[HN Gopher] Is Apple making implausible iPhone satisfaction claims?
___________________________________________________________________
Is Apple making implausible iPhone satisfaction claims?
Author : nowooski
Score : 109 points
Date : 2023-07-13 17:57 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.perfectrec.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.perfectrec.com)
| _Nat_ wrote:
| [This PDF](http://media.wix.com/ugd/bbfb8a_2ea66bffc09b40d099237b
| b83813... ) appears to provide information about their
| methodology -- noting it was linked from [this
| article](https://www.macrumors.com/2015/07/20/apple-watch-tops-
| iphone... ).
|
| In short, it looks like potential-respondents first had to apply
| (e.g., in response to [this Facebook
| post](https://www.facebook.com/Wristly.co/posts/apple-watch-
| owner-... )), and then they pre-screened potential-respondents..
| and it sounds like respondents may have had some sort of a weekly
| commitment?, as the document includes:
|
| > To finish, a big thank you to the 1,100+ strong members of the
| Wristly Inner Circle- we wouldn't be able to learn so much so
| fast about the Apple Watch without your weekly contribution.
|
| So it doesn't sound like a random sampling of Apple-product
| users.
|
| Anyway, then apparently they ask if a respondent's satisfied with
| a product, giving 4 options: " _Very Satisfied /Delighted_", "
| _Somewhat Satisfied_ "," _Neither Satisfied or Dissatisfied_ ",
| and " _Somewhat Dissatisfied_ ".
|
| Then, they add up the first 2 categories as their " _key metric
| of customer satisfaction_ ".
|
| ---
|
| To note it, [this blog-
| post](https://daringfireball.net/linked/2018/04/20/iphone-x-
| custom... ) claims to quote " _Ben Bajarin, on the result of a
| survey of iPhone X owners conducted last month_ " saying:
|
| > When it came to overall customer satisfaction, iPhone X owners
| in our study gave the product an overall 97% customer
| satisfaction. [...] Just to contrast that with the original Apple
| Watch research with Wristly I was involved in, 66% of Apple Watch
| owners indicated they were very satisfied with Apple Watch, a
| product which also ranked a 97% customer satisfaction number in
| the first Apple Watch study we did.
|
| Point being that, while the above PDF appears to talk about the
| Apple Watch, it sounds like they're strongly implying that the
| customer-satisfaction figures for the iPhone were largely done in
| a similar manner -- and, at least in the case of the above-quoted
| speaker, by some of the same people.
| user_named wrote:
| Apple is NPD manifested as a corporation. Everything they do is
| self-gratifying, so of course also this.
|
| "All-new"... Pffft.
| Insanity wrote:
| NPD?
| noisem4ker wrote:
| Narcissistic Personality Disorder
| nowooski wrote:
| Hey - I'm the post author. Thank you sharing these details on
| the Watch survey.
| meepmorp wrote:
| > Hey - I'm the post author. Thank you sharing these details
| on the Watch survey. I wonder if 451 Research is doing
| something similar with their iPhone survey.
|
| Isn't that something you should've researched before writing
| the post? Methodology seems like an important factor here.
| nowooski wrote:
| I agree. Apple is making an extraordinary claim and we
| think they should share their methodology.
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| somewhat satisfied is an amusing answer. it implies you're not
| actually satisfied with the product.
| dktnj wrote:
| Trick in getting 99% satisfaction is asking you about it 30
| nanoseconds after you bought it or before you even received it.
| wereHamster wrote:
| Is there a legal limit how much you can fake the numbers before
| you are held accountable? Seems like Apple is pulling a lot of
| numbers out of their rear end. See also LTT's recent video about
| Apple quite clearly faking Mac Studio performance numbers:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buLyy7x2dcQ
| yuters wrote:
| I'm curious about the stat of the email being opened 73 times.
| I'm wondering if someone at apple who has access to that contact
| email address has the option "Protect Mail Activity" turned off
| on their Apple Mail client or if this is a bug.
| aryan14 wrote:
| Any situation where a company can be put in a better position
| with statistics will 99% of the time lead to the company hiring a
| statistics firm that favours them.
| post_break wrote:
| Just like how they compare the M2 processors to an Intel iMac in
| bench marks which in itself is kind of ridiculous, this is
| unsurprising.
| threeseed wrote:
| They do that to encourage _existing_ Apple users to upgrade.
|
| Apple is growing market share but not massively so. Hence new
| revenue will need to come from it's existing user base.
| arvindh-manian wrote:
| A number this high is absurd to get in a survey of the general
| public -- always remember Lizardman's Constant [1].
|
| [1] https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/04/12/noisy-poll-results-
| and...
| dpkonofa wrote:
| It's not a survey of the general public, though. That's why the
| OP article is nonsense. This is most-likely a NetPromoter
| survey. It is a survey of verified iPhone purchasers/owners
| just after the 14 day return window who decided to keep it.
| It's self-selective but it's not unattainable like the article
| claims.
| howinteresting wrote:
| It is not a NetPromoter survey as clearly outlined in the
| article. It is a non-representative 451 Research survey.
