Exhibit 5a | Creative Disobedience

I would like to start out with a statement: I have been using Apple computers for years, and I have never had as much service trouble with a Mac as I have with the various PC’s I’ve been forced to use over the years. That said, nothing is infallable, and occasionally a Mac owner is going to need service on their machine. Momma said sometimes things just break, and even the most reliable, easy to use machines in the world are going to come up with problems occasionally. As more and more people make the switch to Apple (happily humming along with OS X Tiger while PC users languish in Windows XP), there will naturally be a higher number of hardware problems to contend with. Plus there are a great number of technodolts who simply don’t know how to use their computers and will need assistance after they’ve put their iBook in the washing machine.

Apple seems to be struggling with the service aspect of the business, perhaps because they simply aren’t used to the giant leap in marketshare they are currently experiencing. Back in the day support from Apple was little or none; you could make a few phone calls to California or find a local dealer that fixed Macs – neither of which was very good. Since Steve Jobs came back into the fold however, your avenues for Apple service have been improved greatly. They have excellent phone support and if you’re lucky enough to have an Apple Store in your town, you can walk your machine into the store and talk to a staff member at their Genius Bar. If you don’t have an Apple store, they will send you a box to ship your Mac to them for service, before shipping it back in a matter of days.

This all sounds well and good, except that it doesn’t work quite as smoothly as it should. The Apple Service line you can call has a large disconnect with the local stores. For example, when calling for service they will often tell you to just run it down to your local store and drop it off. When you ask if you need an appointment, they always give you a reference number and say that you can just walk in, since you called the service number and have opened a ticket.

Clearly the operators have never seen the Genius Bar in the Apple SoHo store. Despite recently extending it’s hours until midnight the Apple Store in Manhattan is notorious for long waits, if you can get an appointment at all. And no one talks to a Genius without an appointment. You must schedule the appointment on the day you want to go in only; while you can do it online you can only sign up for the next available slot. So if you want to go in after work, say 6pm, you need to sit and keep refreshing the page until enough slots fill to get you to a 6pm slot. But when you get there you’re shocked to find that there aren’t any of these prime slots available because they have been scheduled by the Apple ProCare users, who, for the price of $99 can schedule their appointments up to a week in advance. ProCare? Didn’t I already shell out a few hundred bucks for AppleCare?

When you send your machine out for service, anecdotally the turnaround times have not been good and the service has been sub par. You can wait up to a week to get the box to ship it, and then another week or so to get your machine back. When you do get it back, your machine may be worse for the wear. When my iBook died two days after I bought it, after a tangle with the Genius Bar, and an extended service wait, my machine came back looking like it had been used as a coffee table for a week. Not only was it put back together incorrectly (casing not assembled properly, keyboard all out of whack), but it was covered in greasy fingerprints suggestive of Cheetos and a sticky smear as though a Coke had been spilled on it. My father recently had to have his Powerbook fixed and it came back from service with a dented battery case, broken feet, an old (and incomplete) version of OSX installed and his airport card removed and taped to the casing (which left sticky tape residue on the metal). And the machine still didn’t work. Why was the airport card taped onto the case? The service guy realized it was malfunctioning. Rather than telling anyone, he just pulled it out and sent it back. When my dad called to complain Apple fixed him up right away, but why wasn’t this done in the first place?

Additionally, from those people I’ve talked to, the service problems seem to be restricted to the East Coast. West coast service is much faster and seems to run smoother. I assume this is because west coast repairs go to Apple, while east coast repairs go to service providers (for example, my dad’s computer went to a shop in Memphis).

Give the superiority of Apple’s products, they need to improve their service, especially if they want to capture more of the family market. Us designers and computer geeks are willing to jump through hoops to have the good machines, but the families who just want to look up movie times and email on their iMacs, aren’t going to be so forgiving. Service needs to be quick and easy, otherwise Apple will start to lose the ground they’ve made over the last few years.

In part two I’ll be posting some thoughts about how Apple’s service can be improved.