Apple Store Employees Aren't Allowed To Say 'Crash', 'Bug', or 'Problem' (theguardian.com) 308
Long-time Slashdot reader mspohr shares a Guardian article which argues that Apple Store employees "are underpaid, overhyped and characters in a well-managed fiction story" who "use emotional guile to sell products":
When customers run into trouble with their products, geniuses are encouraged to sympathize, but only by apologizing that customers feel bad, lest they implicate Apple's products as the source of the trouble. In this gas-lit performance of a "problem free" brand philosophy, many words are actually verboten for staff. Do not use words like crash, hang, bug, or problem, employees are told. Instead say does not respond, stops responding, condition, issue, or situation. Avoid saying incompatible; instead use does not work with. Staff have reported the absurdist dialogues that can result, like when they are not allowed to tell customers that they cannot help even in the most hopeless cases, leading customers into circular conversations with employees able neither to help nor to refuse to do so....
[I]n a move so ridiculous it's almost certain to be a hit, the Genius Bar has been rebranded the "Genius Grove". Windows are opened to blur the distinction between inside and outside, and the stores are promoted as quasi-public spaces. "We actually don't call them stores any more," the new head of retail at Apple, former Burberry executive Angela Ahrendts (2017 salary: $24,216,072), recently told the press. "We call them town squares."
The article argues that since there launch in 2001, Apple Stores "have raked in more money -- in total and per square foot -- than any other retailer on the planet, transforming Apple into the world's richest company in the process."
But it also complains that Apple's wealth "flows from the privatization of publicly funded research, mixed with the ability to command the low-wage labor of our Chinese peers, sold by empathetic retailers forbidden from saying 'crash'."
[I]n a move so ridiculous it's almost certain to be a hit, the Genius Bar has been rebranded the "Genius Grove". Windows are opened to blur the distinction between inside and outside, and the stores are promoted as quasi-public spaces. "We actually don't call them stores any more," the new head of retail at Apple, former Burberry executive Angela Ahrendts (2017 salary: $24,216,072), recently told the press. "We call them town squares."
The article argues that since there launch in 2001, Apple Stores "have raked in more money -- in total and per square foot -- than any other retailer on the planet, transforming Apple into the world's richest company in the process."
But it also complains that Apple's wealth "flows from the privatization of publicly funded research, mixed with the ability to command the low-wage labor of our Chinese peers, sold by empathetic retailers forbidden from saying 'crash'."
Sounds like Mobil Oil ... (Score:5, Funny)
... back when I was a suit.
At a meeting, I told management that we had a major problem.
My boss corrected me saying, "We don't have problems, we have opportunities."
I said, "OK, then I have nothing to report."
A big wheel raised his hand to my boss and said to me, "No, go ahead and report."
I told him. "We have an opportunity that's causing a major problem."
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"Well then, we have an opportunity to embarrass ourselves big-time and make our customers leave to participate in opportunities at our competitors."
Re: Sounds like Mobil Oil ... (Score:2)
The employee that comes up with a solution will be rewarded. With reputation if not money.
Or that there is an opportunity to improve the situation, improve profits, and/or improve the customer experience.
Every problem noticed is an opportunity for somebody, maybe an opportunity for somebody else.
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The problem still exists though, it is the idiot who thinks the problem goes away by renaming it. Ie, taking a pithy aphorism and treating it as literal truth rather than knowing what it means.
Re: Sounds like Mobil Oil ... (Score:5, Insightful)
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If people at your company think that phrasing things differently is what will help them improve, then you're in a corporate cargo cult.
I see it mostly as the culmination of a linguistic arms race. The thing is, we as developers tend to look at first-order solutions to problems, if there's a bug the code needs fixing. If there's technical debt the code needs refactoring. If there's outdated code it needs upgrading. If we're very blunt about the negatives we can make any solution look bad, even when it's a solid workhorse that has served and continues to serve most the users well and has adapted to different business requirements and deliver
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It was an opportunity to avoid accountability for skimping on safety and the resulting environmental damage.