| pm2222 wrote:
| If only there's no carrier lock and photos can be backed up
| easily to personal storage.
| worrycue wrote:
| Carrier locks are not an Apple-only thing -
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SIM_lock
|
| Seem to be a common feature on most phones. Don't like it? Bug
| your government to outlaw the use of the feature like
| "Canada,[5] Chile,[6] China, Israel,[7] and Singapore".
|
| iTunes backups my photos. No idea how to access them though -
| apart from restoring to a working phone.
| jrockway wrote:
| > iTunes backups my photos. No idea how to access them though
| - apart from restoring to a working phone.
|
| You should be able to go to iCloud.com and log in. If you
| have the E2E encryption enabled, it will ask you to give
| iCloud the decryption key, so the webserver can serve you the
| decrypted files. (This ability can be turned off if you're
| really paranoid.)
| matricaria wrote:
| Is carrier lock still a thing in the US?
| RandallBrown wrote:
| I think it is, but it's not like you can't get unlocked
| iPhones in the US. I think carriers also are required to
| unlock your phone if you ask them, but I may be imagining
| that.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Yes, they have to unlock after contract ends.
|
| https://www.fcc.gov/general/cell-phone-unlocking
| pm2222 wrote:
| Yes att is fine with unlocking after contract is done.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| If you buy from a carrier, yes.
| RhodesianHunter wrote:
| Generally it's only a thing any more if you get your phone
| discounted as part of signing up with or renewing at a
| certain carrier.
|
| If you just go out and buy a phone outright you can generally
| use it anywhere.
| pm2222 wrote:
| It is. I paid discounted full price through my employer and
| because it's on a business plan it's locked.
| WA wrote:
| Photo Backup easily: PhotoSync. Been using it for years.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| that all has worked in the US for 15 years or more, i'm one who
| has done that at least as far back as 18 years ago, though it
| might not be what everyone does.
|
| possibly one can get a phone subsidized and locked until an
| extortion fee is paid, though, or get a phone from work that an
| employer didn't pay to have unlocked.
| beebmam wrote:
| I've yet to use a single iphone that I was satisfied with.
|
| My last experience with an iphone was when my GPS began to
| malfunction and Apple's proposed solution was to have me buy a
| brand new iphone at no discount.
| ricardobeat wrote:
| GPS malfunction? There's something I haven't heard in 15 years
| of smartphones.
| nashashmi wrote:
| You must be in the top 1%
| asutekku wrote:
| They are using Google reviews as proxy for customer satisfaction.
| I really can't take rest of the article seriously after that,
| knowing anyone can leave a review at Google and there's no
| guarantee they own the phone.
|
| Sure, 99% satisfaction rate is pretty much impossible, but if all
| Apple asked was "are you satisfied with iPhone 14" with "yes" &
| "not at all" options and only surveyed iPhone 14 owners, I can
| easily see the number being 99%.
| dclowd9901 wrote:
| They mention in TFA that even surveying anomalies (people
| accidentally answering negatively) can't be represented by a
| 99% figure.
|
| That said, if I had a survey that asked a couple times in
| different ways if someone was satisfied with the iPhone and
| they gave conflicting answers, I'd probably simply throw their
| answer out for being nonsensical. Maybe that's what's going on
| here: they're teasing out survey anomalies.
| nowooski wrote:
| I'm the post author. I suspect aside from conducting
| extremely unrepresentative surveys, they are also
| aggressively filtering out respondents. I didn't include that
| since it is purely speculative on my part, but I'd guess that
| is part of what is happening.
|
| I'd note that other seemingly innocuous things could have an
| impact too. For instance, if they surveyed only people who've
| owned their phone for 90 days or whatnot, you would eliminate
| the vast majority of people who didn't like it and returned
| it from the sample.
|
| 99% is an extraordinary claim, which is why we think Apple
| should be more transparent about their methodology.
| goldenjm wrote:
| I'm quoted in the post. We're using Google reviews as one of
| several imperfect comparison points to Apple's 99% claim.
| You're absolutely right about a key downside to Google reviews.
| The limited information 451 provides on their survey
| methodology shows that they aren't asking about satisfaction as
| a yes-or-no style question.
|
| If you want to go really deep on online review manipulation,
| I'm co-author of this research paper on ratings inflation in
| online marketplaces: https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/abs/10.
| 1287/mksc.2022.135.... If you get in touch, I can send you more
| papers on fake reviews that I like.
| throw47474777j wrote:
| > I'm quoted in the post.
|
| Quoted by your employee who wrote the post? At your request?
| To generate traffic for your site?
| camillomiller wrote:
| > America's favorite holiday, Thanksgiving, enjoys 82%
| popularity according to a 2023 survey by Statista. Memorial
| Day comes in second at 77%.
|
| > The three most popular movies of all time on IMDB are The
| Shawshank Redemption, The Godfather and The Dark Knight. They
| have ratings of 9.2, 9.2 and 9.0 respectively.
|
| These examples are so orange and apples it's baffling the
| authors even came up with them.
|
| You compare the most advanced personal pocket computer of all
| time with a patriotic holiday (assuming patriotism as an
| absolute value) or a movie about inmates escaping a prison.
