Newly published data from the American Customer Satisfaction Index show that Apple leads other personal computer manufacturers, beating out Dell, HP and others. On a 100 point scale, Apple merited a score of 83, according to the ACSI, a 2.5 percent year-over-year increase and a 7.8 percent increase from 1995, the first year the ACSI measured the PC industry. The annual ACSI is sponsored by the American Society for Quality and University of Michigan’s M. Ross School of Business. It’s derived from phone interviews with customers contacted by using digital-dial telephone samples. More than 70000 consumers are identified and interviewed annually.
so what…83% of the 3% apple share is happy with their macs?
i guess that’s cool!
Quite impressive if you have in mind that in the last year Apple has been switching its entire line of computers from PowerPC to Intel processors (a major event in Apple’s life!). Doing so and still being able to keep high scores (and growing) regarding customer satisfaction is a great achievement.
most of the happy ones are apple drones anyway. the unhappy ones have left the apple hive, and there are more than 95% of them.
Well then Apple must be doing extremely well, losing 95% of their customer base yet still somehow attracting enough new customers to grow their marketshare faster than the rest of the market, and to double their laptop market share.
Either that, or you’re pulling both your thoughts and numbers out of your ass…
The discussion is getting a bit intemperate, but if you read the data, it does clearly show that Apple owners are happier with Apple than Dell owners are with Dell.
One way to see this is to look at how much difference there is between the top rated car manufacturer and the lower rated ones. There is a 5 point difference between Apple and Dell, and that’s the difference between Toyota at the top (Apple fans will be dismayed to find that BMW is not the top!) and Daimler/Mercedes or GM in general. Without some sort of statistical analysis, its hard to say how much this really means, but this level of difference, if the ratings mean anything at all, is fairly large in the study’s own terms.
The doubt that lucifer and mycspud are expressing is however quite reasonable. If the data is to be taken at face value, Apple owners and Dell owners would have to be likely to report equal satisfaction at the same level of performance. Then the difference in scores would be a fact about Apple, whereas if Apple owners are more likely to rate Apple highly, what the numbers may show is a fact about Apple owners.
Given the legendary devotion of Mac owners to Apple, one has to suspect the study is at least partly confirming something we already know about Apple owners.
The other interesting thing is, how recent the Apple rise is. Dell was ahead of Apple from 1997 through 2003. It has only beeen since 2004 that Apple has moved ahead. Apple scores in the late nineties and early years of this century were truly dismal, more than dismal if you agree that Apple owners have more company loyalty than Dell owners. 69 in 1998 for instance. No auto supplier has ever been that low.
Apple fans will be dismayed to find that BMW is not the top!
Sorry, but I don’t understand the connection between BMW and Apple fans. Please explain.
The doubt that lucifer and mycspud are expressing is however quite reasonable. If the data is to be taken at face value, Apple owners and Dell owners would have to be likely to report equal satisfaction at the same level of performance. Then the difference in scores would be a fact about Apple, whereas if Apple owners are more likely to rate Apple highly, what the numbers may show is a fact about Apple owners.
I think this is simply BS. If Apple owners are more likely to rate Apple highly (which the numbers are effectively showing), then it simply means they are more satisfied with Apple’s product. It’s as simple as that.
Given the legendary devotion of Mac owners to Apple, one has to suspect the study is at least partly confirming something we already know about Apple owners.
Do you think there would be something like a legendary devotion to Apple, if Mac owners were not satisfied with Apple products? Also keep in mind that Apple did not do so well if we go a couple of years back. The fact they are doing better now and the fact that, as you say, Mac users are very devoted to Apple, must say something about customer satisfaction… no?
Apple scores in the late nineties and early years of this century were truly dismal, more than dismal if you agree that Apple owners have more company loyalty than Dell owners. 69 in 1998 for instance.
