You don’t want to hear this, I’m sure. Everyone loves Apple. Except me.
Sure, I love their products. Theoretically. I believe they are innovative and absolutely world changing. I bless Steve Jobs and his amazingly brilliant mind. His products truly make technology serve us and bring the world to our doorstep. For that reason, I bought a new Macbook Pro as my laptop. But it was a mistake.
To begin with, as a writer, the keyboard on the 15″ model is not made for me. There is no regular ‘delete forward’ key so I have learned (finally) how to press Fn Delete to make this happen. There is no ‘end’ ‘home’ key, so I have learned (finally) how to press ‘control arrow’, or is it ‘command arrow.’ Or something equally time consuming that makes me have to stop to remember rather than just type fast and create.
Also,the keyboard is so uncomfortable for me that I end up deleting whole paragraphs mistakenly, and I just learned how to do Control Z to get it back. Until now I was rewriting everything. Not to mention that I get red marks on my wrists from the sharp edge of the keyboard. What did they tell me at the Apple store about this all? Get a new keyboard – and for just $150 here is one of ours!
Next, the computer is faulty. Over the past couple of weeks, it mysteriously doesn’t turn on. Full of juice, all plugged in, and nothing. Dead. I learned what to do when this happens, but that begs the question, doesn’t it.
OK. Not happy. So I went to a one-to-one session that I purchased when I got the computer. And let me tell you that these folks are just plain arrogant. First, a group of them were standing together and talking and laughing (this, while dozens of potential customers were trying out their gadgets, unattended). My guy was almost 10 minutes late.
I was having an email problem that mysteriously started that day. My guy couldn’t help and told me I’d have to make another appointment for a tech guy: make another appointment, take time out of my day again, drive 1/2 hour each way, find parking, and come back, again, on another day?? WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?? ‘That’s not what these sessions are for,” he said. WELL THIS ONE IS. He brought over a tech guy. (Funny how an angry customer gets results.)
When the Apple tech guy needed some data, I had to call my tech guy in the office. But I’d left my cell phone in the car. I asked the Apple guy if he could let me use his phone. “We’re not allowed,” he said. WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT. There were hundreds of working iPhones all over the store! “If I can’t use yours, why can’t use one of the others?” Nope. Sorry. So I had to borrow a phone from the customer sitting next to me. Ridiculous. In my mind that’s like being in a book store and being told I can’t read a book.
Then, there was my technical problem of the computer turning itself off. “Sorry,” said the help guy. “I don’t handle that. You’ll have to make another appointment and bring the computer in to work with the Genius Team.” WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT. I’m here now! Why can’t you help me get this fixed now?
So I left the store, with a laptop that is only partially functioning, part of the time, that hurts to use, and doesn’t do what I want it to do. Great technology for Skype and video recording. But for me, daily use sucks.
I guess Apple doesn’t understand that they are there to help customers. There must be so many buyers just itching to make a purchase, so many fans bowing to the alter of their wizziness, that they don’t need to care about the lowly customers who just need to use the computer to do things like write reports or books or articles. Or be comfortable with the keyboard.
Except lowly customers have blog posts, and complain loudly. So here is my loud complaint: if you need a computer for writing a lot, and need an easy keyboard for long writing sessions, or might need some appropriate support for your usage, don’t buy a Mac.
sd
Hi Sharon Drew, those problems must be driving you nuts. My first Apple product was my iPhone and was sweet until the last upgrades of iTunes. I still think that the iPhone ecosystem is a thing of awe, but I’ve also seen that Apple itself has lost the plot on a few things including software release management.
I always click “yes” for the latest upgrades of iTunes, why wouldn’t you? That meant a crashed iphone, hours and hours to sync, and lost purchases. The purchase policy designed to prevent fraud also makes it nearly impossible to understand and impossible to recover purchases messed up by Apple even if you have the receipts.
I googled around and was surprised to find that its quite hard to talk to Apple. You can do it of course, but in many places you face the wrath of the Apple fanatics if you use the public forums. I found several pleas for help with others having the same sync problems with the new iTunes, and I also found absolutely no response to any of these from Apple.
I made a couple of posts to the effect that Apple obviously don’t give a damn but syncing for 5 hours and losing money isn’t that endearing. About a week later I got an email from a techie, asking me to run through a checklist of actions and files and reports and send them all back. It took me 30 minutes. I haven’t heard since.
A new “update” appeared for iTunes last week and I thought “YES” this is going to fix my problem. Now it’s worse, runs for 10 hours without finishing a sync. And there are purchases missing. And nowhere to go! I suppose with all our social media prowess we should be able to create a storm but weighing up the odds of doing that against the Apple fans means its likely to be effort in without results I think.
I’d just like my iPhone sync to work like it did before, without me having to go blazing into the social media. I’m disappointed to see that Apple has such poor software release control, that’s opened my eyes.
Good luck with your Mac and hope you get some resolution.
Walter Adamson @g2m
Certified Social Media Consultant
http://NewLeaseG2M.com
Melbourne, Australia
My social spaces and places: http://xeesm.com/walter