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Comment by X86BSD | Hacker News Reader

First google is no apple. Don't expect that level of service. They simply don't care.

Second it's not just with their new phone the pixel they support poorly. Try having problems with google fiber. The stories of them taking a year and a half or over two years to deploy fiber 400 feet or to a house next to a house with it or an apartment already wired for it is insane. I don't think they have they really care about supporting their services or products. They just want you use them so they can monitize your data. Beyond that they aren't interested and it shows.

Their core soul is how to make money off data. That's it. Making the pixel was just another finger to capture more data. Android is a tire fire IMO. Google fiber is fast but pray nothing goes wrong. Any of their other services and you're pretty much on your own. I don't think google deserves to be anywhere as large as it is. But time will tell if they are able to stay relevant.

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> First google is no apple. Don't expect that level of service. They simply don't care.

In my experience, Apple support isn't great either, unless you are a paid customer. When I bought the Iphone 3G, it had dead pixels upon arrival, I got a replacement, same thing, then went for another replacement, but at this point they started to argue, talk about "half-dead pixel" (a new concept), etc .. I had to insist heavily and make a bit of a scandal in front of other customers to make them replace my phone, which they did (finally, my 3rd phone also had a dead pixel, this time I gave up).

I also remember dropping close to $2k for a macbook pro 2 years ago, upon arrival the hinge of the screen was loose, this time tech support told me that 'unfortunately', that kind of stuff requires a screen replacement, and that's not going to happen for such a small thingy.

I've always assumed that for the kind of money Apple charge, I deserve perfection, the reality is kinda different. Best way I found to prevent insulting myself too much when I order from them is to falsely claim I am a student and pay with a discover credit card. It's still a robbery but 15% cheaper.

Interesting. I've always had a very pleasant experience with support for my apple devices. To the degree that I've had two laptops repaired for free that were out of warranty. Getting an iPhone screen officially repaired on the spot is something that still amazes me.

In the end, googles lack of support is one of the major factors I'm willing to pay the extra cash for Apple devices. That plus privacy and thought out security.

Same here. The fact the above poster got two replacement phones for free is proof they have good service. You think a dead pixel on a google pixel phone will get replaced? Let alone twice. I don't think so.

Apple has good service but they won't repair/replace everything. But i find them more than reasonable when something goes wrong.

> The fact the above poster got two replacement phones for free is proof they have good service.

Not it's not. A replacement for a hardware problem is only good service if the new one does not have the same hardware problem. Replacing a broken part with a broken part is slightly worse than doing nothing at all.

I think Apple's phone support has been overhauled recently to make it way better. I called about an issue on my new touchbar macbook pro and the person I talked to stayed on the line for about 45 minutes with me, including waiting while I reinstalled macos over the top of itself. After the problem seemed to be resolved he gave me his email address so I could talk to him directly if it happens again. He promised they'd sort it out one way or another.

I believe him - I have no doubt they'll send me out a replacement if the issue keeps showing up.

Its a super expensive laptop so I'm definitely paying for it. But it sure is nice to get a personal, premium experience like that from customer support.

Thought out security?

Apple seems to be on some sort of mission to tie everything to your fingerprint, something that people have demonstrated is easy to fake if you have an image of the fingerprint. There was a massive issue about the FBI getting access to that iPhone but, when they tried to do it themselves (instead of getting Apple to give them a really easy way to do it that they could use in future, which was their initial goal) it was easy for them to do.

Apple is not doing a good job with security. They are doing a good job with PR, including convincing people that don't think about it too closely they are doing a good job with security. Look at it more.closely and you can only conclude that they don't actually care about security, just the perception of it.

> It's still a robbery but 15% cheaper.

How is it robbery when you consented to the purchase?

None of these sync up with actual standard Apple Care. I maintain a fleet of iOS and Mac devices and have never had this much of a run around with Apple support. With iOS devices it's pretty much here's a new one and with Macs they go out for repair and come back just fine. So either you're really unluck, or it's something else.

I feel like its "something else". Anytime I hear stories like this I think of Amazon reviews where clearly someone is doing something incorrectly yet blames the company. Shrug.

How have I done anything incorrecto? Dead pixels show up on my phone when I boot it the first time, is this just the way I opened the package?

Same thing for the 2015 MacBook pro, problem with the screen hinge wobbling since day one. Just Google for it and you will see how widely reported this problem is.

> Second it's not just with their new phone the pixel they support poorly. Try having problems with google fiber. The stories of them taking a year and a half or over two years to deploy fiber 400 feet or to a house next to a house with it or an apartment already wired for it is insane.

Deploying fiber where you think it would be easy to deploy fiber is not customer support...

Aren't they officially backing away from fiber?

Yes, they made a ridiculous marketing speak non-announcement about that about a month or two back.

Yes, it was odd. They are still rolling out in the cities they are in but have given up expanding to other cities. As usual I think they just don't have the will to power through the issues to keep deploying in city after city. Or they are not making as much money off google fiber subscribers data as they thought and it's not worth it anymore. Or they can't find people to actually do the infrastructure construction they need. Hence two years or more just to get service no matter how close it is. But again I expect this from google, I have never been impressed with anything they have done. Sadly.

I think you are right to expect this - they have a long history of dropping support for things that were huge.

If you have never been impressed by anything they have done though you have pretty high standards. You can be impressed and still not want to use it but, it is hard to imagine someone not finding anything they have done impressive.

> First google is no apple. Don't expect that level of service. They simply don't care.

Apple has an appalling history of denying problems with their devices when they know about them and making life hard for people who get third party repairs. I think Apple are probably great while your device is in warranty but, out of it, they seem to be actively making it hard for you to keep using it wherever they can get away with it.

Blaming Google fibers aloe rollout all on Google - that's a new one.

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