I HATE APPLE

Oh, of course! Local time machine backup and online backup with Crashplan. Plus documents and photos additionally backed up on Dropbox and SmugMug. Multiple methods of backup is the only way I fly.

xpost, oh yeah, I wouldn't get anything less than 27".

the night before last my 2 year old iphone 4s wouldn't charge or sync. after trying various troubleshooting things recommended online i booked a genius bar appointment in glasgow. the guy looked at the phone and said there seemed to be corrosion to the charging port. he took it away for a rather long time, by genius bar standards - around 15 minutes. on returning he said he'd done extensive tests and had determined that the phone was irrevocably damaged - not only to the charging port but to the motherboard - he offered me "as a goodwill gesture" (!) a replacement reconditioned 4s for £159 (in addition to keeping my existing broken phone) and then told me that the 4s was on its way out and advised me to upgrade to the 5c, rather than going for a new 4s, telling me about various payment plans that would make if affordable within a contract that they (the store) could arrange for me. there was no point trying to repair the phone since, he claimed, he had tried various different ways to charge the phone and it was not possible.

i panicked and said i'd have to think about it - by which, i meant, i didn't have £159 nor did i want to be tied into a 24 month contract for a 5c (of all things).

some friends had recommended a 3rd party repair joint in glasgow and told me that they would also buy my old (but not that old) phone off me for parts, if the worst came to the worst, so within half an hour of leaving the genius bar i was at this place asking what he thought the best course of acton was.

two minutes later the independent repair guy had a look at the phone, dismantled the relevant parts, run tests and told me that the problem was only due to spots of moisture in the dock and had no clue as to why this would affect the motherboard, which was fine, as far as he could see. if he replaced the part and it didn't work he would simply take it back out and there would be no charge. he did all of this right in front of me - offering me a repair for £29 (£19 for the part plus £10 for his time).

of course it worked, my iphone charges up fine ("well, of course it does", said the repair guy)- the problem was not with the motherboard it was only with the charging dock.

"why did the apple store guy tell me i'd need a new phone?" i asked.

he lied to you to get you to buy a 5c, said the repair guy.

I told him I'd go back to the store to complain but he said they would simply tell me i had had a shonky repair which wouldn't last but, the thing is, that - shonky or not (and i doubt it is) - the genius bar had told me the phone was irreparable - not that a repair wouldn't last or would be pointless but that the phone COULD NOT BE REPAIRED.

is there any point going back to the apple store and telling them this? is it worth the increase in blood pressure? is it better to complain on line? or just forget about it? tbh i'm furious but i dare say the store know these things happen - and actually ensure they happen - and have a very calm rational and legally circumscribed response to people who catch them out at this.

what would you do?

I had a very similar thing happen to my out-of-AppleCare warranty iPhone 4 about a year ago. Took it to my local indie repair shop and $20 later it was as good as new.

This sort of thing is standard operating procedure for any piece of tech that's out-of-warranty. Once the company is off the hook, they're only in the business to sell you a new one.

(this is not a defense of apple, I am not particularly a fan of the company that brought us iTunes, Final Cut X, etc., fuck all corporations, etc)

Apple UK must have a different mandate when it comes to that stuff, because I've brought in so much stuff, a lot of it out of warranty, and if you ask them for even a teensy bit of leeway, they just give you the repair/replacement for free. It's always felt like they had a bunch of "be a nice guy" Customer Service Experience Satisfaction tickets that they had to use every week or something.

i was so "nice guy", seriously. i didn't have any attitude because in my head it was a £30 repair.

could be he was just incompetent and mistook it for something that is hard to repair. my charger port died on my much-loved ipod touch some years ago and i called around to lots of shops, all of which insisted that it was typically too hard to fix.

unlikely! but i admire your generosity.

i mean it was a total 5c hard sell.

I had a similar experience with a 4S faulty dock connector at a Genius Bar, but the guy was much more honest. He said Apple don't replace dock connectors because it's too fiddly a procdure but he was honest enough to say that third-party repair places would, but that he wouldn't advise it as it might go wrong. I took my chances and it was fine. He did vaguely mention the idea of getting a new phone, but in a half-hearted way very far from a hard sell.