Oh come on, this is an easy one! (Score:2)
Trying to understand the opportunity involved in BP dumping billions of barrels of crude into the Gulf of Mexico with Deepwater Horizon... exactly who benefited here?
"We have an opportunity to test the problem-solving skills of our best engineers & roughnecks. Further, we can test the efficacy of the world's oil spill clean-up technology."
See? That wasn't so hard. ;)
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Trying to understand the opportunity involved in BP dumping billions of barrels of crude into the Gulf of Mexico with Deepwater Horizon... exactly who benefited here?
BP benefits from a legal ecosystem which permits them to risk such happenings without being held ultimately responsible for the cleanup.
Re: Sounds like Mobil Oil ... (Score:2)
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Technically speaking, Apple store desired language, fully complies with their restricted access closed garden. Need to pigeon hole Apple in you mind, consider and Ladies and Gentlemen's computer club and cheeky fucker's ain't invited. Yes, that store language is typical of that kind of club, no one is ever really at fault, the environment is creative whilst always remaining pleasant. Don't buy into that lifestyle, don't buy into Apple products, as simple as that. They most certainly do have their place wit
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Don't buy into that lifestyle
And that's exactly what they are selling: a lifestyle, a pleasant fantasy, or an "experience". Something that many marketing managers are keen on these days, thanks in part to Apple's success in doing that. And people like it. Though I'd have to agree that it is taken to ridiculous levels these days.
Full disclosure: I do own Apple products. For one, I prefer iOS - walls and all - over Android. And while I did some app development, I much preferred Objective-C over Java. But I don't buy into Apple's
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Part of that lifestyle they're selling is the lie that users of their products are at the cutting edge, using Apples innovative products.
This marketing style, like most of their work, is of course derivative as hell. It is how e.g. the sports branch went from commoditised sneakers to 'Just Do It!' lifestyle markers, increasing their markup by magnitudes at the same time.
Apple is a branding and marketing exercise, the Nike of the computer industry.
Re: Sounds like Mobil Oil ... (Score:2)
Apple is an overmarketed Buick in a world full of Chevys. Stop getting off on your Mercedes/BMW hype. There's nothing that great about brand X commodity hardware over brand Y.
My 'squeaky plastic' laptop cost about as much as the accessories and dongles required to use a one-port-wonder Apple laptop. If I want to spend as much as an Apple laptop there are a huge number of excelleny non-Apple choices I can make.
It is nice that smug Apple types have joined the discussion for illustration purposes, though.
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< and > are seen as HTML code.
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Note of clarification, I do not own any Apple products and never have
If you had, you might have gone to an Apple user's group meeting at least once. Pathetic things, really. You spend as much time learning about products for sale as you do about learning things, or at least that's how it was back in the 68k days. The only cool thing about it was getting to see the latest portable macs.
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This seems to be an issue with some types of management. They apparently think by banning certain words, that somehow the problems associated with those words magically goes away. Or, perhaps more likely, they just get sick of hearing about the same old problems over and over, and instead of buckling down and actually *solving* those problems (which requires hard work + competence), they simply ban the key phrases used to describe those problems, thus, "solving" the problem on their end, since they no lon
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Re:Sounds like Mobil Oil ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Heh, yeah. It's a little sad how something that starts out as an explicit rejection of dogma and over-reliance on process can itself become dogmatic in a very short period of time. I guess that's just human nature. My takeaway is that relying on any sort of single methodology (without regular introspection) to achieve excellence is ultimately doomed to fail, because without understanding the motivation behind an innovative / effective methodology or process, one is doomed to either misapply it where it doesn't make sense, or to continue to use that same process beyond its useful lifespan.
Naturally, a manager who bans words they don't like to hear isn't going to be interested in much introspection or innovation in their workers' processes. Dogma is so much more comfortable to fall back on, because you don't have to actually think, or make hard decisions.
