Having a bad experience with something can certainly turn you off on it. Here to tell us how Apple turned his smile upside down is Shelley Palmer, writing for Ad Age:
“Is Apple Over?” (Tip o’ the antlers to @JonyIveParody.)
Over what? Macho Grande?
I started personal computing on an Apple II circa 1977.
I have hella street cred. Don’t come at me, bro. My Performas, let me show them to you.
On September 7, 2016, I stood on line for an hour to pick up my brand new iPhone 7 Plus.
That’s a pretty neat trick since they weren’t generally released until September 16th. (It doesn’t seem that Palmer received a pre-release review unit based on the details of his story.)
I had made an appointment to be one of the first to pick one up because I was still a blind faith follower of the cult of Apple.
I once was lost. But now am found. Amazing about-face.
There was going to be an issue with the headphone jack… But being one of the faithful means putting aside common sense.
Or getting an iPhone SE. Or not upgrading this year. No one is making you buy an iPhone every year.
Now, it sounds like Palmer has had a rather rough time of it with both his iPhone 7 and 2016 MacBook Pro. Both had severe technical problems. That’s unfortunate. But simply because you had a bad experience, it doesn’t mean that everyone did. There are two iPhone 7s and one 2016 MacBook Pro in the Macalope’s house and they’ve all worked perfectly well. Not necessarily the Macalope’s favorite Apple products of 2016 (those would be the iPhone SE and AirPods), but they function as designed.
Of course, just because the Macalope had a good experience doesn’t mean that everyone did, either. But Palmer doesn’t have a shred of evidence of an endemic problem other than his own anecdote. That’s not how science works.
With the number of iPhones Apple sells, some are bound to be defective—but this was not an isolated incident.
Palmer offers no proof of that other than to speculate that because it was hard for him to get a replacement iPhone 7, Apple must have burned through its imagined stock of replacement units. But Apple always struggles with supply early on because its products are so popular and it’s tough to go from zero to 78 million in a weekend.
What are the odds of receiving one bad iPhone and two bad MacBook Pros in any six-month period in the post-iPod era?
Non-zero! Palmer seems to believe things were better with Apple years ago, but as long as we’re just swinging anecdotes around, the Macalope remembers waiting several months to get an iPhone 4, simply because there weren’t any. He also purchased an iBook with a bum AirPort card as well as one of the infamous CrackBooks. You are more likely to run into these problems if you’re an early adopter.
Who is making decisions about dongles and jacks at Apple?
Senior Vice President of Dongles and Jacks, Jack Dongle, of course. Analysts estimate that by 2023, Apple will be an all-dongles company and will change its name to Just Dongles.
No, of course not. Apple is trying to get its customers to stop relying on wires. If reports are true, wireless charging may take away the problem of charging and listening to music at the same time. AirPods certainly do. This isn’t that hard to see, unless you’re too busy with your foot stomping to notice.
Fanboys may keep buying its products no matter what, but normal consumers are going to have a hard time with this kind of nonsense.
Yes, that’s right, fanbois are all buying defective products over and over again and keeping silent about them because… we hate ourselves or something? No one who promotes such ridiculous tropes ever seems to explain that bit.
The important thing is, we cannot stress enough how dumb and sheep-like Apple fans are. It’s the only way to explain why they’d keep using these devices that don’t work. Assuming we’re throwing out the idea that their devices generally do work and Palmer just had a bad experience.
Is it possible there’s a huge quality control problem with both the iPhone 7 and the 2016 MacBook Pro? The Macalope supposes so. But until you have some numbers to back it up, it’s idle speculation.
The Macalope cannot blame Palmer for being put off Apple products after having a bad experience and it’s perfectly understandable if he chooses to look elsewhere. It may not match up with the data that tends to show Apple products are pretty reliable and definitely well-liked and well-reviewed, but it’s understandable when you get burned, you might want to try something else.
What’s not okay is drawing sweeping conclusions from it.