[plibither8]

Agreed! However, I also wonder what their ratio of spam vs. actual ASL-requiring-customer calls is. Since it's so easy and quick to connect to a real human with comolete audio and video enabled on both ends, won't it be prone to abuse?

The more such a service gets attention from regular media (instead of the niche, targeted audience it aims to serve), I fear it'll be another case of "why we can't have good things".

[pjerem]

It’s already pretty easy for anyone to talk to an human at Apple tbh, be it by phone or by going to a physical store, their support is already really accessible for everyone.

Here if I understand you don’t get access to support but to an interpreter who will call the support for you. It’s of no interest if you don’t know ASL

[joshstrange]

Agreed, their customer side gets a person very quickly and so does their Apple Business Manager program. After spending many hours fighting AT&T’a automated and unhelpful customer support I got connected with a knowledgeable person instantly with ABM who was able to diagnose my issue at a level I never dreamed possible for what I’ve come to think of as “support” from most companies.

They were able to confirm the issue was on AT&T’s end, give me the exact language to use when talking to AT&T, and were nice and easy to work with. At one point they needed a picture of something and I braced myself for what that process would look like, it was stupid simple, they sent me an email with a link to upload the picture. It literally couldn’t have been easier but I don’t think most support places could have accomplished that task.

I have been an Apple customer for well over a decade and that ABM experience blew me away and made me happy I had gone with iPads for my business over cheaper Android tablets (one of _many_ reasons).

[roughly]

Something that baffles me about modern business is that Apple is far and away the most valuable company in the world, they’re phenomenally profitable, they’ve got an absolute mountain of cash, and they’ve done so by basically eschewing every page in the MBA playbook, and this has had no influence whatsoever on how the business world talks about proper business strategy.

They’re obsessive about quality, they treat design and customer experience as first class parts of the process, they invest heavily in long-term R&D, they have world leading support - they’ve basically done the opposite of what every financial analyst and business consultant in the world thinks is the right move, and as a result they’re worth more than Saudi-Aramco, and yet somehow every company out there is still sprinting in the exact opposite direction of how Apple operates.

[figassis]

Apple had one leader who thought differently, and that paid off, and now there is already some inertia inside apple because that is part of their brand. They put out one bad keyboard, mess with the ports in their macs and the world judges them harshly, everything is something gate.

Because Apple's way works does not mean other ways do not. Those other ways are way easier and cheaper, and businesses are fine chasing lower hanging fruits.

[cavisne]

One part is probably because they are so secretive externally and internally, so there have been no business books on apples culture, playbook etc. No TED talks from ex Apple leaders.

I think Tesla is the closest to trying to follow their model, in a much scrappier way of course.

[kortilla]

Tesla in no way follows Apple’s model. Musk has a very specific way of running companies reflected in both SpaceX and Tesla. That involves two key things Apple would never do:

- ship 90% solutions to learn very early what doesn’t work - iterate and make changes very rapidly to the product

This can be seen in the model 3, which has had significant variations even within a year. Both improvements (better fit and finish) and likely mistakes (deleting lidar).

The same is seen on the SpaceX side. The starship launches were wildly successful despite the catastrophic endings. This can be seen in the live streams of the employees cheering wildly at the end (which completely baffled armchair critics).

I’m on the fence if this is a good way to run companies long term, but the general point is that it’s about as far from Apple’s culture as you can get.

[phinnaeus]

Nit: Model 3 never had lidar, radar is what they removed.

[avar]

That Apple doesn't ship 90% solutions is laughable. The initial versions of OSX, iPhone etc. had a lot of rough edges, and were practically public betas.

The only difference is that Jobs and later his deciples were able to blow smoke up your ass, and sell the obvious incomplete product as focusing on some other distraction, or something. Clearly the reality distortion field worked.

[astrange]

https://hbr.org/2020/11/how-apple-is-organized-for-innovatio...

[sheepscreek]

Tesla has not been known for great customer service. They are user friendly..ish, but human to human level experience is a hit or miss.

[weeblewobble]

They were in the early days. I remember someone posting about how their Tesla broke down and a Tesla flatbed pulled up with a working car, swapped them out, and left their car as a loaner

[plibither8]

> Here if I understand you don’t get access to support but to an interpreter who will call the support for you. It’s of no interest if you don’t know ASL

I might receive some slack here, but I gave it a try (I don't know ASL). Within 5 seconds of clicking the button, I was connected to a live human, with both my video and sound, as well as the other person's, turned on (although I did have the ability to switch them off). There was no intermediate step to filter out spam calls. I did cut the call quickly though to avoid wasting their time!

[SteveDR]

Wouldn’t the spam calls be pretty minimal if they make it known that they will not provide support to non-ASL callers?