hyperbole about what he experienced.

 

[Tubamajuba]

Even macrumors users can ruin this story. The negativity is truly a pain in this site.

On topic: this is phenomenal. The guy lost loads of data and Apple saw that, sympathized and took responsibly. More companies should be like this. Google. Sam, Microsoft, keep your eyes open.

Exactly why my posting here has dropped considerably over the past year. Nothing Apple does is ever good or the right thing. As soon as people get what they think they want, it's on to whining about the next thing.

I agree. I wish that the people who just come here to talk about how much they no longer like Apple would grow up and actually switch platforms. But they won't. They don't ACTUALLY want things to be different because at present they have an excuse to endlessly complain.

Strongly worded, but I agree that a large portion of the MacRumors user base should really consider solutions from other companies. They would be much, much happier.

 

[satchmo]

I wish that the people who just come here to talk about how much they no longer like Apple would grow up and actually switch platforms. But they won't. They don't ACTUALLY want things to be different because at present they have an excuse to endlessly complain.

Then there are those who have been using Apple products for decades (yes plural), who remember a time where quality control and user experience was paramount. We stick with Apple because they're still the best. They themselves, set a high standard and holding them to this, is probably what they'd want and expect from us. It's the apologists who except mediocrity, who should switch and leave.

 

[morcutt11]

Men In Black coming to your house now to tell you, you don't have a problem. You're just using it wrong

Nothing to see here... Move along.... Was this your computer? It appears that we have no deleted your iTunes account - thank you for your cooperation.