Dump Tim
My iPhone 7 plus doesn’t work. My MacOS Sierra doesn’t work. I have gone from apple products “Just Work” to a living technology hell. All of this happened in the past month with Apple’s latest bug releases. My Mac crashes ten times a day. My iPhone deafens me with squeals and will have 2G signals when it used to have LTE. Really, it is frustrating beyond belief. I have talked with other iPhone 7 and Mac users and they, too, are experiencing problems. I am not alone.
I wrote to Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. I figured the problems were serious enough that they needed executive attention. I wrote a nice letter, on paper, and mailed it to his office.
I received a nice phone call from somebody in his office (probably one of a hundred executive sounding aspiring staffers). They were calm and sympathetic sounding and assured me that they would take matters seriously.
What actually happened was that I got dumped into the ordinary Apple Technical Support queue where I reached an uninformed and disinterested staffer. I explained my problems, and I provided a sample PDF file that would crash my entire operating system if I tried to open it up. I would think that with an easily reproducible problem and a letter to Apple’s CEO there would be some sense of urgency.
Apple couldn’t care less, is what I now believe. Days and days go by without any returned calls from Apple. My emails to these staffers get no response, or simply get generic responses. Apple acknowledges that there are a few problems and that what I am experiencing has been reported by others. But they have no suggestions, and no indication that the engineers are working on the problem. There is no sense of urgency. None whatsoever.
Tim Cook is a nice person who greatly values harmony. And, it is pretty clear too me that a harmonious place to work and everybody getting along happily at Apple is far more important than products actually working.
Writing to Tim Cook is a dead end. Even emailing him at [email protected] will lead to a brick wall. You will get a polite phone call in return, but the company isn’t actually going to spring into action and give you any special attention. It seems that nobody fears Tim Cook, and Tim isn’t all that concerned about products that don’t work. Apple is one big, thick, unresponsive bureaucracy.
I can tolerate Tim Cook being the world’s most boring product presenter. I can tolerate his 2-hour presentations when 1-hour would suffice. But when he clearly doesn’t care about product quality I draw the line.
Tim Cook, just like Steve Ballmer, doesn’t belong running a Fortune High-Tech company. I feel it’s time to replace Tim.
Look how well Microsoft has been doing since they finally (Finally!) dumped Steve Ballmer. Nadella has Microsoft on a tear. How wonderful would Apple be with a CEO that has vision and expectations.
Dump Tim.