Yeah, but I think you need to place that in context. I believe things weren’t going too well with the company in the nineties. In ’94 there was the change from 68k processors to PowerPC processors. I don’t know whether that had an effect, but I guess that this can have a bad effect on customer satisfaction. In ’97, things were going bad with the company. Their internal effort to create a new operating system was a massive failure. They then looked at BeOS, NeXTSTEP OS and Windows to use on Apple hardware. We know they chose NeXTSTEP and this brought Steve Jobs back to Apple. I don’t know how much of those things came in the news back then, but I assume this caused worries about the future of Apple and that may very well be a reason for the customer satisfaction going down.
The discussion is getting a bit intemperate… When the first post is the typical Windows fanboy flamebait, discussions to tend to get “a bit intemperate”. Using a falwed generalization about Mac’s market share as some kind of off hand explaination is of no value.
Given the legendary devotion of Mac owners to Apple, one has to suspect the study is at least partly confirming something we already know about Apple owners.
We also know that devoted Mac owners are the most vocal critics of Apple. We also know that very few Mac owners switch to Windows based PC’s. Is this reflected in the statistacl analysis? Raw numbers at face value, no. Interpretation, yes. Statistics are all historical bits of fact, so to adequate interpret the value of the numbers you need a historical perspective.
Apple’s lowest point in Q2 1998 was at the end of 12 years of very poor leadership essential by 2 CEO’s. John Sculley tired to create Macs into boxes for every market, and Gil Amelio tried to turn the Mac into a biege box world dominant platform. These guys lost sight of the users, focusing on the shareholders. Say what you will about Steve Jobs, but he has always been focused on the user and the user’s experience. No matter how wrong Sculley and Amelio were, the one thing they could not take away from Mac was the level of user experience that Windows has never been able to achieve. How many Personal Computer companies out there could withstand the poor leadership that Apple suffered with for so long?
The market share red herring is soooo worn out. Lumping all PC manufacturers together, including Apple, into one sum, then take the earlier reference (this thread) and accept that Apple now has 3% share we see that Apple is growing where others are losing share. What else do we all know. Macintosh pretty much dominates in the markets where it competes. Apple does not manufacture POS Terminal systems (Point of Sale if your wondering) which is a market sector that recently has been enjoying huge growth. Total market share is a poor analysis, but even so Apple is going strong.
No matter how you parse it, Personal Computer companies do not survive and grow for more than 30 years based solely on a devotion.
Edited 2006-08-20 15:18
That would suggest that Apple ever had more than 95% market share. So, your statement is incorrect. There is both a flow from people leaving Apple for something else, and people coming from something else to Apple. Currently, the flow with people coming to Apple is bigger than the flow from people leaving Apple.
With that in mind, your statement most of the happy ones are apple drones anyway gets another meaning: the unhappy ones left wherever they were, went to Apple and became happy.
Of course, one could argue it’s easy to become happy when you’ve tried being happy with a lot less. Or, put in another light.. Apple is gaining market share and the people who are coming from something else and change to Apple, were obviously not very satisfied in their previous situation and will contribute to Apple’s high rating.
There are obviously more Windows drones than Mac drones because, of course, Windows is the safe choice.
Marketshare is not installed base and, as has been said during WWDC, there are 19 million active Mac OS X users and a number of them have been converting from Windows.
Dell has mentioned recently that they’re in some need of rejuvenation as their financial tactics are started to consume their own profits, which were down 51 per cent. Not only that, but their growth in the industry is falling while HP is growing nicely and Apple is doing even better than the rest of the industry.
I suspect that if everyone using a computer were forced to buy all of the software they use, the Windows marketshare would drop to minimal numbers, except for industry, which is more able to afford both software and hardware.
I love it how the Windows weenies think they are insulting Apple users with the (fallacious) market share %. Last year it was supposedly 2%, but now they are deriding Apple because it is now 3%! Macs must be no good because market share is increasing…AND customer satisfaction is the top in the industry. Apple did this without even trying to compete selling cash registers like Dell. You guys are High-larious!
