The Dark Side of Steve Jobs

Bridget Riley lines ignored by Apple quality assurance.

Get It Try It

This is one ugly example of a company actively fighting its customers. I could tell you an endless story since I am monitoring this story since my device was affected in September 2006, 15 months after purchase and 3 months after the 'warranty' expired.

This issue had __extensive__ coverage on the Apple discussion board but Apple is systematically wiping its discussion board clean of every reference to crosspond.com/apple.php within hours.

It started by the end of 2006 when numerous (about a dozen) threads emerged describing the issue and pointing to the dreaded M9689 PowerBook G4 17 inch. One big thread contained dozens of pictures and by that time more than 70 individuals describing their problems. This thread had far more than 1000 views and was frequently updated. It vanished overnight, together with all the others.

This made David set up his database. Apple continued to actively censor everything dealing with it: The 'smaller' threads, which do not hint at the massive spread of this issue, are locked down as soon as they reach a response number of like 10 or so. Posts which hint at Davids database are deleted within the hour. One day I checked the discussion board for information and noticed they had deleted another thread with more than 2000 views.

As of now, this whole thing turned out quite absurd: Every week another individual posts a thread describing strange vertical lines on his M9689. He or she has of course no idea that the topic was quite widespread because all the posts are gone. As soon as anybody mentions the database, his or her post is deleted. Aware of this, I told a guy to 'put the words bridget riley powerbook into his favorite search internet engine'. Even that post is gone today. You might catch a glimpse of another guy telling the author to have a look at the database site. He made his post at 6:30 AM; I bet this post will be gone until Monday. One isolated ..... keeps talking about Apple warranty, possible failures, which have nothing to do with real issue. This person really makes me sick!

I went through hell with Apple: I wrote to Apple in Ireland and they would not even respond at first. They simply say 'you are out of warranty'. Not only to me but also to the people I know, who wrote as well. In Germany there is a law saying otherwise when dealing with such evident circumstances.

7 of us wrote to Germany's most respectful computer magazine (c't) and the editor confronted Apple with the number of defects and the forum censorship. And guess what: Apple tells the public that it's all isolated incidents and does not comment on the censorship at all. This was published.



From what I heard and read from the people from all kinds of other forums there is quite laughable stuff:

Two separate individual guys from distinct places in the US report that Apple employees refused to admit any knowledge about the defects. When the customers told them to have a look at the Apple discussion board they answered that Apple employees are not supposed to read the Apple discussions.

One girl in Germany went to the shop where she purchased her broken PowerBook and had the store manager call Apple. She overheard the phone call and told us that the Apple employee immediately said: 'Ahh, it's the display data cable'. The employee promised to call back but did not. When the store manger called Apple again, they 'apologized'. Not what you might expect: They apologized for their employee 'acting wrong'. Finally the girl got a new display but had to pay about 200$ for labour. The 'new' display showed vertical lines 3 days later...

Another guy from the UK posted a note on the Apple discussions (- of course everything is deleted now -) when he went into an Apple Store, showed the young employee the database and recited the European law dealing with warranty in such a case. He got a new display free of charge. The only lucky guy I know of.

Apple is censoring systematically: Posts dealing with meltdown MacBooks, random shutdown, melting power adapters, discoloration, nVidia-Bugs are killed right away.

If you expect anything to happen, the only choice is a class action law suit in The US or avoiding Apple products.
 - 'another PowerBook owner'

There are three tiers of customer relations at Apple: Customer Relations (Tier 1) Customer Relations (Tier 2) and Executive Relations. If you call the switchboard with a customer service issue and ask for a director or other executive level person, Executive Relations is supposed to call you back.

While once compassionate ER - especially Brad - is largely made of stonehearted asses now.
 - Doug Broussard

AppleCare don't.
 - 'Dalinian'