Apple Falls Behind Microsoft, Samsung, Sony In New Consumer Experience Survey | Hacker News Reader

Apple Falls Behind Microsoft, Samsung, Sony In New Consumer Experience Survey

macrumors.com

For me ios 7 has lowered the bar when it comes to expectations from Apple. My Ipad Air crashes multiple times daily when browsing websites, somehow the flash free world seems just as craptastic as the flash filled one.

From what I've seen online, people with the new 64 bit chips have seen more crashes. I'm not sure what's to be expected when such a transition occurs, but it's safe to say the amount of crashes should reduce with each update.

From the graph it appears that the change in ranking is more or less a result of Apple's competitors improving their customer relationships while Apple barely changes.

Yeah, they noted Apple actually improved from last year but everyone else improved even more. Meanwhile we the consumers benefit.

Sigh what a squishy article. What is the methodology? What is the sampling error? What does "OK" mean relative to "Good" ? This reminds me of the anecdotes in "Proofiness"[1] which talk about how the news industry figured out they could manufacture news by taking a poll.

[1] http://www.amazon.com/Proofiness-Youre-Being-Fooled-Numbers/...

MetaSigh. Why is it only now that there is a contradiction to the accepted narrative of technological merit that squishyness has become problematic?

Well for me squisyness is always problematic. When people's reasoning depends on subjective self reporting feedback I don't consider it nearly as persuasive as something done methodically. My sigh was that I can't see how the article even gets to the 'ranking' order they get to.

They lead with "The survey measures customer experience, which involves difficult-to-define criteria based on how a customer feels about his or her interaction with a company. Forrester queried 7,500 consumers about their retail and customer support experiences and used the responses to assign each company a customer-experience index score. "

So 7,500 respondents, how were they picked? What was their demographic? Were they previous device owners or new device owners? etc etc. And this:

"Sony came in second with a rating of 83, while Microsoft and Samsung followed one point behind at 82. Apple scored an 81. All three brands rated below Apple in the 2013 survey. "

What moves someone 1 pt up or down in the survey? What is the margin of error? In 2013 Apple shipped 150M iPhones, if they surveyed just iPhone customers who bought a phone last year, 7,500 would be .005% Except the slides mention at least five vendors Amazon, Samsung, Apple, Sony, and Microsoft.

So that is why I felt it as non-news. There isn't enough data to say anything about the market, consumer sentiment, or usefulness.

So what was your take on the story?

My take is that the story is that the story is the story. It's contrary to the standard narrative - a narrative which has used Forrester and similarly squishy measurements of perceptions as evidence of Apple's unquestioned superiority for many years.

E.g. https://duckduckgo.com/?q=site%3Adaringfireball.net+Forreste...

As for the sample size, 7500 is plenty if properly selected. If the selection process is poor in ways that are not accounted for in the analysis, then a larger bad data set won't make the analysis any more accurate.

I agree, but what made me sigh was that in order to make that story 'stick' for me, is to be really crisp about the selection process. By going through and detailing the ways you tried to disprove your result (which is counter to the narrative) you legitimize the conclusion. But without that, the critical thinker is left without any way to evaluate whether or not they reached a valid conclusion.

If the structure of the report was out of character for Forrester in particular or the industry in general, I'd be with you. But in the end, it comes down to trusting the pollster, be it Forrester or the New York Times/CBS or Harris or Nielson's overnights.

Polling - even rigorously constructed and conducted polling - isn't presented in the press with an abundance of meaningful detail. Probably because it's all in the sampling, and sampling and statistics are so counter intuitive [e.g. The Thursday Child] that explaining why something is meaningful won't convince a typical audience member.

Ignoring statistics, it seems to me that Microsoft has been rapidly improving their image in the consumer space. It has also been my experience that Amazon has really good customer service. My gut tells me that Apple has not revamped its customer relations model recently.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com