|
Cats & Dogs Living Together (7/10/03)
|
 
|
| | |
Will wonders never cease? PC Magazine has just released the results of its 16th Annual Service & Reliability Report, and Apple comes out smelling like a rose-- maybe even like a rose carrying a pizza. Check it out: Apple ranks an A+ in the Desktop category, an A for Notebooks, and an A for Servers, and is thusly plastered all over the Readers' Choice listings (both for home and for work) like a stubborn and embarrassing rash.
None of this comes as much of a surprise to us, since our own experiences with Apple's repair service have been stellar, and just last week faithful viewer Shane Burgess told us that he had shipped his PowerBook with an ailing Ethernet port to Apple at 5 PM on Tuesday and got the fixed unit back on Thursday afternoon-- and Apple had even fixed a ding in the enclosure he hadn't even mentioned. Okay, granted, the quality of Apple's phone support certainly seems to have declined a bit over the years, but it still hasn't degenerated far enough to have caused any murderous rampages in highly-populated areas by wild-eyed callers toting automatic weapons (at least, none that anyone can prove in court), so hey, how bad can it be?
No, to us the real news here is that Apple is showing up in the results of this reader survey in the first place. The grades are tabulated based solely on submitted data from PC Magazine subscribers, and the magazine "excluded any company for which [it] didn't receive at least 50 responses"-- so that means that, as of April 2003, there were at least fifty PC Magazine readers using Macs, which has our faces frozen in a comical mask of confusion and disbelief. Heck, there are apparently even more than that; "fewer than 2 percent" of desktops in the survey were Macs, but given that there were 16,851 desktop responses this year, we're talking about maybe 330 Mac-using PC Magazine subscribers. Somebody call Ripley's! Especially since Apple was "not on the charts last year because of its modest share among survey takers."
So are more PC Magazine subscribers choosing to buy Macs, or are more Mac users choosing to subscribe to PC Magazine? Our gut feeling is that the former possibility is mildly less preposterous (and a whole lot less disturbing)-- and if it's true, it's good news for Apple, because it might mean that even more PC Magazine readers will be swayed by Apple's A+ rating to give a Mac a try. Hmmm, maybe those Switch ads really did work after all. We figure this is all Ellen Feiss's doing. Somebody send that girl a subscription.
| |
| |
 |
SceneLink (4066)
|  |
 |
|
And Now For A Word From Our Sponsors |
| | | |
|
| |
|
 | | The above scene was taken from the 7/10/03 episode: July 10, 2003: Apple somehow scores top honors for service and reliability among PC Magazine readers. Meanwhile, rumor has it that Panther might actually ship well before the end of the year, and apparently somebody caved on the whole reseller contract thingy, because iPods are once again available at Target...
Other scenes from that episode: 4067: 10.3: Hope Springs Eternal (7/10/03) That dastardly Steve! First he gets us all hopped up on Panther by showing off new gee-whiz features like scampering windows and spinning cubes, and then he goes and kills our buzz by announcing that it's going to ship commercially "before the end of this year."... 4068: iPods Back On, Uh, IN Target (7/10/03) You know, there are a lot of plot threads we regret missing during those eleven weeks we were held captive by the Mole People and forced to dance for their amusement, but probably the one we most wish we had been around to cover was Apple's revised reseller contract...
Or view the entire episode as originally broadcast... | |  |
|
|
