Apple replaced the bent iPhones on the spot for free. That said, the iPhone 6 represented peak Jony Ive. I'm glad he's gone. Apple has walked back their obsession with thinness in favor of maximizing utility, all to the benefit of the user.
No, they eventually admitted it was their fault, they didn’t admit fault when the iPad came bent recently, or the MacBook Pro had failures. But with Steve Jobs alive it wasn’t hard to get your handhelds like the iPhone or iPod replaced, now they blame you or make you wait forever.
I agree about Jony, the iPhone 5 was peak Apple design, and it comes back with no headphone jack in the 12.
The generosity of Apple's support during Steve's era was unparalleled. It created a great deal of goodwill for the company within the iPhone/Mac community. Like you said, supports now is delayed, difficult, rigid, and merciless.
Somewhere along the line, Apple forgot that its retail stores and support were products in and of themselves.
They also grew exponentially and started serving everyone, not just technophiles. Support at such a large scale is an interesting problem. The apple store in my city always has lines out the door and the store is huge. They probably have to handle everything from broken devices to general troubleshooting, and for everyone from tech empathetic individuals to ludites, old people to young, and reasonable to agressive and entitled. All face to face in their stores.
They had those before too. They could have just sent them away with a refurb like they used to, in and out quickly instead of corralling them waiting for screen repairs.
For 25+ years I'm not sure I've ever thought of the Mac market as primarily technophiles, so much as a crowd interested in the "pursuit aesthetic" and notably not interested in looking behind the technical curtain.
The user group that was technical was a relatively late demographic. But Macs were always (well, since my memories in 90's) targeted towards this odd trifecta of the media production crowd (high-dollar professionals and aspiring high-dollar creators), academics, and grandparents (people with money who just wanted things to 'work'). Still seems that way to me, I guess. The closed nature of the hardware and the traditional lack of servicing to people who wanted to "break" things even on the software front was always a bit off-putting to technophiles until relatively recently (2013-2020ish?), but I might say there was a bit of a blind eye towards the faults in light of the awesome advantages. The fading appeal is likely just a more honest assessment of the platform/ecosystem in light of improving options (linux from the factory with working drivers, WSL). I mean, thank God for Apple driving quality in hardware and software. Maybe that's what you meant by technophiles - those with a love of what technology can be in its most refined and integrated sense, rather than the nerds who love to tear shit apart and improve it.
Phones, on the other hand, are an everybody thing, but that broad appeal goes back even to the first iPhone at the turn of the century to my memory. Ever since Apple has had stores, I think the phone/ipad/accessory/gadget crowd has been an ever-present customer.
We may indeed have a slightly different definition of technophile, to me it's early adopters and "gadget" people. One of the first recipiets of a Mac was Stephen Fry for example, but I imagine he has less interest in code or hardware, just enthusiastic about what the device can do for the user.
The early adopters of smartphones were people excited by what it could offer, I remember being distinctly dissapointed at what seemed like a closing ecosystem, opaque hardware and an end of an era in general computing. Things have progressed since then and so has my outlook mind you.
Even as a software developer I would not consider myself a technophile and certainly not an early adopter. More a begrudingly up to date luddite.
> Just my opinions, worth what you paid for 'em.
Considering the cost of my internet in Australia that may actually be non-zero! But they were worthwile opinions, so I'll accept that cost.
> One of the first recipiets of a Mac was Stephen Fry for example, but I imagine he has less interest in code or hardware, just enthusiastic about what the device can do for the user.
Douglas Adams was a fan as well [1]. He wrote sometimes in a Mac magazine whose name escapes me at the moment. He was an über-technophile.
They got into shrinking hardware and made great consumer gadgets that were not expandable with hardware but much better. The first iPhone had a headphone jack, it didn’t need a weird one like the Sony Erickson, I don’t think the palm had one. I had used a Mac in grade school with a mean teacher that died of cancer (they said thats why she was so mean, I don’t buy it), it played crappy math games, and Oregon trail, it looked weird since I was used to windows and my friend got a Mac laptop for school that was nice I think it was a G3 or something. No more locked down than any laptop of that era.
The iPod didn’t have expandable storage, but nobody did and AA or AAA batteries sucked. The iPhone didn’t have battery or storage upgrades but it was a full Unix computer in your pocket.
Steve Jones mentioned why he chose mechanical, it stored more songs, in 2002 you didn’t have many gigabytes. The iPod was the size of a deck of cards, it wasn’t much larger. You listed an MP3 player you needed to add storage to, when SD cards were 8mb or 16mb for the period.
You could get 2GB flash on the iPod nano. I wouldn’t have liked the nex one, the battery life was probably worst, the iPods had good monochrome at the beginning, and the good ones they were fighting were the rio karma which also used HDD, battery, and the Archos were good too, and no different aside from the iPod needing iTunes.
Apple brought it on themselves with their anti-repair stance. Third party repair companies are literally begging them for parts so they can service Apple products. In other industries, there are a large number of quality technicians who can service consumer products without a problem.
Yeah it was so easy to walk in with a problem knowing Apple was gonna take care of it (except the MacBook problem but I didn’t use a MacBook). You knew you didn’t need an appointment, 20 mins in to get a nice person who looked at it, saw your problem and said ok well take care of it, here’s another one.
Incredible service at that time, something that Samsung and others didn’t have. Now I get some asshole that says it’s not an issue or it’ll take 2hr to fix the screen, then they break it anyway and give me another phone that isn’t unlocked and I have to go again or call the carrier because Apple fucked up.
I had very very negative experience with Apple hardware issues and I agree so much about how bad is the service now.
First time on a very brand new MacBook Pro (1 day old). The laptop screen was glitching for no reason. The service center took it for repair, and when they gave it back, they visibly damaged the computer in the process (with a screwdriver they damaged part of the case), and then denied causing the damages.
At the end, they didn't even fix the issue (they changed motherboard, when it was obviously a screen or screen cable issue, not a motherboard one because the issue didn't appear on screenshots nor on external monitors).
I had to take the losses, I hate this company so much for this, by principle.
Second time, the MagSafe-style charger of my other MacBook computer took fire, Apple never acknowledged the issue, and neither offered replacement and pointed only to legal and stopped responding.
This company really has shitty processes handling defects in their own products.
I keep buying because the alternatives are very weak in comparison and outdated, but really, if you get a bad product from Apple you are fucked.
You should have complained more, I never would get that service, and my friend has had his screen replaced and never had problems as long as he had applecare or was under warranty.
>I keep buying because the alternatives are very weak in comparison and outdated, but really, if you get a bad product from Apple you are fucked.
I think the M1 is great but I wouldn't use a normal x86 from them.
Telling someone in effect "they're holding it wrong" after being severely scalded by a company and then recommending their products probably isn't going to get them to switch back.
I had a 2008 iMac HDD fail when it was barely out of warranty in either late 2009 or very early 2010 and was charged full price for the repair, then a "we'll recycle it for free" when my barely 1 year old iPod Touch decided to stop connecting via USB after updating it to iOS4.
In 2013 the same Apple store replaced a 3rd party stick of RAM in my iMac for an Apple one for free when I sent it to fix the bad hinge on that year's model.
That sucks, I had never gone in after warranty though, maybe once it was under a month and they gave me another one. Usually if you get a nice genius they’ll help you out, I didn’t try after the warranty and just repaired it myself. Knowing how bad they are now, I will never set foot in one again and I’d rather repair it myself after a year.
