beatworm.co.uk

There’s a small, persistent chorus of dissent that echoes around the net, a companion to the peculiar cult of Apple worship that purchasing a Macintosh computer seems to bring out in some consumers. “Apple computers are all very nice”, it goes ” but they’re overpriced, and tend to be unreliable” . I’m not really sure how much truth there is to it, but like anything repeated more than three times on slashdot , it’s approached the state of a received wisdom amongst that particular strain of technophiliac. Nerds love dogma.

It’s not a very significantly-sized sample, but I have owned/managed six modern Macintosh systems, and my strike rate for hardware problems is exactly 50%. Perhaps interestingly, it’s been entirely limited to the notebooks. I’m not sure if this spells anything significant itself. I can certainly see how portable computers might undergo more stress as part of their normal wear and tear. One trend I am getting a little tired of is what seems to me to be the plummeting standards of product support at Apple.

My powerbook, the same one that originally started me thinking about questionable standards of support , is one of the lucky models that was sold with a battery that’s subject to a recent safety recall . There’s been a lot of this happening recently, to various brands of laptop . From what I’ve read, it’s all down to contamination in the cells, a flaw at the factory manufacturing the base cells that go into Lithium-Ion batteries. This contaminant means the batteries can get too hot in operation, and when hot, potentially catch fire or explode. The cells in question were produced by Sony for assembly into laptop battery packs for various other computer brands. In fact, Apple seemed to be making a point of this, highlighting the fact that the batteries were made by Sony, and mentioning in a subsequent press release that Sony would be picking up the tab for the free replacement program Apple have set up to handle the recall.

So I typed in my serial numbers into the web form, and sure enough my battery was a dud. I was advised to stop using it immediately, and wait for a free replacement. This might take from four to six weeks to ship. This means my portable won’t be very portable for a month or so, which is irritating. On the other hand, I’m going to get a factory new battery, which will probably have a larger charge capacity than my worn in one. Also I didn’t catch fire or explode. Overall, a net positive I think, with some minor inconvenience.

Nine weeks later, there’s been absolutely no sign of this replacement battery. I’ve been getting progressively more twitchy about this after the minimal four-week period passed. I’ve got a confirmation email about the transaction with a tracking number, which fails to work in their online order tracking system. I don’t ever seem to have much luck with Apple store shipments. This one is now well overdue, and I realise I’m going to have to give them a call to try and chase it up. I’m reluctant, remembering how terrible the last session was, but I’m getting increasingly suspicious that something’s gone wrong with the process, and I’ve had a functionally restricted computer for the past two months now.

So I make the call to the support number offered on the useless web tracking form. The robot reads out a menu, with an option for tracking orders or shipments. I press the indicated number. A robot tells me to use the web tracking form, and hangs up on me. Irritated, I redial, and this time wait and choose the ‘Other enquiries’ option. Five minutes or so on hold and I get picked up. Heavy accented English once again, perhaps an off-shore call centre. I explain I’m trying to track a battery replacement for a powerbook G4. I’m asked if I have a reference number. I give him the tracking number I was originally sent by the email robot. There’s a short pause while he does his thing with the number. He asks ‘Is this a battery replacement?’, sounding a little suprised. Declining to point out that I’ve already explained that it is, I agree. He’ll have to transfer me to another department.

Forty-five minutes on hold. Forty-five minutes of obnoxious pop music, too loud for the phone, distorting. So loud I have to hold the receiver a few inches away from my face. Every couple of minutes the volume drops and a voice starts speaking, so I’m compelled to listen closely once more in case it’s a pickup. It’s a robot, telling me a representative will be answering as soon as possible. And then the music blasts in again, deafening. These call queues are a horrible variant on the traditional bus-stop dilemma. Hang up after twenty minutes? What if the mean queue time is twenty-five, and I’m only a few minutes from an answer? I have to make the call, it’s my only realistic avenue of support. What if the next time it’s a forty minute average wait ? Better to stay on the line.

At the end of this ordeal, I’m answered by a female, again an accent, sounds off-shore. She explains helpfully that I’m through to iPod support, asks about the nature of my problem. I’m so stunned I have to ask her to repeat this. She confirms it’s iPod support. I manage to say something about having been put through to the wrong department by the previous operative, but I’m almost lost for words. I think my mood must be detectable from my voice, because she volunteers to see what she can do, referencing other departments. I hand over my details, including all the serial numbers, and the useless tracking number. I’m put on hold for another ten minutes while she looks things up. Thankfully this time it’s just quiet elevator muzak. Not often you find yourself grateful for bland piped music.

She returns with a UPS tracking reference. It doesn’t elucidate any detail other than the information that it was billed and shipped on the 20th of September, with a destination of Bristol, UK. This seems likely to be mine. She tells me that she will escalate this incident, gives me a ticket number, and tells me to call back in a week if it hasn’t fixed itself.

Overall I find this to be a fairly shocking standard of product support. I’m a moderately competent computer user, I wouldn’t bother to trouble the support line for usage or software problems, or anything self inflicted. In all cases I’m calling because I’ve purchased an expensive piece of consumer electronics that has proven to be mechanically faulty as supplied. I can accept that accidents and mistakes can occur, but I’m not sure it makes economic sense to keep purchasing products from a source that seems to guarantee I’ll be spending months waiting for inevitable faults to be corrected (taking into account the previous hardware fault, this powerbook will now have had fifteen-plus weeks of outage/reduced functionality), and spending multiple hours chasing up the state of these orders and repairs.

Another interesting data point is that the first two support incidents I ever reported to Apple were handled magnificently, super friendly support lines, and whizzy next day turnaround on replacements and repairs. Whereas currently, the root of the trouble I’m getting is entirely down to customer service, which although it’s polite, and ultimately helpful, is too unresponsive, and close to incompetent. I’ve got two working theories as to what has changed.

• At the time they were impressing me with customer service, I had valid Applecare for one of the Macintoshes in the house. Perhaps you get a better tier of support if you’re a registered Applecare customer. Unfortunately the only way I can test this hypothesis is by buying another Macintosh, and buying some Applecare, and waiting for a fault, or faking one for test purposes. This plan is both expensive, and perhaps morally dubious.

• Now that Apple have become a mainstream consumer electronics company, selling iTunes and iPods to the Dixons crowd, they’ve had to dramatically streamline their support costs in order to scale to this market size.

Either way, I’m slightly ticked off. I think Apple products are good value for what they offer. I’m a big fan of the software. In particular, I think the modern Mac OS represents the least irritating computer environment I’ve worked in yet. I appreciate that sounds like faint praise, but I think it’s quite a measure of acheivement. I’ve been working with software and computers long enough now, that I appreciate that most of the skill in system design is centered in, for want of a better term, the process of suck-removal . I really appreciate that all the NeXT technologies and principles still have a viable platform, almost twenty years after their inception.

The trouble I have is that commiting oneself to using Macintosh means a commitment to a single supplier. Nobody likes feeling like they’re being peddled a lower quality deal because of a vendor-contrived platform lock-in. The increasingly fashionable anti-Windows grumbling, that Apple are cheeky enough to allude to in their current television advertising , is rooted in a similar sentiment, borne of a peculiar, voluntary form of modern serfdom; indenture to an unsatisfactory software platform in return for maintaining compatability with the status quo. There would be a certain kind of irony in Apple managing to parallel this antagonism by fixing the software, but in turn locking you to a hardware promise they’re not capable of delivering. I wonder how I’ll be feeling about this after the suggested week’s wait.