VR, you can sound as if you are trying to do the hard sell reality distortion act that Apple stage. That, and mixed with some "no bread, then let the little people eat cake" attitude. Like the earlier audio bug indignant deny-ers, such input can seem the opposite of constructive (for users and Apple).
Apple as a whole is made of many different parts, whose performance varies as far as the customer is concerned. One issue seems to pervade all aspects of the company - selective deafness and extreme secretiveness. Also parts like support vary widely in different regions. My Apple support experiences in NYC have been generally OK. My experience is the UK has sometimes been abysmal. A litany of lies, evasion, incompetence, brush-offs, and plain ignorance with a dose of arrogance. Not all, but an unacceptably large proportion.
Blanket statements that Apple is through and through fabulous seems just shill talk and seems to contribute nothing for users (and may alienate some in a polarizing manner).
It might be constructive if we tried to help Apple see blind spots in their systems and operations where they impact on users. And I'd expect the company to welcome that. Like someone telling me I have egg on my chin.
I see support operations as integral to any product. And for a Mac Pro which is premium priced and so targeted, support operations can be pitiful. The number of people of these forums screaming their exasperation demonstrates a measure of the brand image damage done.
There is extreme contrast between a sexy Apple Store sales experience under the Louvre, versus AppleCare when directed to Mumbai call centers that are staffed by people who are hopelessly out of their depths with issue such as this bug.
To blanket endorse Apple including every corner of incompetence, seems insulting to the users who are nursing bruises, and does nothing to help Apple. The brand is one of the strongest in all history, it doesn't need indulging/babying lest it break. Agreed not to over-react and trash all of Apple, far from it. We wouldn't be here if we weren't at heart addicts of using these systems (if not necessarily brand lovers at the same time).
I advocate breaking comments into various sectors. Support is one part. And aspects of support in different regions vary greatly. To make excuses for Apple having a system as a whole that seems set up to shun user input like this audio bug is pure waste, for Apple and users. At times Apple seems to show it has little sense of what user experience is like, it is entrenched and seems to sell the divine perfection message very hard. Nothing on earth could live up to such gushing standards, and the support operations can be more like hell.
We often heard people saying that (a) there was no bug and (b) that anyway Apple would just swap out any system with a problem. They are not just in fantasy land, but are just being flame bait. Justice would be for such people to go through one of the horror experiences with Apple support. They'll never talk like that again. Failing to distinguish between early sales swap outs or returns, and later support operations is misguided.
I'm not for or against Apple. Though as a developer on Apple since the 80s, recent experiences with their support operations do make me recalibrate my expectations of the company. They may be striding away to new horizons of gadget sales and spectacular profit, but for my customers I've growing concern over supplying systems that are based on Apple. The kits is generally fine, but support can be so bad that it could reflect really badly on my products. In a nutshell, there is effectively no way to get through to the company short of what we just learned - screaming headlines in international media.
It is not about the company listening to what it wants to listen to when it wants to listen. It is about customer needs. And in some areas of communication with the customer, Apple can be disappointing, infuriating, even useless. That's just to target some communications areas, not the whole of Apple or all of its sometimes fabulous products and services.
I have no expectation that Apple has ears for this sentiment. So I'll have to plan my business and personal use of Apple systems accordingly. I'm sure others will as well. To not listen or communicate can be to hold a knife to my throat.
IMO Apple communications and customer care are at times not premium (eg. for more than half a year, all efforts to get through to AppleCare about this bug were needlessly stonewalled and denied).
