I had a dream of owning a Macbook Air since the launch of the first MacBook Air in January 2008. Totally loved the machine for its thin, lightweight and most importantly its beautiful design. Still remember the beautiful "I am a young soul" ad it had. But back then I was a student and waited for me to start earning to buy the machine. So finally in December 2013 I decided to buy one. But since then the whole experience has been disastrous.
First the purchase process. I went to a local Authorised Apple Dealer in Panjim Goa. When I visited the shop near Hotel Fidalgo they told me that they did not have the machine in stock. When I inquired if they could provide me the same before 31st December 2013 they said they will have to speak to the store supervisor who will give me a call the next day to inform about the same. They also noted down my name and phone number on a book. Sadly I did not get any call next day and I had to visit the shop again next day and upon inquiring why they did not bother to call again they just gave a blank look. The store supervisor present there told me that they could give me the machine in a 3-4 days time however I will have to make full payment in advance and only then the order would be processed else they will not get the machine. Since I did not have a choice I returned to the store with my cheque book to make the payment however before making the payment I tried to confirm if I would get free iWorks as informed by Tim Cook at WWDC. However the employees in the store had no clue about the free iWorks and told me that again the store supervisor would call me next day with details. Luckily I did get a call but the supervisor refused to comment anything about free iWorks but instead gave me an online link of Apple uptodate Program and a helpline phone number and asked me to speak to them and find out about the feature of the laptop which I was going to purchase from them. Upon calling the number I was told that they are not the right people to speak to and I will have to call up the sales team and was given yet another number and the sales team informed me that I will have to call the local dealer to know if my laptop qualifies for the free iWorks. Yup ! I was back to the point from where I started. All this for the famed apple purchase experience !
Finally I decided to take the risk and go for the purchase and made the payment. I received my MacBook Air after three days time on Saturday 28th December 2013. I was super excited to finally own a Mac. Wohooo !! A dream come true.Sadly my excitement was short lived. The experience of unboxig was great.The devise looks amazing, like a piece of an installation art. Super light weight. Ultra Thin. In short the look and feel is just amazing. Upon filling in the details and setting it up I finally logged in the devise. One of the first thing I did was to visit the App Store and download the latest version of OS X Mavericks. I also put XCode and Twitter for download. However after few minuits it gave me an error message saying unknown error.
First the purchase process. I went to a local Authorised Apple Dealer in Panjim Goa. When I visited the shop near Hotel Fidalgo they told me that they did not have the machine in stock. When I inquired if they could provide me the same before 31st December 2013 they said they will have to speak to the store supervisor who will give me a call the next day to inform about the same. They also noted down my name and phone number on a book. Sadly I did not get any call next day and I had to visit the shop again next day and upon inquiring why they did not bother to call again they just gave a blank look. The store supervisor present there told me that they could give me the machine in a 3-4 days time however I will have to make full payment in advance and only then the order would be processed else they will not get the machine. Since I did not have a choice I returned to the store with my cheque book to make the payment however before making the payment I tried to confirm if I would get free iWorks as informed by Tim Cook at WWDC. However the employees in the store had no clue about the free iWorks and told me that again the store supervisor would call me next day with details. Luckily I did get a call but the supervisor refused to comment anything about free iWorks but instead gave me an online link of Apple uptodate Program and a helpline phone number and asked me to speak to them and find out about the feature of the laptop which I was going to purchase from them. Upon calling the number I was told that they are not the right people to speak to and I will have to call up the sales team and was given yet another number and the sales team informed me that I will have to call the local dealer to know if my laptop qualifies for the free iWorks. Yup ! I was back to the point from where I started. All this for the famed apple purchase experience !
Finally I decided to take the risk and go for the purchase and made the payment. I received my MacBook Air after three days time on Saturday 28th December 2013. I was super excited to finally own a Mac. Wohooo !! A dream come true.Sadly my excitement was short lived. The experience of unboxig was great.The devise looks amazing, like a piece of an installation art. Super light weight. Ultra Thin. In short the look and feel is just amazing. Upon filling in the details and setting it up I finally logged in the devise. One of the first thing I did was to visit the App Store and download the latest version of OS X Mavericks. I also put XCode and Twitter for download. However after few minuits it gave me an error message saying unknown error.
I also tried starting twitter and XCode download but the same error occurred. The download used to work for a few minuets and then fail. This problem occurred again and again. There was no problem with my internet connection as I was able to browse websites as well as able to download data on my Dell PC. When I called up the support centre Mr. Rakshith who asked me to make a few changes in the network settings and downloads started working. He also asked me to download a small app to check if it works. I downloaded Pocket and it got downloaded and installed properly. I also managed to download twitter which was unable to install for which Mr.Rakshith told me that it was the problem of the 3rd Party app maker and they could not help. I also kept Mavericks again again seemed to work fine. However after another half a GB of download it again filed and the the problem continues. I also tried to download flash player to run youtube videos but even that installation had error.
During this process I had not connected the power supply for a long time and must say the battery life is just out of this world and full marks for apple on this. However when I tried calling apple support centre again for support and to inform that the problem has persisted I got a recorded message that they were alwready closed. In a world where even startups areA shifting to 24X7 support Apple has support timings till only 6.30 pm. Now I am waiting for the apple support centre to open so that I could try and fix the issue which I have no clue when it is going to be sorted out.
The whole issue is becoming more trouble as I am used to some extraordinary service for my laptop from Dell. Whenever I faced the problem with my Dell Laptop the person from Dell Service centre was at my home the very next day and sorted out the issue. Once my charger got spoilt when I was in Mumbai and they Dell executive made sure that the new one was on my desk very next day. For Apple however if there is any fault you have to try troubleshooting the devise on your own with help from Support Centre which has got working timings from 19th Century. Also if it needs to be sent to repair then I think you need to personally go and give it to authorised service centre of apple or to the dealer from where you purchased it.
Overall from this experience I have released following:
- Apple MacBook does not work out of the box as they promise. You will have to spend a lot of time to get it working functionally and as in my case a lot more then it takes for a Windows PC.
- When it comes to service apple is average. It does not comes anywhere close to the service provided by a company like Dell.
- Apple is not about great engineering. Its about extraordinary marketing.
- All this bad experience when I am paying almost two times the cost of a PC make it just not worth it.
While may would some how try to convince you about their MacBook experience being amazing simply because they have already paid twice the amount they would have paid for a PC but here I have decided to truthfully list out the issues faced by an Apple user. This is my honest MacBook review. My old Dell Laptop was not as beautiful as this Mac and the battery lasted for one fourth the time but then it at least did the work I bought it for. MacBook is just a beautiful glowing piece of art that suits for Art Galleries not a office where people are trying to do some serious technical or managerial work.
Honestly, I have never been a fan of apple. What you say is absolutely true, Apple is not about great engineering. Its about extraordinary marketing.
ReplyDeleteI have seen my friends struggle with tons of issues on their office MackBook , only luck being they have a local IT support to solve the issues.