Market share is very important, because it shows that only 2-3% of worldwide customers are interested in Apple at all – and I am not a Windows User. I am using a real and free operating system.
But I like the war between a real fallout os like Windows and designer dream like MacOS. :o)
Market share is not important when it comes to customer satisfaction, dell doesn’t own 95% of the computing market, windows owns 95% of the operating systems market. You don’t look at the Operating System market share when comparing these companies, you look at PC’s/units sold.
This report shows that the millions of Mac’s sold last year people were more satisfied than with HP, Dell etc..
There are plenty of other markets, where having 99% doesn’t automatically mean than you will have higher customer satisfaction than the 1%.
That’s okay, but it doesn’t show that Apples concept is the right path too, because only 3% worldwide think so ; )
In my opinion it depends. There is just no common “desktop user”, it’s a buzz phrase for marketing from Microsoft and Apple. In opensource world there is just “choice” and many different likings. Apple users would be just a flavor in Linux/BSD world, so speaking of “Customer Satisfaction” in terms of computer industry is just a buzz phrase too.
>Given the legendary devotion of Mac owners to Apple,
Yeah, but some people said good bye a long time ago. I for myself did this with system7/8 and a Quadra AV. Because in my opinion Apple isn’t Apple anymore. Remember this is valid for my person
Most of the other 97% don’t know diddly squat about the excellence of the current Mac experience when it comes to doing what most of them want to do on their computers. As a result, they don’t have any kind of informed preference. This appears to be changing to some degree because there is a certain level of buzz/word-of-mouth out in the marketplace these days that you can buy a Mac and still run Windows XP at native speed if you need/want to. Apple has an excellent ‘concept.’ Savvy and curious consumers will take the short steps to find out…the rest will continue to use what they know.
That’s a nice dream, but it’s not reality. Many people left, me too, Apple after system 7/8 and never look back. Arrogance is one part of the Mac community nowadays, overestimation of one’s own capabilities – most people think of Apple = Aol. The computer world would be better without worshipping Applemaniacs and Microsfoft-zealots.
Edited 2006-08-20 14:54
Generally when I see a brand name PC I think – “gee that was expensive I could have built a better one for the money”. When I see a Mac I think, “I’d like one of them”. And now I can boot it into Linux, Windows and OSX, I when I have some spare cash, I’ll buy one.
Who have never had to call AppleCare to get a dead MightyMouse replaced, and then had an Apple tech support representive waste 45 minutes of their life on a call that should have taken 3 minutes by having them try things that have nothing at all to do with the mouse being dead, before finally admitting that yeah, the mouse is dead, and sending you out a new one… This even after you have told them you already tried a different mouse and it worked fine, as well as the the fact that the problem you had with the mouse is a widely known design flaw that has killed thousands of these mice.
Edited 2006-08-20 14:29
Who have never had to call AppleCare to get a dead MightyMouse replaced, and then had an Apple tech support representive waste 45 minutes of their life on a call that should have taken 3 minutes by having them try things that have nothing at all to do with the mouse being dead, before finally admitting that yeah, the mouse is dead, and sending you out a new one… This even after you have told them you already tried a different mouse and it worked fine, as well as the the fact that the problem you had with the mouse is a widely known design flaw that has killed thousands of these mice.
Not to defend Apple, but you do realise that these employees whom you are currently deriding with your post actually have to follow a proceedure before they can offer a solution, such as ordering a replacement – there is a company policy set down that they must follow as to remove any possibility that the user, not the component is at fault.
I have worked in the ‘customer service’ side of the equation, and you would be surprised at the number of users who ring up, and viciously claim that they’re a computer expert, and according to their expertise, a particular component is broken, and its all the companies fault; after going through the set proceedure, its actually found that the end user hasn’t installed the drivers correctly, installed batteries or something mundane, completely unrelated to the actual functional (in regards to whether the product is faulty or not) state of the device.