Re:Sounds like Mobil Oil ... (Score:5, Insightful)
I once wrote a longish essay saying more or less that.
React - you eat prawns that have been warm (which they have, because you live near the Mediterranean 5000 years ago) and you get ill and throw up.
Reason - you notice the connection between eating prawns that have been warm (which they have, because you live near the Mediterranean 5000 years ago) and being ill. You become noticeably less keen on prawns.
Religion - eating prawns is taboo! Don't even look at them, sinner!
Except now we have refrigeration.
I'd accidentally hit upon somebody's model, but I forget the name.
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It doesn't scare me, but then I don't know what "intertia" is.
Or they saw a TED talk - and believed it (Score:5, Insightful)
One business that has always been profitable is telling people that changing there attitude will change their situation. Currently, TED talks are a popular platform for this. "If you see everything as an opportunity, it becomes an opportunity!" Some people believe that and there will always be people who believe that because believing the trope is much easier than the alternative - facing and solving hard problems.
It's believable for two reasons. It's so attractive - we WANT t believe that all these hard problems can be solved just by changing our attitude. Also, it's inverse is true, making it an attractive fallacy of the inverse. It's true that if we have a defeatist, hopeless, victim attitude, we won't solve our problems.* We'll whine about them, we'll blame others, and we won't solve anything.*
Of course does NOT mean that the right attitude magically solves our problems. A "can do" attitude, fortitude, looking for the opportunities we can leverage, determination is a *prerequisite* to finding solutions. It's not the solution. It's what you have to do *before* you find the solutions, and *after* you frankly acknowledge the problem.
* If this truth that an attitude of victimhood and blaming others doesn't solve any problems reminds you of a certain political party, that's not my fault. They chose that approach.
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The fake patting in the back and fake "positive" attitude was revolting, and it discussed me more than going to an evangelist mass.
Coincidentally, or not, the failed people that I know that did not have any particular strong skills to keep a job in the recession, went on being "coaches".
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The fake patting in the back and fake "positive" attitude was revolting
Oh yes, corporate culture. Expressed in the language used in team meetings, documents, and corporate communication, and the drivel from the mouths of managers. As well as in the absolutely hideous corporate "art" hanging in meeting rooms (3 stylized figures lifting a heavy pyramid: I know it means teamwork but it sure looks like slave labour...)
It's the stuff that eventually drove me to leave my previous client where I had been working for years. People at my current client thankfully don't put up with
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Your attitude to problems will not fix it, but it may be a cog in the process.
But like everything it needs to be well balanced. IT negativity and sarcasm often backfires with non IT folks. Because they think they are getting a product while they are getting a solution to a particular problem. This means a bug in the code will need to evaluate to see if it a bug where the code isn’t working as designed or the user is trying something it wasn’t meant to do and causing problems.
Store computer repa
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As a devils advocate, language dictates reality. Propogandists, psychologists, marketers, have all known this for a hundred years. We have switched to saying "challenges" instead of "problems" at works and i feel that it does have a psychological impact that you can't just ignore.
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This isn't the same thing at all. "Crash" could mean a ton of different things - the system has hard-locked, the Mac equivalent of a BSD, the actual hard drive head has crashed into the platter, "spinning beach ball," etc. Just like your BMW dealer doesn't tell you that your car is "making funny noises." It's a vague, unhelpful word for the expert to use.
Some other other words (like "problem" vs. "issue") are just branding but it doesn't really matter. Just like they call the tech support guys "geniuses" -
This pretty much sums it up (Score:3, Insightful)
Big mistake. Apple turned it slow with the infamous updates "to keep old batteries happy".
I just switched to Android, a 200 Euro/USD phone is more than enough to use and drop every couple of years.
On the bright side, I am not also giving my business to a company that only cares about fake political correctness and about using their foothold on business to promote whatever Tim Cook things about political or sexual issues instead of caring into improving technology.
