Are you kidding me? Apple has outsourced operating system product delivery to third parties of dubious expertise, though with good intentions, I am sure. Apple recently released Mountain Lion the latest version of their operating system for the Macintosh family. That’s the good news. I tried installing it and didn’t like what I found out. Consider this:
- They don’t sell a disk of any kind that you can install in a conventional manner; you have to download the OS install file from the App Store and do the installation yourself.
- It takes FOREVER to do the download. People are saying the download takes hours. Seriously?!
- People are complaining about their computers’ performance afterward.
I understand the value of SaaS and of downloading things from the Web and I endorse the idea (read my blog), but this is one of those things best not done over the Web. The net has become a forest of solutions for slow downloads. There are actually do-it-yourself instructions from third parties describing the process of making your own DVD or flash drive for easier installation. Again, are you kidding me? I gotta tell you, I did not sign up for this! If you, Apple, want me to use your stuff, you need to make a reasonable effort to sell and deliver it to me. As a vendor, that’s your responsibility. A nice DVD would be a good place to start. This nonsense is unbelievable and unacceptable.
(Cross-posted @ Beagle Research, LLC.)
so, shipping a CD or DVD would be faster? The download happens in the background and doesn’t interrupt whatever you’re doing at the moment. It recovers from disconnects and failures gracefully. This is such a non-issue to any normal mortal. Not to mention downloading is more green, less wasted plastic and paper and shipping charges.
the download has issues as the referenced materials show. Also, I don’t have the time to babysit the process. Many people are having problems with this approach. It might have green and other benefits but it should not be the only way to a solution. Normal mortal?
I don’t know, more people upgraded to mountain lion, on a percentage basis, than people who upgrade windows in any similar timeframe. Must work for most people. Sorry it didn’t float your boat. But I think the analysis on this one is pretty poor.
You have no concept of the individual user and you sound like you are blaming the customer, not a great idea. This is not about how most people fare, the company has a responsibility to all of its customers and in the examples I found, it failed them.
Denis, I am the individual user. And There are 20 mac users in this office (and a few windows users as well) who all updated with nary a complaint. We don’t have a single “IT” employee to help them do installs.
I believe the data you found does not paint the picture of “most people” but of a few people from a forum. Check the status on mountain lion downloads and you have your # of successful downloads… far outnumbering the number of problem downloads. And of course Apple has a responsibility to those customers – and has better customer service than anyone will get if they’re upgrading Linux or Windows, from their respective hardware providers, I might add. I’d say you need some perspective, sir.
That’s right, discount my findings. You still don’t get it. It’s not the number of successes or failures that count but the way the customer is treated. For Apple to say take it or leave it, given the various skill levels of users and the variety of download speeds they have, is insensitive to the customer. I really don’t care how many were successful, I care about how the company treats those least able to do the job and the policy Apple put in place is insufficient to give people an alternative. THAT is the ONLY perspective you need if you are in a customer service business. You don’t get to declare victory and abandon your customers who can’t keep up.
[...] a lot that we’ve been debating in CRM circles for many years. FYI, the debate is happening at the Enterprise Irregulars site where the piece was cross posted. You can also read the post at that link and you should and also [...]
Denis, you really don’t get it. Maybe you missed this news last year: http://lifehacker.com/5823096/how-to-burn-your-own-lion-install-dvd-or-flash-drive
In other words, Mountain Lion is the second release to not come on a DVD. Not the first. Apple customers are perfectly competent to install it. It works just as well as any other OS update for Mac or Windows (except that it is much bigger than the average update). Not to mention, many macs no longer ship with a DVD drive (obsolete technology for many)…
And the Apple store turns out to be a fine place to get help for those needing reference in the customer service business. Apple didn’t abandon their customers at all. They still have internet connections, no? It just seems like you’re not very informed about the Apple ecosystem at all. (and your other cross-linked blog post was pretty humorous. recapping the “debate” between you and me on another site? ) (and fwiw, i’m not blaming the customer, i’m blaming you for this terrible bit of research and writeup).
BTW, don’t know if you noticed… but iTunes downloads don’t come on DVD either… neither do app updates for your iPhone… (heck you can even get app updates via the Mac Appstore as well… ) This internet thing is pretty cool.
[...] I ran into trouble and quit after I’d discovered other people with issues. I wrote a post, “First Mammal to Lay an Egg: Mountain Lion by Apple.” I love Apple products but took issue with this [...]
Denis, good write up. As for my experience, I skipped the lion update and was waiting for Mountain Lion. I also recommend for folks to look at these kinds of updates as an overnight kind of thing. Despite having broadband 20Mbit + down I picked one night, started the download and in the morning waiting for me was my update. Now I also did not just kick off the update but rather used the save to usb disk image for later install. Since we have 5 macs in my house I did not want to download it for each – so saving it to a usb stick was the trick. I installed from usb and all went smooth on all of family macs. If I run into any issues I can use my usb stick as a recovery disk.
While my experience was straight forward I did benefit from a fast connection as well as some techie background to make a usb disk for later use and install from it. But if I think of my mother-in-law doing this it would be tricky to say the least. So my CRM recommendations to Apple to make the process a bit easier for the non-techie would be the following:
1. After download, the software should automatically great you with a menu for installation, recovery or saving copy to external usb via a simple walk-you-through fashion. Customers are empowered, they can install at that time or later and/or have an option to save a copy to time machine or usb incase the internal hd crashes or they need to update other macs, as in my case and dont want to re-download. In this way, “normal” folks dont need to go try to go through the whole how do i make a disk image stuff if they want an off-disk copy.
2. For folks without high speed connections or otherwise problems with downloads I would offer a menu option at either time of purchase or after download or both to schedule time with a genius to either have them get you taken care of in-store or to walk in with a usb stick and have them give you a quick copy in store for you to use later.
Now these 2 recommends are just that and do not solve 100% of all issues but nothing ever is 100% anyhoo. But the key is to provide options to Customers and to make them feel empowered with those options.
That’s all I sayn.