This is no different to Dell, for instance, who will tell a customer to run a certain utility – in the case of a hard disk, they’ll ask that the customer runs a certain utility which will test and diagnose any possible hardware errors, if there are hardware errors, the programme will come back with a error code, to which the customer care representative can pair up with a possible match on the database and provide a possible solution, which could include a replacement part, but alot of the times, might simply be a matter of the hardware not at fault, but the drivers installed, BIOS setup, or another software related issue
Well, I never had. I don’t even have a Mighty Mouse. But the day my PowerMac decided to not boot (it wasn’t even under warranty), the Apple Center near my home just lend me an iMac till my own machine was OK. You’ll understand why I’m one of the extremely satisfied.
“These must be people…Who have never had to call AppleCare to get a dead MightyMouse replaced, and then had an Apple tech support representive waste 45 minutes of their life…”
Yeah, must be.
These results are very close at the top and there is certainly a margin or error. As for Apple itself, the significant thing is how much they have improved over the past decade.
Mac users will defend the platform when attacked, but I think in a poll like this people would be honest. Venerable Mac troubleshooting sites like macintouch and macfixit show every day that Mac users have problems like everyone else – and complain about them (and Apple) just as loudly as anyone.
If you’d like to see some interesting stats, macintouch has been doing Mac Reliability Surveys over the past year or so. Some models, like the original G5 iMac had failure/problem rates of over 30%. On the other hand, the big winner has been the Mac Mini with an astounding failure/problem rate of only 3%! Of course, the simplicity of the system is surely the reason for that, but that’s quite a testament.
In my own opinion, Apple’s main fault regarding customer service/satisfaction is they sometimes stonewall users and won’t admit to a particular known problem for a preposterous length of time.
Why can’t we have some nice and interesting replies? Its all childish Apple bashing stuff, with an exception or two.
And get this, one user registered in April and has only 2 posts, both bashing Apple. What woke him up? Other user registered today and his first post is one of the shortest and most childish Apple bashing sentences I’ve seen in a while… why did he bother registering?
There are clearly too many ‘clones’ around… this is one (just one) of the reasons OS News is losing its quality. No interesting discussions, just the same old childish remarks about the market share and such. What’s wrong with these guys? What moves them to do this? Hate? Lots of spare time? Pure ignorance? Quite boring…
Was I the only one being able to ignore the bashing and to actually comment the news by myself? I hope not. 🙁
Edited 2006-08-20 15:01
> Why can’t we have some nice and interesting replies? Its all
> childish Apple bashing stuff, with an exception or two.
Mine was not childish Apple bashing. It was a real experience I had with AppleCare trying to get them to replace a dead Mighty Mouse where the scrollball had stopped scrolling down and Apple’s recommended cleaning procedures did not fix the problem. This is a problem that tons of people have had with this mouse because of a design flaw. But instead of just admitting that it was a dead mouse, Apple’s tech support guy spent 45 minutes on the phone with me trying to find a software configuration problem, despite the fact that I told him right off the bat that I had already tried another mouse and it worked fine.
And yeah, that taints my experience with Apple quite a bit, and lowers my customer satisfaction rating for Apple significantly.
Oh no, I was not talking about you. You had a bad experience and you explained that to us. Facts! You were one of the exceptions.
http://www.osnews.com/permalink.php?news_id=14905&comment_id=134233
http://www.osnews.com/permalink.php?news_id=14857&comment_id=132154
http://www.osnews.com/permalink.php?news_id=14857&comment_id=132152
http://www.osnews.com/permalink.php?news_id=14903&comment_id=134023
http://www.osnews.com/permalink.php?news_id=14673&comment_id=126788
Looking through your comment history you post:
Complaints about Microsoft and its software
Praises for Apple and its software
Project animosity toward anyone that says anything you think makes Apple look bad.
I would say that you are not “ignoring bashing,” but rather dwelling on it as if there exists some threat to your computer choices.
The quality of the discussion is often a reflection of the subject matter. To be honest there just hasn’t been a lot of interesting news.
