iLounge: “Customers ask: Is Apple going rotten?”
This has certainly been the topic of the day. But it was also, on a smaller scale, the topic of every day from yesterday to a few years back. It’s been escalating in the long haul, and there’s been assurance from Apple that they really are in it for the customer, too. (Like “Thoughts on Music”, and the resulting iTunes Plus.)
However, there’s more of these small, niggling issues now than before. The iLounge article mentions Ringtones, the broken TV-Out, the non-forward-compatible iPod games and the poor iPod touch screen. To this I could easily add the (now broken) undocumented checksum on the iPod database, the no-redownloads policy on the iTunes Store (long-standing), the inability to transfer data not purchased on the iTunes Store back from the iPod, the iPhone’s “make a web site” non-SDK and Apple’s shitting-in-your-hat-and-calling-it-a-sundae attitude towards it, the lack of an iPod touch SDK now that there’s no west coast network to (not) bring down, the needless bundling attempts of iTunes to QuickTime and Safari on Windows (n.b. not of QuickTime to iTunes; iTunes requires QuickTime, but not the other way around), the rampant and continuous upselling of .Mac and QuickTime Pro whenever the chance arises… the list just goes on.
Apple sure does treat its customers nicely in a wide variety of scenarios, and it’s better than a lot of companies. But that doesn’t give them brownie points to burn completely needlessly, and that doesn’t mean Apple is somehow immune to criticism. So I hope Apple does take note, and tries to listen to its customers and adapt its business accordingly. Shareholder value or not, a pissed-off customer base and a few more million bucks in the coffer is not where it’s at.