128 MB? (Score:2)
Wow, you got screwed. I thought my iPhone 4S' 16 GB was small! :P
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Yep. Stupid Apple iDevices with no ways to upgrade physical storages. :(
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I am using an Android One, Xiamoi A1, Google updates instead of Xiaomi and very pleased with the experience. So pleased that I gave another to my wife, and chose to buy a Samsung Smartwatch instead of an iWatch too. And a Chromecast Ultra capable of doing 4K.
Putting things in perspective, if you shop around well, at least
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The phones: Xiaomi A1 64 GB for $188 [ebay.com], iPhone Xs for $999 [apple.com]
The watches: Samsung Galaxy for $126 [ebay.com], and the Apple Watch for $400 [apple.com]
The Chromecast/Apple TV: Chromecast Ultra 4K for $59 [google.com], Apple TV for $179 [apple.com]
Seems his claims check out. I guess in your world, stating actual, hard facts you don't like is a troll? Most people consider that an education, but that might break your reality distortion field, so better to simply shout TROLL! and run away, eh?
Re:This pretty much sums it up (Score:4, Insightful)
The last one I saw, where they decided to enforce "diversity", showing an element of each excluded type, instead of showing viable products, was too much to take and process, and I stopped worrying about seeing them after that.
PS. I am of an older generation, and all that fake politeness and made up political correctness makes me want to puke.
Re:This pretty much sums it up (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: This pretty much sums it up (Score:2)
No, anti-political-correctness is just honesty.
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Being honest or right is not a requirement of free speech.
Re: This pretty much sums it up (Score:2)
Correct. And?
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It doesn't justify the censorship I was complaining about. Glad you agree.
Wait, what? (Score:3)
Anti-political-correctness is fascism pretending to be a defence of free speech. It's supreme irony that for us to have free speech some people think that we have to ban criticism.
So criticism (anti-political correctness) of your criticism (political correctness) of other people's speech is fascism? Why isn't it free speech? How many layers of recursion do we have to go through? Or is it an unnecessary exercise, because the humorless scolds of the left always magically end up in the virtuous column?
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It's the silencing and censorship that is the problem.
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See, anti-political-correctness activist editors have to silence posts they disagree with. They must exert control, they can't help it.
Re:This pretty much sums it up (Score:4, Insightful)
"You thought 1984 was describing communism, yet here you have the most successful capitalist corporation engaging in its methods."
That's no news. *Every* single corporation chooses communism for its internal organization. How is it, then, that they shout north and south communism not working and/or being evil's incarnation?
* Central planning? check
* Ownership of the means of production? check
* Democracy disallowed? check
* Free market disallowed? check
* Punishment of dissidents? check
* Messages about the common benefit being above the individuals? check
* Gross unbalance of power and perks favoring the politburo? check
* Control of public speech to disallow anything but the party's mantras? check
Re:This pretty much sums it up (Score:5, Insightful)
That's not communism. You're describing fascism.
Also, confusing several points in order to fit them with your metaphor.
Central planning in a corporation is done not by a committee responsible to the lower ranks in the corporate society, but to personal and outside money interests.
In communism it would be the other way around.
Similarly, in a corporation workers tend not to own the means of production - unless they themselves own the controlling interest in the corporation AND are the ones dictating the future course of the corporation.
Again, you'd need that for communism.
Democracy... Oh boy... That one is a prerequisite of a prerequisite for communism. Literally.
Control of the government MUST be in the hands of the people for any kind of a community-based system.
It is quite literally a government of the people, for the people and by the people.
Why do you think all those supposedly communist regimes kept sticking "People's republic of..." or "Democratic this or that..." in front of the name of the country?
Free market disallowed? WTF are you even talking about here? Free market within a corporation? Of what? Lunches? Office supplies?
As for communism... It's not against free market. It's more like market free.