Looking through my comment history:
– I’ve been using Windows for years, yes.
– I’ve recently switched to Mac OS X and Ubuntu.
– I’m not waiting for Vista or upgrading my PCs to run it.
– My old Macs are running Mac OS X, my old PCs are now running Ubuntu.
– I agree with the antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft, not because I hate MS (I don’t!) but because they are getting too powerful, and consumers are being harmed by it. They’re limiting the available software, and charging us more and more for it.
– I think Apple’s move from PowerPC to Intel was the best thing they could have done. Using the words of Adobe’s CEO “what took you so long?”.
– I don’t want OS News to be somebody else’s little soviet union so I will always criticize the editor everytime I believe he/she is not being impartial. I don’t like the ‘John Dvorak’ way of posting news. Have you seen the video to understand how some guys work?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SAWDYaWAVQQ
Anyway, it is ok to disagree as along as it is done in a polite way, like you did. Or with facts like Simba did. 🙂
[QUOTE]
I dared to not put a fcuking halo around your pet company
[/QUOTE]
This was posted by and editor. Can you believe it? And you tell me I shouldn’t be concerned?
[QUOTE]The quality of the discussion is often a reflection of the subject matter. To be honest there just hasn’t been a lot of interesting news.[/QUOTE]
Totally agree.
I don’t know if I necessarily disagree with you about the existence of accounts solely to rile-up Mac users in general: niche platforms have more zealous users in my experience, and it isn’t difficult to drum up some entertainment with some strong personal opinions about them. That is probably what frustrates Thom, since he’s accused of nonsense by platform zealots for just linking to articles that don’t sing the praises of the platform. If I were Thom I’d quit and tell the people that post here to troll through Digg for their tech news, because dealing with their whining isn’t worth the effort. People even complain about the topic icons! I’m sure meta-whining about OSNews and its staff amounts to a large portion of the total comment history here. I’ve certainly made a few disparaging comments about the turd articles from informit, so I am not above it or anything. I try not to attack the staff, though, since they filter news for me without any remuneration and don’t really do anything to warrant outrage.
I was really just disagreeing that you were outside of the cycle of it, since flaming Microsoft products and promoting Apple seems to be most of what you do here. It’s the other side of the coin, if you will. It’s just part of the whole process that encourages people to act out.
The news topic itself is a pretty boring one. It’s really just an invitation to come up with various hypotheses explaining descriptive statistics. If I didn’t usually scan story comments for items with only a few comments to see what others were saying, I wouldn’t have even paid attention to it. As it is I had to spend a few seconds fixing moderation that didn’t follow the moderation guidelines (and personally I hate being bothered to moderate anything but crap) and post comments I hope will encourage people to not make this into a 100+ post flamefest.
Anyway this is off-topic now so I’m just going to move on.
one part the dismal experiences of competition, and one part personal experiences with the company. If a company makes you feel good about your purchase, that goes a long way. Tobacco and beer companies were all about making you feel good about developing addictions to substances that impair your lifestyle. Microsoft’s platform is overrun with spyware, adware, and other crap if you happen to be naive. Fleeing from it to a more obscure platform likely reduces stress levels enormously (this is one of the reasons I sell relatives on Macs). Then you get to whatever personal experience you have with your Macs. Some are good and some are bad.
the difference is in the way customers think
from my experience:
if something breaks i’m pissed because the manufecturer didn’t do his QC-part.
when an apple breaks it’s repaired and the apple folks are happy that they got such great support.
or do you know a rational reason why a company wich is recaling batteries once a year can be number 1?
“or do you know a rational reason why a company wich is recaling batteries once a year can be number 1?”
because they aren’t waiting for them to start exploding before they do.
Having used all sorts of OSes and hardware over the years, I can certainly understand Apple’s high satisfaction rating, especially in light of the fact that the other computers usually run Windows, which tends to be a bit rough around the edges even now. (with the exception of server 2003, which is the best thing they’ve produced by far)