Leopard delayed until October/November

[Guest sirvine]

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First of all, Leica is not the benchmark for good service in this respect. There are plenty of complaints about waiting for Leica service, right here on this very board. Also, I don't have Leica's ProCare support, because they don't offer a comparable service.

 

Second, I am not trashing Apple. When I have hardware under warranty, I don't consider it acceptable to have to lug some very heavy and delicate items into the store and have multiple 20+ minute waits (over an hour in some cases after my scheduled "priority" appointment) only to have an undertrained Genius tell me that I need to come back a few more times, or buy AppleCare to get a replacement. Proper warranty support (which many companies still offer) is to replace or repair on presentation of reasonable evidence of defective parts, without incremental charges. I don't know how you can accuse me of being irrational for expecting that. You're hung up on the ProCare waiting issue, which (for the THIRD time) is not the point. Even Leica will allow me to ship the defective part for diagnosis--Apple won't unless I buy AppleCare. (I am wondering how many times this needs to be repeated for you.)

 

Third, I never intended to hijack this thread, but my sense of pride compels me to repeat myself. Someone else might find my experience interesting, especially if they're not accustomed to having to fight for warranty support.

 

I've used Apple products as long as you have. They used to have better post-sales service. Some of their competitors still do it the right way. It matters to me. If it doesn't matter to you, that's not a reason to slander my opinion.

[spylaw4]

Sol, you all too obviously have a downer against Apple because of a perceived problem with their service. I think you will find that any other computer company will be no better and possibly a lot worse. So I think it is now tme for you to shut up.

 

We all know that Apple has delayed Leopard for stated reasons, which may or may not be the whole story. Personally I think that some of the "special features" that Leopard is supposed to have are the real reason.

 

Now - to all the other Forum members and mods. Hasn't this thread strayed way off "topic"? Can we PLEASE get back on track or else close the thread?

[wlaidlaw]

The point I was trying to make is that Leopard, which I would regard as the "bread and butter" of Apple, which keeps long term customers happy, has been delayed for an item I see as ephemera. I may well be proved wrong and the iPhone will keep Apple customers and shareholders happy for years but I don't think so. Nokia, Sony-Ericsson and Blackberry will react very swiftly and produce a comparable product at half the quite high iPhone price.

 

On the service front, I and every other customer who bought an iMac with the later 802.11n airport card had had trouble from new with 802.11g wireless reception and unstable networking. When you phoned up on an Applecare plan, you were kept hanging on for a long time while they "spoke" to various levels of technicians; you were made to go through endless routines of fixes and tests and this on a premium rate phone line in the UK. The whole thing was a charade. Apple knew there was a firmware problem, which they eventually after three months, produced a fix for. Meantime I had spent probably £40-50 on useless and blood-pressure-raising phone calls, as must hundreds of others. This must have been a decision taken at a reasonably high level, to mislead customers deliberately. They could have taken the Leica approach and said "guys we know there is a firmware problem and we are working on it" but they didn't. In just the two years I have had Macs, there has been a noticeable deterioration in the service, when you phone up. Poor language skills, poor computer skills. When I moved from Sony to Apple laptops two years ago it was like a whole new world. Phoning Sony was always a waste of time. It is heading in that direction with Apple - sad.

 

Wilson

[wlaidlaw]

Sol, you all too obviously have a downer against Apple because of a perceived problem with their service. I think you will find that any other computer company will be no better and possibly a lot worse. So I think it is now tme for you to shut up.

 

We all know that Apple has delayed Leopard for stated reasons, which may or may not be the whole story. Personally I think that some of the "special features" that Leopard is supposed to have are the real reason.

 

Now - to all the other Forum members and mods. Hasn't this thread strayed way off "topic"? Can we PLEASE get back on track or else close the thread?

 

Brian,

 

Please feel free not to read the thread.

 

Wilson

[Shootist]

This is in stark contrast to the rotten and grudging service I had from Apple over my faulty iMacs.

 

Apple seems to be going out of its way to irritate its base customers. They seem to forget that a computer customer pays a lot more per unit than either an iPod or iPhone buyer.Wilson

 

Wilson I have a friend that recently bought a Mac for his son. The video card went bad and he had to jump through a lot of hoops top get it fixed. He called apple and asked to have the part sent to him, he can change it himself. They said he had to take it to a Apple store. So he takes it in and they tell him he needs a appointment and there is one slot open in 2 hours. He waited around the store for the 2 hours and when the tech looked at the unit he said Yup the Vid card is bad. We'll have a new one in about a week, you can leave it or bring it back.

Great service, NOT.

[Guest sirvine]

People get really touchy if you criticize Apple for even the most valid reason. It's a kind of technology political correctness. It's a little mental, if you ask me.

[grantray]

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People get really touchy if you criticize Apple for even the most valid reason. It's a kind of technology political correctness. It's a little mental, if you ask me.

 

I tried to get backup discs for my REGISTERED fcp 4.5 studio after I lost everything to Katrina. I was under AppleCare Pro and had spent over 20K through the company I worked for. Apple acknowledged my ownership and registration, and refused to send backups regardless. Even after seeing pictures of my destroyed studio. I have many stories about Apple's complete disregard after the storm. This is just one. Macromedia and Adobe didn't hesitate to send backups.

 

ApplSoft is a greedy corporation, just like everyone else. Now, back to Leica please...

[Venkman]

I'm not starting the apple/windows comparision, but I see a major difference.

While Apple is not just the provider of an operation system, it is also a hardware producer.

 

Now this is the part where I can't get my head behind - and I say this from the perspective of someone who is using both, Macs and PCs for years, in business as well as in my pasttime. If my PC is having a problem, I walk to any shop nearby and replace faulty hardware (given the fact that I can locate it) and am back in business in no time. Doing that with Apple hardware is nearly impossible, since I don't get the parts (at least easily). It's even harder if the Mac is a couple of years old.

 

That, in result, means that I am dependent on Apple service - which I experienced on the whole range from absolutely unacceptable to outright great. And yes, I do see the necessity to buy some protection plan from Apple, else I will be toast if something happens.

 

But would any of the PC users buy such a plan from any vendor?

 

As for the delay, I haven't been spending much time reading what will be in there - but I find the current version running smoothly, so what's the big deal?

 

And no, I haven't "upgraded" to Vista, because I don't see the need to do so, other than having an excuse to buy new hardware.

[Lucklik]

I know a lot of the forum are Mac users and might be interested in the following: I have seen today that Apple has announced that Leopard has been delayed until at least October,Wilson

This means my OS will be up to date for another 6 months.

 

rgs

 

Luc

[rwfreund]

Software slips are not the end of the world, they are almost a universal truth.

Developers are inherently optimistic, and even doubling their own estimates rarely works to produce a reliable date. After working in the software business my whole career, I am quite sympathetic to those developers who usually would not announce a date until they were at least "feature complete". The marketing department forces an announcement ofter a year or more in advance. All such announcements should be interpreted as a marketing hope and not a corporate commitment. (somebody tell that to Wall Street)

I have been mostly pleasently surprised with Vista, having used it since RC1. Not only is it stable, but when things go wrong there is a lot of troubleshooting information available with its enhanced logging. Personally, despite all of the operating system theological discussions, I would rather troubleshoot a Vista machine than a Tiger machine. I use either as required, the diffrences are not enough as far as I am concerned to make a difference. The key point for me is the applications I need and how they run on the respective platforms.

-bob