You know... like how atheism is not a competing religion to other religions - it's a "don't need it" alternative.
The idea is that after the population seizes the means of production, including government and democracy, it will run so fuckin smooth that everything will be for free.
Sorta like bitcoin, but not just for money - for EVERYTHING.
Punishment of dissidents etc...
That's clearly veering off into description of a totalitarian system there - which is not a necessary function of communism (it's supposed to be a counter-solution to such systems) nor is it present solely in nominally communist regimes.
"Needs of the many", political power being corrupt, official narratives... none of that is endemic to communism.
Those are bugs (or as in setting the well-being of a species/society above that of the individual - a feature of biological existence) common to all social arrangements, not just governments.
BUT... you ARE forgetting to add an essential feature of a corporation - a battle royale competition with outside interests.
I.e. State of perpetual war with the final goal not of peace, liberation or even dominion - but of expansion through destruction and/or absorption of opposition.
Add that to the mix and you have genuine fascism. All it lacks is goosestepping - most corporations already feature some kind of uniform for its minions.
Communism, again, would be closer to a hippy collective... a commune if you will.
"Check this thing out man. It's like... freedom from the oppression and toil, man. And brotherhood of humanity, like, everywhere man."
It's really a great concept. Much like FTL space travel, eternal youth, matter replicators...
Maybe with robots, free energy, free health, free education and a comprehensive realignment of personal goals away from consumerism and sectarianism and towards personal growth and achievement of both individuals and the humanity we might get to something akin to what theoretical communism should be.
But not bloody likely in this century. Maybe in the 23rd?
Re:This pretty much sums it up (Score:4, Insightful)
You're describing fascism. If you you were describing communism the 131999 Apple employees would be far better off and Tim Cook wouldn't be worth $800m by himself.
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You realise that what was practiced in the USSR didn't even remotely resemble the theoretical principle of communism and instead like in many countries resembled a wide mix of different political philosophies right?
What you're describing is fascism. What you're also describing is that you seem to not know that a big part of the practices of the USSR were actually fascist and that raw communism fails due to being an economically unstable form of government incompatible with human tendencies to compete with o
Re: This pretty much sums it up (Score:2)
1984 was describing Stalinism.
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When did you buy your iPhone? My king ant's early 2015 6+'s battery went to crapper when the world found out and had to get the $29 battery replacement many months ago.
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People are full of it, and anti-Apple comments get modded up here.
My 6s+ is still running strong. IOS12 seems to have sped it up too.
Might consider the battery swap while it's still cheap... 90% and I have an anecdote from a coworker that her phone nosedived fast when she got hers swapped.
No need nor desire to swap my phone. It's still great and has a headphone jack.
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That's funny; my iPhone 6 Plus still shows 93% battery capacity, and has NEVER suffered a slowdown.
I'll just mimic your actions from above:
Like that story is believable.
Nice try, troll.
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Just Apple, ah? (Score:5, Insightful)
I sure as hell get that at every shop I walk into these days. And it ain't restricted to tech products at all.
My interaction with most sales staff at most shops usually end very abruptly, and often rudely now. Simply because they are clearly not trying to help in any meaningful way. Which is usually is around questions of specs and function of the products they are meant to be selling!
They may as well be machines.
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My interaction with most sales staff at most shops usually end very abruptly, and often rudely now.
I shop online. Fuck retail.
Re:Just Apple, ah? (Score:5, Insightful)
Apple pays notably more than minimum wage at every Apple store I've visited, because they've been _good_ at their jobs, either as sales people or as people excited to learn about technologies and paying for their tuition. Yes, many have been fashion conscious and far, far younger than me, but they've been quite helpful. And when I have a problem beyond the tools in house, they've replaced it, once with an upgrade, _immediately_. I've found the service and general quality of their devices to justify the extra cost, when I can afford it. And I've in turn pointed their staff to local developer or technology groups in software or hardware they're interested in, and tried to inform them of the workarounds for problems I encounter so that they can use those solutions in their suite of "issue" handling tools.
