Apple is evil

[Note: copied from GWD.]

How can Apple be evil, you say? It sounds, preposterous doesn’t it? Apple’s brand is ranked in the top 10 on the social radar and ranked 20th on Interbrands best global brands.

Lets start with a question. How does one brand reach the top of the brand heap and garner such fierce customer loyalty? By producing a superior product and providing superior customer service. Apple used to do those things.

I’ve worked in the creative field since the beginning of my career and I know those Apple fanatics. Heck, I worked with a pretty big one. He was the guy that would declare outright war on the IT department if they so much as mentioned moving the art dept to PCs. When they told him they wouldn’t support a Mac on the company email system (and this was a $350 million shop, not a tiny biz) he told ‘em, I don’t need your stinkin’ email. Or at least something similar. He posted his huge Apple logo on the door to our work area for all to see and never missed a chance to talk about how superior a Mac was.

I’ve never been that passionate about it but, back then, he was right. If you were doing graphic design in the mid 90′s you needed a Mac. You just did.

But that folks, is called history. No more.

Why Apple is evil

Apple is evil. Pure and simple. I’m not talking Darth Vader, Lord of the Sist evil, but they’re not far from it. Sour grapes aside (I’ll get to my story in a moment), I’m not alone on this.

Terrence O’brien over at switched.com has a great article titled, Is Apple More Evil Than Microsoft? Among the reasons he lists, which are all pretty dead on by the way:

• Apple is less open than Microsoft
• Apple copies other companies, just like Microsoft
• Apple is a bunch of jerks
• Apple only cares about the money

The article is a great lead with many links to supporting arguments. Take the time.

How about the recent hubbub when Apple started to pick and choose which apps could enter their store. TechCrunch has a great write-up on it. Basically, Apple and/or AT&T blocked the Google Voice (of which I’m a fan and user) App from the App Store. It’s such a contentious issue, it has sparked off an FCC investigation (probably a good thing). I don’t even want to go into how evil it is that you tie your iPhone into only one mobile market provider.

Come to think of it, that might not even be eviljust dumb.

And as long as we’re on the subject of things I’m not going to comment upon, how about labor practices. Look, this is the 21st century. If you want to take your product to another country for production because it’s cheaper, I came to terms with globalization a while ago. But you can’t say you’re not an evil company if you allow these types of unfair labor practices to occur.

My personal Apple is evil story

I know you’ve been waiting for it.Why is this guy so upset that he jumps up on his blog box and starts yelling about Apple. The thing is you can already guess the story.

Go to Google and start typing out ipod touch. Before you finish, you’ll see it. ipod touch greyed out wifi. More than 9,000 results. This is not an isolated incident. My iPod Touch hasn’t worked properly in months. It started when the battery wouldn’t hold a charge. Again, go to Google and start typing iPod Touch b and watch the most common search results start to creep up. Problems and replacement start to pop up pretty rapidly. I decide to try an upgrade. It seems to have worked for some, and what have I got to lose. Who can’t see this coming, right? I try the upgrade but the battery still won’t hold a chargebut now I’ve got the bonusthe wifi was greyed out, too.

This weekend, I decided to make one final push to fix it myself. My warranty expires on the 20th so I figured I should finally tackle it before the warranty expires. I went online and spent hours researching, updating, restoring, uninstalling, reinstalling, patching, etc. All to no avail. Then I scheduled an appt at the genius bar figuring someone could either help me or at least tell me what I needed to do to get Apple to honor the warranty that came with my $400 (that’s what it cost me at my time of purchase) touch. In case you didn’t catch it, the iPod touch comes with a warranty. So I got that going for me, right?

The genius barnot so much

So, I go to the Apple store in Annapolis for my appt. Needless to say I am less than impressed. The guy takes my touch and loads it up. I give him the brief rundown on my problem. It won’t load properly all the time, the wifi is greyed out and the battery won’t stay charged. He spends about five minutes getting it to load, going through the settings and talking with one of the other reps there that seems mildly interested. I hear them mumbling back and forth and can distinctly make out hardware failure. He brings the unit over to me and points a small light in the headsets hole. He says there is a small red line in there indicating that there is water damage. I’m told that this of course voids my warranty.

So, I’m basically SOL. Well, I wouldn’t use those words but[insert nervous laugh here].

Of course, I can see no red line, but I’m old. I take his word for it. I have no idea how (or if) water got in there. First of all, I think I would have remembered dropping my touch into the toilet. Though, to be fair, I may go this route before choosing to mail the touch back to Apple. Could it have been a bad seal that allowed moisture to seep into the unit while in my pocket? Maybe. Could I be one of the thousands online now screaming about their iPod issues related to hardware failures, system upgrades or restores. More likely.

I wasn’t really surprised. My wife went through the same exercise some months ago. I thought I might be able to arrive at a different destination. As I walked out of the store with my oldest son, what struck me was how unfair it all felt. I had given good hard-earned money to purchase a product. A product with a warranty. A warranty that is basically worthwell you can guess. When did it become ok for a company, a global brand known for superior products and customer service, to ignore a warranty. I guess now.

Am I mad that my piece of geek love failed. No, not really. Gadgets fail all the time. Here’s why I’m mad:

• I’m mad because they’re not honoring their warranty
• I’m mad because I’m not buying this water horseshit but I can’t prove it.
• I’m mad because I wasted six hours of my time trying to fix my iPod brick (more than three million results to that, but I guess it’s not a common problem).
• I’m really mad that as I was going through my dozens of restore processes that I bought a system upgrade to 3. whatever hoping it would fix the issue. It did not. Add $5 onto my bill. Why am I even being charged for a system update like that.
• I’m mad that this is obviously a serious full-blow problem, yet the genius bar tech or Apple won’t even acknowledge it.
• I’m mad because I never even got a sorry.

Full disclosure: I own a couple shuffles, a Nano and an iPod classic. I may even have to replace the touch. I’m going to be lookinghoping for the company that can come along and give some legitimate competition in this area. Competition is good.

What happens next

I’m going to go back to apple.com, stumble my way around that poorly-organized excuse for a service-oriented web site, and submit my warranty. I’ll let you know what comes out of that if you can’t guess.

Lets be realistic. Apple still has good products and Apple dominates in most of the fields where their products exist. How many people still brag about their MP3 Player or their Zune? There are various rumors about their profit and profit margins but all of them have good or healthy in their somewhere. I don’t think they’re going anywhere anytime soon.

Still, companies start to falter when they forget that each customer contact is an opportunity for a good experienceor a bad one. Someone needs to remind Applequickly.

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