My Consumer Journey with Apple

It was 2003. America did not have a black or white demagogue president. Steve Job was alive and Apple was booming. In 2003, Apple launched the Itunes Music Store with 200,000 songs and a new Ipod that could hold up to 7500 songs. To put that in perspective, Spotify has more than 30 million songs on its streaming service and Apple Music now has 30 million songs.

In June of 2003, Apple sold its one millionth Ipod. In December of 2003, I purchased my first Ipod, and became part of the two million purchases to date. At 11, it was the greatest thing I owned. I cherished it. I paraded it around like I had found Jesus.

I signed up for Itunes at both of parent’s home and danced around in the computer room while I listened to music.

Apple had me hooked and for a good reason: They were innovative. They exceeded my delight and presented exclusive enthrallment from me. I had that Ipod until it was stolen in 2012. The updates had not made this piece of equipment obsolete. Had it not been stolen, that initial splendor would have been ever present even today.

My next piece of Apple equipment was a Macbook Pro. My dad helped me purchased it in 2010 after graduating from high school. My school had given me $500 for being Senior Class President. I showed my dad the money and said, I will put all of this into a Macbook if you will split it with me for college. He obliged, and I handed him over my check.

At the Apple Store, I remember seeing all of the college students. I’m about to be one of those! More importantly, I am about to be one of those with a Macbook Pro. My father went to the genius, and in the blink of an eye, we had purchased the Macbook. I was offered a Itouch or a printer with the computer. I of course opted in for the Itouch. It was much cooler than the printer.

My Macbook lasted me throughout college, and it died in 2014. It will still run but only when continuously plugged in. It won’t update because “this version of Macbook is no longer supported”. My Ipod lasted me more than 9 years but Apple won’t send updated to my Macbook after 6 years.

My next purchase was the Iphone in 2011. I convinced my stepdad to add this phone on to our plan. It was the coolest, greatest technology ever! I HAD TO HAVE IT! After coercing him to get me the phone, he was so hooked on the idea that when I upgraded and got one, he did too. He and I have not both been sold on an idea since then (except for my Subaru).

I continued to have my expectations exceeded on every purchase, but that has changed with my last three purchases: Beats Headphones, 6S Iphone, and Macbook Air.

The first and least important purchase in my opinion was my Beats headphones. As a graduate student, they gave them to me with my purchase of my Macbook Air. I found this to be strange since they eliminated the option to get a printer with the computer. A college student would benefit greater from a printer than Beats. Even though most students choose the headphones, it would be nice to have that option still.

I used the headphones three times and they broke. The speakers don’t work on both sides. For a retail price of $300, I don’t want them to break within the fourth time of me using them. Besides that, my speakers broke on the airplane and will require me to go into the Apple Store for the third time this month. I don’t want to go into the Apple Store once, let alone 3 times because all of my Apple products have broken.

Second user frustration, my Macbook Air stopped functioning properly after 3 months. My teacher thought it was a six year old computer. I took it into the store, and the genius wiped my computer. It was extremely frustrating but it fixed the error. I left irritated but at a level that I would continue to purchase Apple products.

This changed on my most recent visit to Apple. After the update, I had to take my Iphone 6S into the store. Nothing worked. The speaker was broken. The screen did not fade into black. It went straight to black. Siri would register a spoken text but not properly text it. She would input my last two words into the text and nothing else. Additionally, the battery would die at 50%. I had 50 percent one day and was using Google Maps and my phone died. I had no clue where to go and couldn’t reach anyone to figure it out. It sucked. It also wouldn’t hold a charge. Icloud wouldn’t update automatically or when you manually told it to update, nothing would happen. It stopped showing the contact number for people I had multiple numbers for. It wouldn’t have all the lines separating contacts saved in my favorites. The sad thing is I could go on.

I made an appointment and went to the Apple Store. The genius wiped my phone. I was frustrated, much more so than with my computer because I had texts I wanted to save. I had apps I like. It was set how I wanted it. I didn’t like the change, but I dealt with it because I thought it would fix the issue. Wrong. My phone worked worse than before. I made another appointment at Apple.

The genius told me, “Air updates haven’t been uploading properly. They miss lines of code and we’ve been seeing a lot of strange issues lately.” I’m sorry what? Your update is not working and LINES OF CODE ARE MISSING! Thousands of users are having this problem. The update has been out since October, but did it come too soon? Apple should have found that updates aren’t installing properly. How did that get missed?

He wiped my phone in hopes that it would fix the problem again. It didn’t. After working with him for more than an hour, he said, “I don’t know what the problem is. I’m stumped. This is the first time I haven’t been able to solve an issue. I can get you a new phone for $300.”

I was irate. He couldn’t solve the problem, had wiped my phone again, and had no idea what the issue was. He solution: Give Apple more money to not solve your problem. That made no sense to me, so I left extremely frustrated and with the notion that I never want to buy another Iphone again.

My user journey with Apple went from exceeding expectations on every purchase to below expectations on every purchase. If users continue to have journeys like these, the Goliath of Apple will be defeated by giants such as Google.