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Apple pays notably more than minimum wage at every Apple store I've visited, because they've been _good_ at their jobs, either as sales people or as people excited to learn about technologies and paying for their tuition. Yes, many have been fashion conscious and far, far younger than me, but they've been quite helpful. And when I have a problem beyond the tools in house, they've replaced it, once with an upgrade, _immediately_. I've found the service and general quality of their devices to justify the extra cost, when I can afford it. And I've in turn pointed their staff to local developer or technology groups in software or hardware they're interested in, and tried to inform them of the workarounds for problems I encounter so that they can use those solutions in their suite of "issue" handling tools.
Totally believable, and pretty much my experience with our local Apple Store, too.
Apple products are PERFECT (Score:3, Funny)
Everything is awesome, all Apple products are flawlessly perfect. ~ Duke of Duloc
And so the little BUG never got fixed. As a result, several web-facing products began quietly failing. Nobody dared report it as the Ecuadorian embassy is already full up. And so the little BUG grew and grew. One morning, Apple work up to most of the Apple missing. A large worm was then observed munching away down Cupertino Ave and Apple Way, devouring all in its path. It had become unstoppable.....
And the rest kids, is history. Today we can look at these Apple products on display in our museum. Note they are heavily sealed for safety reasons....
The glass of the screen is (Score:2)
no longer contiguous.
I'm sad to hear you are having a non-supported issue with your excellent aPple device, but I'm happy to tell you for merely another 1K, you can replace it without having to retype your contact list.
The last apple device in my home was a Mac II CX which as solely running A/UX because I needed X windows compatibility. I later moved to a Graphon X terminal using a 38K modem
Endgame (Score:3)
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This sounds great! (Score:4, Funny)
I don't own an Apple computer but if I did and I needed tech support (which I wouldn't), I would make it my mission to use all the forbidden language and act confused when they didn't respond using the same language. When they finally quit the linguistic acrobatics I'd start yelling, "HERETIC! HE SPOKE THAT WHICH SHALL NOT BE SPOKEN!", pointing and maybe jump on on a table [theblaze.com] to maximize store-wide attention.
And that's how I plan to get banned from every Apple "town square". ;)
Re: This sounds great! (Score:2)
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Your sense of humor stinks and yet it detects nothing at all!
Testing an OS (Score:2)
Hire smarter people using merit to work on the OS.
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Hire smarter people using merit to work on the OS.
You have to test it on complete idiots at some stage, just to see what they'll do... like, drag all of the software into the trash can and then empty it. Although to be fair, that was the 7-year-old child of one of the users I once supported.
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I work in the hell of first-line tech support, and whenever I can't reproduce a problem, I have to walk across the site and go visit the user in person so I can view exactly what it is they are doing wrong. Sometimes they do things so strangely wrong that no technical user would ever think of it - like managing all their files via the MS Word open dialog, because they don't know how to open a file manager window. Or spending hours in frustration unable to find their emails because they accidentally clicked
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Total apathy. The users cannot irritate me, because I have not a single fuck to give about any of them.
Genius (Score:2)
The West Wing (Score:4, Funny)
"We agreed not to use the word recession in The White House."
"Then what do we call it?"
"A bagel."
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"Hamburger time!"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=msGvEtmR970
Genius Grove? (Score:3)
Now you're just fucking with us.
The word that may not be spoken (Score:5, Funny)
"Overpriced"
Different than what I thought (Score:2)
I hate this article. (Score:5, Insightful)
Sometimes the Guardian is a great source, but other times they're just delusional.
But it also complains that Apple's wealth "flows from the privatization of publicly funded research, mixed with the ability to command the low-wage labor of our Chinese peers, sold by empathetic retailers forbidden from saying 'crash'."