Oh, and he said that he'd liked to have swapped the whole unit out for free as a goodwill gesture, but that my screen had been replaced by a third-party, so company policy meant that he couldn't. I had no idea that I had replaced screen (I bought the 4S second-hand) – I think people sometimes get stung by this when insurers give you reconditioned phones as replacements.

The reason they're usually so "nice" in the UK is they have to be: EU law pretty much gives you a six-year warranty on anything you buy (5 in Scotland). They honour this, but don't advertise it for obvious reasons. If they give you any shit about it, this link usually shuts them up http://www.apple.com/uk/legal/statutory-warranty/

(Won't work on modified devices, unfortunately)

(And there is a bit of a fight over latent issues: they used to claim that broken home buttons were normal wear and tear, but they now are more likely just to do a swap for one of those)

Good god, that "Chicken Fat" song is a real catchy earworm; I pity the kids that had to listen that every day!

wtf - the developer of an app sends out an update to my app that my phone should not have gotten and they tell me to get a refund from apple - apple says FU - I hate apple!

https://musescore.com/groups/musescore-ios/discuss/283596#comment-313411

current best itunes alternatives for windows?

sticking your head in a bucket of lye, probably

lol

Mediamonkey is pretty robust. Seems to best used if you don't even have iTunes installed, though.

i was a fan of that back in my ye olde Windows days

I just had a free rental from itunes store movies - how stupid - 24 hours to watch a movie ? why not just get it form netflix and have as long as I need?

mediamonkey is dece xp

foobar if u ever thought bitcoin made sense

I've been using BeeMusic for the last couple of months and like it a lot. Basically the same as MediaMonkey but more lightweight and less buggy.

Something tells me public confidence in Apple is gonna take a huge hit by tomorrow morning...

why?

Nhex is Edward Snowden

lotsa apple news the last couple days

Referring to the iCloud celebrity nudes leak that happened today. Kinda waiting for a more legitimate site to report on it, don't want to link to the sources of the "fappening"...

are you going to make me search the internet for "icloud celebrity nudes"

you can't say that and not provide a link

twitter.com

just seems like garbage reporting by some garbage websites based on the claims of somebody on 4chan, including multiple spox comments from the people named that the photos are faked

The pictures allegedly were retrieved due to an Apple iCloud leak that allowed celebrities’ phones to be hacked, and were posted on 4chan in an attempt to earn bitcoins.

http://i.imgur.com/Cyq4r5z.png

yes that is a list of names

Saving you a click to ch@n.

guys, i even gave you the term to google in quotes

And I gave you a .jpg from imgur.com. Hand over the bitcoins.

http://pbs.twimg.com/media/Bwa5UWMCQAACZgP.jpg

welp there's a google search i feel pretty horrible about wending my way through

easily found on reddit now. well.

iMovie is so broken haha

Would love to say I resisted the urge to click a few when I first saw them posted, but I did not. Feel bad about it now though, sorry JLaw and Kate Upton.

ill look at some celebrity boobs if theyre out there, curious abt celebrities, boobs

these women did not consent to have the general public see them naked. this whole thing is unbelievably gross and it's been really demoralizing to see men who are ostensibly feminist allies treat this so lightly.

I agree that it's a gross invasion of privacy, but at the same time this shit happens all the time and the only reason there seems to be such a swell of outrage is just that it was a bunch of celebrities at once. I mean I don't think I've ever seen a single thinkpiece devoted to leaked celebrity nudes before and it happens all the fucking time, so I'm a little taken aback.

Also celebrities who complain about paparazzi harassing them usually get laughed down, and that's been going on for decades.

these women did not consent to have the general public see them naked. this whole thing is unbelievably gross and it's been really demoralizing to see men who are ostensibly feminist allies treat this so lightly.

― compassionate sports, electronic father (reddening), Monday, September 1, 2014 2:17 PM (17 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

really unbelievably gross

like you cant believe it