Apple gives up on discussion?

[Swad]

As the administrator of a growing online community, I found this to be one of those "I can't believe that the heads of Apple, who have MBA's and private Learjets, are getting paid to make these decisions" things. From The Mac Observer,

Apple Computer has terminated its Apple Discussions Hosts, the forum moderators that monitor and moderate the company's user discussion boards. A source involved with Apple Discussions, speaking on condition of anonymity, told The Mac Observer that management at Apple has questioned the value of the discussion boards. The end result, however, has been a marked decrease in the quality of discussions, and an increase in everything from rudeness to instructions on pirating music and software.

 

Apple Discussions are used by Mac, iPod, and other Apple software users to discuss issues they have with their Apple products. The boards have heretofore been moderated by Apple staff members, called Hosts, who answer questions and otherwise moderate the discussion (for instance, deleting rude and unruly posts reported by highly ranked volunteers).

 

Apple Discussions have long been a source for its customers to find solutions to their problems, and the vast majority of posts are how-tos and problem/solution threads. According to TMO's source, some within the company fear that losing its staff of mods will result in Apple having less of a direct interface with its customers.

 

"We know that Apple will have far fewer eyes to spot real problems," said our source, "or to moderate the actions of those who have unproductive agendas."

Any ideas why they'd do this? This was a great resource that I think most of us have used from time to time when considering buying a Mac. It's a shame they don't care about it anymore, and I guess it means that communities like ours will be all the more important in the years ahead.

 

P.S. We have a great Mod staff here - they really are the best I've seen.

[gwprod12]

It does seem rather... foolish. But, it has always been my opinion that the people in charge at Apple are somewhat... confused.

 

Maybe they decided that they didnt want to pay people to help customers, or for one reason or another couldnt outsource the job to India. Who knows.

[Swad]

Seriously - they could pick up a kid off the street doing his paper route to do a job like this.

 

I think the reason things like this are a little annoying is that Apple has positioned themselves as the "We're there for the consumer, be a rebel, come join us, we're a club, etc" company... and yet really they don't care anything at all for customer feedback. It's odd and a little unsettling.

[gwprod12]

Well, what you just described is the classic hipster doofus. The old man using lingo that's 5 years out of date to try to appear "cool".

 

Corporate america isnt compatible with the "artsy intellectual free-spirit" ideal. Even though they pretend to be.

 

So, what you're seeing is the marketting department saying "Hey, lets have all these cool nifty adolescent images with blogs and podcasts and forums and stuff", and you have the board of old bankers in 50yo suits saying "what's that sonny? discussion?! in my day, we didnt have discussion! a blog? what's that?!".

 

So, my interpretation is this: It would seem like having a community-based support forum would be a good idea, but a company run by accountants only sees how much money it costs vs how much it generates (little, or lot of cost, no revenue) and shuts it down. When the people who dont get how the product culture works take charge, thats when a company goes out of business.

[retroz]

1st does this mean the forums stay up just without mods?

 

2nd, if the above is true, then look at it from this P.O.V., apple is allowing the board to spread with all sorts of talk from crack to warez without mods!? Why?

 

Genious! They are allowing the many users to come on-board, set up a systems, software, etc. (in the long run probably buy a real mac as I think Mac pricing structure will change and they will also slash prices and update much more often) while at the same time they are seeing from the crack/OSX point of view, what works what doesn't. They can stand by and read and say, sorry, no mods, while learning all the while.

 

Pretty smart! Look for Apple shares and market threshold to increase, especially if the decide to release the OS with restrictions.

 

Think about it. Perhaps they release the OS, offer no support though unless it's a real mac and make $100 per copy and require a serial number to access the forums. There users can get questions anwsered but no support from Apple unless it's a MAC and if you happen to own a copy of the OS, perhaps a 20% discount on MAC hardware. Brilliant.

 

Vista looks to be in the toilet for a while. Now is the time to strike, especially if you can run Win XP and probably vista down the road!

[gwprod12]

Apple would lose money if they sold the operating system by itself, capable of running on standard hardware and offering no support.

 

THEY WOULD LOSE MONEY!

 

For every $100 they made selling the OS to someone who wont buy a mac, that's $3 dollars in cost.

 

$3 in cost trumps $100 revenue. Everyone knows that. Dude, go to Harvard Business School, and learn how a business actually runs. The only way to make money is to screw everyone who wants to buy your product. Preferably before they give you money.

 

</bizarro world>

 

[RedSox]

If you where to say 5 years ago Mac would run PC chips almost everyone would disagree.

 

You can never say never.