"Privatization of publicly funded research"? That's mind-bogglingly stupid. Show me a PhD economist who claims to prove otherwise, and I'll show you extremely strong evidence that motivated reasoning is a thing. By that standard we should run all airlines as public utilities because none of our current plane designs would be possible without WW1-era-government-funded R&D.
The claim that Apple retail employees are "low-paid" is slightly less stupid, so I'll bother to refute: as someone who is roughly 19 years into a retail career, I have never made the same hourly Apple employees do. I know, I have repeatedly applied to their stores, because even the shelf-stocking guy makes 30% more then I currently do. To get their wages in a non-Apple setting you need to be at least a department supervisor. It's also an amazing place to work precisely because they don't have commission. You can sell someone a $400 iPad or $799 Mac Mini instead of selling them a $3k laptop or $6k Mac Pro because you make the same either way.
In terms of Chinese wages being low, that's a bit of left-wing lore that was true ten years ago, but is quite exaggerated today. Chinese factory workers would not put up with the Communist Party if they hadn't been given some very nice raises in recent years. They make less then US factory workers, particularly factory workers on old Union contracts, but not that much less. It's also somewhat silly to damn Apple for doing something literally every other company in the world does.
The rest of the article it doesn't improve. No shit Apple tries to control every aspect of the customer experience, so does literally every other company on the planet. At my retail company there are actually tasks that I am supposed to perform in 90 seconds, and the computer adds all these tasks up, plus all the time I have devoted to said tasks, and if I was taking an average of 2 minutes per task I would in huge trouble. No shit Apple wages (which start at $14.50 an hour and go up fairly rapidly from there) can't support a family of four, but if it couldn't support a family of three half my coworkers would have literally starved to death years ago. The only guys who make $14.50 an hour are management and the handful of guys who got hired in back before they started hiring High School kids with no home improvement experience.
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before they started hiring High School kids with no home improvement experience.
I don't know who you are working for, but the big orange box by me used to be staffed with retired trade professionals who could actually give you solid advice about installation, troubleshooting, codes, etc. Now, it's mostly young kids who if you ask for a GFI breaker look at you like you are speaking a foreign language.
I've found Apple's customer service and tech support to be real good. They don't bug you if you are just looking and when I've had to get tech support they took their time, diagnose the iss
You're misreading the quote (Score:2)
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That's a smart-sounding way of putting it because it's very abstract. If you're an activists (and the Guardian are proud to be activists) you use that type of language all the time because it makes you sound several hundred times smarter and it's also extremely hard to disprove. However in this case it's trivial to disprove.
Apple computer did not "build itself on the public dime." They did sell a lot of Apple IIs to schools, but they did so at a huge discount because they figured that dominance in education
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Just about every school system in my vicinity is transferring large amounts of public tax dollars to Apple for their products.
So what? The only reasonable question is whether that actually costs more than the other options. It's not actually at all clear that it doesn't. Macs aren't invulnerable to security problems but Windows appears from a distance to have been designed specifically to promote them, mostly because it hasn't really been designed in years. It's just grown like a malignant tumor, sprouting new attack surfaces while keeping all of the old ones. Linux is a lumpy issue because you have to find people to maintain it w
Oh so common in the corporate world. (Score:5, Insightful)
but only by apologizing that customers feel bad
This has become the norm in any corporate apology. No matter how badly they've performed, the best you'll get out of any big organisation is something along the lines of:
"We strive at all times to provide the highest levels of customer service and satisfaction. I am sorry if you feel that we have failed on this occasion."
Never any kind of admission that they have ballsed up, no matter how much evidence there is that they have made a phenomenal pig's ear of things. Instead they try to suggest that it's your fault really - you're being over-sensitive, and it's not really their fault.
