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So Apple is 'flailing,' eh? (re: TechCrunch story)
- TweedHeads 18y agoTC is always full of animosity against Google, Yahoo and Apple. Are they sponsored by microsoft?
- laut 18y agoTC is probably trying to get attention, that's their business after all.
- jonknee 18y agoAnd Daring Fireball is always full of animosity against anyone against Apple. Are they sponsored by Apple? Alas, fan boys need no corporate sponsorship to throw dirt from the trenches.
- nadim 18y agoI'm not sure about in general, but I think they presented good supporting evidence in this case.
- william42 18y agoI remember their article about how free software will never be usable because usability requires a visionary like Steve Jobs(although it was really Jef Raskin that did most of the work)
- demallien 18y agoNot really, Arrington presented anecdotal evidence, and Gruber smacked him down with a survey contradicting the anecdotal evidence. Unless some new evidence comes to light, Gruber's point of view holds more weight.
- axod 18y agoI can't remember them mentioning Microsoft ever. It's better to be mentioned in a negative way, than not be mentioned at all.
- briansmith 18y ago"It's better to be mentioned in a negative way, than not be mentioned at all." If that is true then I think Microsoft is pretty happy with Techcrunch's coverage of it, which is almost universally negative: http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Atechcrunch.com+microsoft http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Atechcrunch.com+microso...
- axod 18y agoI stand corrected. I guess I must just subconsciously ignore them.
- mattmaroon 18y ago"My obvious enthusiasm for Apple products is fairly evident to readers of this blog." Clearly, Arrington hates Apple.
- captain-m 18y agoIn this case doing better than the competition doesn't mean doing well. It doesn't even mean acceptable. I don't use any apple products and I don't really care either way, but saying that they're better than the competition doesn't mean anything.
- auston 18y ago"...saying that they're better than the competition doesn't mean anything." How does that statement even have a basis? How else can you benchmark anything? You need SOMETHING to base your placement on. Past performance even, which was considered in that article. How can we award gold medals if there is no competition to base that award upon?
- briansmith 18y agoLet's say company A sells laptops such that 1 out of 1,000 of them blow up due to a defective battery. Company B sells laptops such that 1 out of 100 blow up. You can say that company A's product is 10x better. But, it doesn't mean that company A's product is good. It just isn't the worst.
- deleted 18y ago[deleted]
- halo 18y agoWhat is with Hacker News' obsession with Apple minutiae?
- thomasmallen 18y agoI know, right? It's not like they're an innovative tech company or anything.
- dmix 18y agoIt's a mix of finally finding a product that satisfies your needs perfectly with the pseudo anti-establishment that comes with it. People complaining about apple fan boys is just as cliche as the fans boys themselves, and it just fuels the fire. OSX + the great community of developers creating apps like 1password and Textmate, is what sold me. Looking back at my experience using windows for over a decade I have a lot of negative memories. At the same time I don't like 90% of Hollywood (CGI-fest) movies but it does a good enough job to satisfy most people. So I don't bother convincing people otherwise in the same way I don't push Apple on other people. I just support it when the topic comes up.
- alaskamiller 18y agoIt's all troll and linkbait anyways.
- gstar 18y agoDon't know if PG has released browser stats for HN - but my guess is that Safari and Firefox on OS X would be fairly well represented. Everyone likes news about their tools - ever seen a mechanics shop when the snap-on van pulls in?
- nsimpson 18y agoI know I'm going to get downmodded for this but I have to agree with Captain-M. The attitude that "we're doing better than our competitors so we don't need to improve" is toxic, and usually fatal for a company in the long run (... the others aren't going to be content with sitting in second place forever). My earlier-gen MBP, iPhone, iPods etc are all rock solid (I'm delighted with them all), but I could easily see a situation where quality could go south on new products in the rush to cut costs and get to market faster. I hope that's not the case. It would be little comfort to me as a new buyer if my machine bricked for no reason, and some smug fanboy pointed out that other people who bought Macs in the past had no problems (making me the problem?)
- jacobolus 18y ago> The attitude that "we're doing better than our competitors so we don't need to improve" is toxic Who exactly has this attitude?
- Hexstream 18y agoPretty much anyone or anything somewhere at the top of the food chain for an extended period of time.
- alaskamiller 18y agoSo you know for a fact that Tony Fadell, Scott Forstall, Sina Tamaddon, Bob Mansfield, and Ron Johnson have this problem?
- william42 18y agoHe said "most" not "all". It's the perfect out when a specific is pushed!
- chaostheory 18y agofor a masochistic corporate culture that has the motto for something pretty good as 'it doesn't suck', I somehow doubt Apple will have the 'Resting on their laurels' GM syndrome until after Jobs leaves (I have had no problems with the new intel macbooks and pros)
- river_styx 18y agoI've found this to be quite common of bloggers. They tend to generalize their own personal experiences to the entire population without really doing much research into it.
- briansmith 18y agoI see what you did there.
- greyman 18y ago>> But is Apple doing a far better job than any of its competitors? Yes. << No.
- comatose_kid 18y agoYou might be right, but it's a little hard to agree with a one word statement.
- greyman 18y agoThis is exactly the point I wanted to communicate to the blog author.
- demallien 18y agoSo how do you interpret the survey results that Gruber presented?
- narag 18y agoI'm not greyman, but anyway... maybe the survey is detecting a different culture: people that owns a Mac gives higher scores to customer service not because it's better, but because they feel more satisfied with their computers. That feeling might come from many reasons. I wouldn't use it as an argument without a detailed survey that evaluates things like response time, charges for reparations, or kindness of personal.
- demallien 18y agoThat's not really a fair argument. There are always what-ifs that are possible. I could say, for example, 'Sure, General Relativity is OK, but how do we know that it works for that little patch of reality that is within the Oval Office. Has anybody tested it?'. I mean, technically you are right, but the a priori interpretation of the survey results is that Apple does a better job of satisfying it's customers than do the competitors. That interpretation should stand unless someone comes up with a survey providing more detailed results that indeed shows a selection bias amongst Apple customers...
- keyes 18y agoI love my MBP, but in my experience AppleCare support is horrible compared to the competition. If something goes wrong with your Dell laptop, they will send a technician out to you the next day and repair it on-site. If something goes wrong with your Mac, you have to make an appointment to take it to an Apple store, and you may have to leave it there for up to a week while it gets repaired.
- nuclear_eclipse 18y ago> If something goes wrong with your Dell laptop, they will send a technician out to you the next day and repair it on-site. Only if you paid extra for that service option. The default phone-support and ship-it-back-for-service warranties that you get with most Dell machines by default is likely no better than Apple. However, I must say that if you get the upgraded support from Dell, especially the type that comes with their XPS line, they certainly have the best support service in the consumer PC industry. And turnaround time is fantastic; they paid to ship my XPS laptop to the service center and back, and I literally had it fixed and back in my hands in less than a week.
- keyes 18y agoSorry if I was unclear. I was comparing Dell support with AppleCare, which you also pay quite a bit for.
- Maascamp 18y agoWhy the hell is this linked?
- sown 18y agoI dunno...I've seen both sides of this issue. I had an iBook 13" I got in 2002. Stayed with me for three years before the logic board start to go out on me; freeze ups, bad video, etc. It seems like it was either asleep or on, and always with me so I kind of expected it. Another person I was acquainted with seemed to have this same problem but every few months or so. He got a few free Ti and iBooks out of them. Better to ask forgiveness, I guess.