Let's face it: Apple has issues. It's a company that has grown from a single garage to a multi-national behemoth. And like all mega-corporations, it has its share of problems.
Less than a week after getting my new MacBook, one of the keys stopped working. Or rather, I should say it worked intermittently. Sometimes it wouldn't register at all; other times it would produce a double character. Annoying, to say the least, and not expected from a brand new two-thousand dollar machine, much less one from Apple.
A quick search revealed numerous complaints surrounding the new butterfly keyboard on these Macs. I followed the recommendations, from blowing compressed air into the affected key to the wholly ridiculous procedure of reloading the OS.
Blowing air seemed to alleviate the problem to the point that I canceled the Genius Bar appointment I'd scheduled for Friday evening.
Of course the moment I canceled the appointment the key started typing double characters. (Hey, it wasn't not typing any more!)
Fuck.
I made another appointment and took the machine in today, expecting the worst and gearing up for a confrontation. (After all, it was barely a week old.)
Imagine my surprise then when—after explaining what was going on to the Genius and mentioning it was only a week old—he said, "Oh heck, we'll just swap the whole thing out."
This is the outcome I was going to fight for if it had not been offered. After all, I was still in Apple's 14-day no-questions-asked return/exchange window.
After verifying my educational pricing purchase (I was never asked for Ben's education credentials when I picked the machine up a week ago), the machine was swapped out and the old one wiped of my data as I watched. The Genius then offered to help me set up the new one, but by that time he'd already sensed I was more than capable of doing it myself.
I set up the machine with a temp account (something you need to do if you're planning on restoring from a Time Machine backup), verified that all the keys worked normally and that there were no dead pixels on the display, and was on my way less than a half-hour after arriving at the store.
Many things can be said about Apple's Quality Control these days. No longer under the watchful eye of taskmaster Jobs, I believe that the company's attempt to adhere to what are now expected annual multi-platform hardware and software upgrades isn't allowing much opportunity to squash every software bug and hardware glitch before new product rolls out the door. This is what's most frustrating because you don't expect to encounter these type of issues with an Apple product. "It just works," after all.
But based on my own experience—and despite some horror stories from friends and others posted online—Apple's Customer Service is exemplary and what I still strive to emulate in my own professional life (when I'm not cussing out my customers under my breath, that is). This, more than anything else is what keeps me a loyal customer.
Their customer service, as well as the fact that when you've tried other things, you still realize that Apple is the best of the bunch in fit and finish, keeps me a loyal Apple fanboy. Every once in a while I try something else (Windows, the Google ecosystem) and everything is so damn buggy. Apple has bugs throughout their ecosystem as well, but their number is much smaller compared to the other options.