The really stupid aspect of this is that a decent apology can win you customers. I used to run a small mail order business, and when we got something wrong we would instantly take the blame and apologise. "Oh, whoops! Sorry - that's my fault." People were so surprised at this kind of honesty that it won us some of our most loyal customers. Big business though seems absolutely determined never to issue a real apology, and by so doing they merely alienate the general public.
probably "legal" department (Score:4, Insightful)
If you actually admit to a fault, you provide evidence for a lawsuit.
Re: (Score:2)
War is peace (Score:3, Insightful)
âoeWar is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.â
What, you thought only communism used propaganda?
This comes from the people who made the infamous 1984 ad.
Re: (Score:2)
The ad was done by Chiat-Day, an advertising agency. That aside, the ad was commenting on the "big brother"-ness of IBM and their mono-culture. Apple was the subversive liberator.
This hasn’t been my experience (Score:2)
There are a number of things I don’t like about Apple right now... but this story doesn’t ring true to me.
I went in this past summer with an iPhone 6S - GPS no longer worked. The “genius” (yeah, I do hate that) listened to what I’d done to attempt a remedy, said “I’ve seen this problem before, but it’s usually been with the 6 not the 6S”, then gave me a replacement 6S. No hassles, no dissembling, no attempt to upsell.
In summer 2017 I went in with a 2015
Not so sure if this is a bad move (Score:2)
Do not use words like crash, hang, bug, or problem, employees are told
Actually I think this isn't a bad thing. I'm a software engineer. When me and the missus have dinner and talk about the work day, I'd say for example, "there was a problem with the app but I was able to figure it out". She sometimes responds with "why does your job consist of so much problems?"
It's gotten in my lingo to just call everything a problem. It's not a bad thing, my job is fixing those and delivering a working end product. But I think it makes it more understandable to regular people to not call i
Makes some sense (Score:2)
Do not use words like crash, hang, bug, or problem, employees are told. Instead say does not respond, stops responding, condition, issue, or situation. Avoid saying incompatible; instead use does not work with.
It see
Re: (Score:2)
Incompatible may have a precise meaning, but only nerds and tech-oriented people know its meaning.
Almost every other gadget on the market has been compatible with other brands: cassette tape, VHS, DVD, Blu-Ray, etc.
You will now point out "VHS vs Beta" of course, and you may also mention "HD DVD" and especially game consoles. But remember that a lot of people back then never heard of Beta and a lot of today's users never heard of VHS either. HD DVD was such a failure that most people never heard of it.
There'
newspeak (Score:2)
If Apple would invest these resources in some programmers.... (a.k.a. developers! developers! developers! (remember that one?))
LOL "geniuses" (Score:2, Funny)
Aerospace-style alternatives (Score:2)
Crash: Rapid unplanned program exit
Bug: Unintended program functionality
Hang: Unscheduled process suspension
And White House employees aren't allowed to say.. (Score:2)
And White House employees aren't allowed to say dossier, collusion, or impeachment. True story.
Re: (Score:2)
We actually don't call them stores any more... (Score:2)
We actually don't call them stores any more, we call them town squares.
Heh, fuck, I could not better this in trying make a cringe-worthy capitalistic statement - It's so perfect I almost suspect it's astroturfing - Yes Apple! please do come and run our town, I for one welcome our new technological overlords.
I don't see anything wrong with this (Score:2)
Apple has created an impression of being significantly more stable than Windows. Take away the bloatware and buy decent hardware and that's just not true. Now, to be fair it's often hard to do those things with Windows (I got st
FaaS: don't leave home without it (Score:2)
It's a big jump—fraught with insecurity—to go from living at home to living on your own. Who's going to tell you you're still awesome when the best laid plans of callow fledglings screw the pooch?
Apple Inc.: I will! Me, me, me, meeeeeee!
Oh, what a complex world you weave when Fiction as a Service becomes the killer application of sugar-laced independence.
Re: (Score:2)
If you think that behavior is limited to Apple, you are naive. I've been paid to lie and cheat at multiple companies. I usually try to leave such dirt-bags, but such had not been easy during recessions.