Comment by mikae1
19 hours ago
"Just award them with some stars or points or whatever, and they'll be happy."
I wish these people would wake up and spend their time helping peers on a forum for some open source project instead.
19 hours ago
"Just award them with some stars or points or whatever, and they'll be happy."
I wish these people would wake up and spend their time helping peers on a forum for some open source project instead.
There's a bunch of hyperactive people in those Apple "support" forums who don't actually help anyone. They respond to almost every discussion thread aggressively deflecting any criticism directed at Apple.
They pretend to offer "solutions" so their posts don't come across as unconstructive, but their solutions are always essentially the same, often culminating in a factory reset. There is never any attempt to get to the bottom of anything or diagnose what the actual issue is.
They are volunteering their time to make people shut up, bow their head in shame and go away. I don't think this is what you want in an open source project.
Indeed. Apple should close those forums. It damages their brand to have such antagonistic people pretending to be support agents. A company of Apple's wealth could afford to have a small army of people in the Philippines do the same job with much less aggression.
>small army
Instead we get:
https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/669252
>”… Now, the few Apple engineers that get back to me for some of these issues and the Apple support as well often tell me that Apple really cares about customer feedback. I really want to believe this ... but it's so hard to believe it, if less than 1% of my submitted reports (yes, less than 1%, and it's probably much less) ever gets a response. A response, if it ever comes, can come after 3 months, or after 1 year, or after 3 years; only rarely does it come within 1 month. To some of the feedbacks, after getting a response from the Apple engineers, I responded, among other things, by asking if I'm doing something wrong with the way I submit the feedback reports. Because if I do something wrong, then that could be the reason why only so few of them are considered by the Apple engineers. But I never got any answer to that. I told them that it's frustrating sending so much feedback without ever knowing if it's helpful or not, and never got an answer. …”
Why is this Apple’s path?
2 replies →
Wholeheartedly agree. The few times in my life that I’ve bothered to post there with a problem, it’s been all the more upsetting that the patronizing generic advice and scolding of the frustrated users, is coming from random volunteer fanbois on the Internet, not even paid Apple staff who contractually have to be positive about Apple. A company with such rabidly loyal supporters shouldn’t deploy them like this. And if it was wise back in 2010 when Apple software was for the most part quite good… it sure isn’t wise now when they’re reaching what I hope is a temporary nadir in quality.
I don't think anything Apple does at this point can damage their brand. It's indestructible.
1 reply →
Yes, fanbois, lecturing people that they're using it wrong.
It's not just on Apple's forums, Microsoft has the same kind of guys. They tend to look really popular too because all the other fanbois upvote their comments.
And not only there, many open-source software forums have the same problem.
I wonder if other cult brands attract the same kind of personalities, or if Apple has somehow done something special to encourage it. When a Harley Davidson owner says he has a problem with his bike, do Harley zealots jump out of the woodwork to attack the dissenter and defend the brand from which they derive their personality?
This shows up in a lot of other areas, like small game companies that have a devoted following. It can get pretty nasty because these types of people are able to be condescending just short of ToS, while baiting other people into crossing the line. A common thread is weak moderation or biased moderation.
As a developer, it's easy to be blind to this because they're on "your side", but it's bad for the health of your support forums.
Given that it appears in Windows, I presume if there was a Harley Davidson support forum, there'd be fanatics defending them there.
(They do defend them IRL, it's "commonly known" that HDs have issues that the install base "overlooks".)
“ When a Harley Davidson owner says he has a problem with his bike, do Harley zealots jump out of the woodwork to attack the dissenter and defend the brand from which they derive their personality?”
I’m no Harley owner but you and I both know the answer to that.
1 reply →
That may be true to some extent but I am still often able to find some kind of answer, granted it's often just "NO, Apple doesn't do this".
For Windows support I assume it accrues some benefit to the unpaid support, like it contributes to them getting their Microsoft Certified Windows End User Support Helpful Guy badge.
Then we would have zero support, or they would shut down the forums entirely. Or are you implying that the companies would be forced to finally offer official support?
There is official support. Apple Support should be more deluged with callers, but they rely on these forum mod suckers to carry water for them and tell people it’s their fault to lessen that load.