| Like, really?!
| buffington wrote:
| That's not what's being compared. It's the rating those
| things received compared to the rating of the phone.
|
| I think it's fair to include the ratings of the highest
| rated [whatever] to compare to the ratings of another
| [whatever].
|
| The author is saying "even people's favorite things don't
| get such high ratings."
| rahkiin wrote:
| Better would be to ask everybody who watched Shawshank
| Redemption: 'were you satisfied with the movie?'. A 9.2
| on imdb is not equal to 92% satisfaction due to
| granularity in the answer options
| nowooski wrote:
| Hey - I'm the author of the post. Thanks for reading.
|
| I included the Google reviews as a secondary example since it
| is public information. Google reviews are actually more
| positive on the iPhone than the third party surveys, which
| found satisfaction rates in the low 80s for 5G iPhones.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| > I really can't take rest of the article seriously after that,
| knowing anyone can leave a review at Google and there's no
| guarantee they own the phone.
|
| > but if all Apple asked was "are you satisfied with iPhone 14"
| with "yes" & "not at all" options and only surveyed iPhone 14
| owners, I can easily see the number being 99%.
|
| "and only surveyed iPhone 14 owners"
|
| 451 Research's own statement on their survey mentions _nothing_
| about owning the phone:
|
| > The findings are based on a December 14th - January 22nd
| survey of 3,568 primarily North American consumers from 451
| Research's user insight service, Voice of the Connected User
| Landscape and its Leading Indicator panel of 25,000 accredited
| business and technology professionals whose application for
| inclusion identifies them as having a high wallet share being
| used for personal technologies, and a high readiness to try new
| products and services. The service captures consumer and
| business spending through weekly tracking studies, delivering a
| continuous view of user perceptions and purchase activity as
| new products and services enter the market.
|
| And also, how valid would you consider a "satisfied" rating
| from an iPhone 14 owner who'd never owned anything but an
| iPhone? There's value in their ongoing satisfaction, but
| relatively speaking what does it mean? It could just as easily
| be interpreted as "not annoyed enough to change ecosystems".
| SllX wrote:
| > And also, how valid would you consider a "satisfied" rating
| from an iPhone 14 owner who'd never owned anything but an
| iPhone?
|
| Why wouldn't it be valid? If somebody says they're satisfied
| with something, take them at their word. There's no shortage
| of people who complain about anything and everything,
| especially if they paid money for the thing in question, and
| _especially_ if they paid a lot of money.
|
| Apple is a single vendor that makes a very small number of
| models and earned $205.49 billion on iPhones _alone_ in 2022.
| This excludes a lot of their "services" revenue of which I'm
| convinced the Lion's share and then some is also basically
| just iPhone revenue that wouldn't exist without specifically
| the iPhones tied to them. You don't get anywhere near that
| for one company on one hardware product division in one year
| without some seriously high customer satisfaction and repeat
| buyers.
| photonerd wrote:
| > how valid would you consider a "satisfied" rating from an
| iPhone 14 owner who'd never owned anything but an iPhone?
|
| Very? It's a subjective position no matter what but they know
| their own satisfaction level better than you do, certainly.
| howinteresting wrote:
| Do you think that (even if that was the survey) it is an honest
| survey? Do you not care about the richest company in the world
| being so blatantly dishonest?
| dpkonofa wrote:
| Yeah, especially when you consider that Apple likely uses
| NetPromoter as its primary metric for customer satisfaction.
| NetPromoter only sends out surveys to verified purchasers and
| the question is a 1-10 scale for satisfaction. Anything 8-10 is
| "satisfactory". This is not only plausible but likely and is
| why the rating is so high. There wouldn't be very many
| anomalous responses of people not understanding the question
| because the question is literally "Would you recommend the
| iPhone (whatever model) to friends and family?". That's not a
| hard question to understand.
|
| This is not a seriously written article.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| > Apple likely uses NetPromoter as its primary metric for
| customer satisfaction
|
| The article is entirely about a completely different firm,
| 451 Research, who actually is not and does not use
| NetPromoter. They state that they use a pool of "high wallet
| spend early adopters and technical people".
|
| (For added irony, 451 Research says it's own customers are
| 98%+ satisfied with them...)
| nowooski wrote:
| Hey - I'm the post author.
|
| Apple may use NetPromoter internally, but on the earnings
| calls they are citing satisfaction surveys from 451 Research.
|
| In 2018, they shared some of the response categories from the
| survey. They are customer satisfaction questions "Very
| Satisfied, Somewhat satisfied." Not recommendation questions.
| ars wrote:
| > I really can't take rest of the article seriously after that,
| knowing anyone can leave a review at Google and there's no
| guarantee they own the phone.
|
| Do you mean you can't take _Apple_ seriously? The article is
| _calling out_ this issue, not engaging in it.
|
| > I can easily see the number being 99%.
|
| No, it can't. It's utterly impossible for it to be 99% unless
| it's fake data.
| sezycei wrote:
| > utterly impossible
|
| No, it's not. Unbelievably unlikely? For sure.
| threeseed wrote:
| No it's very likely in fact.
|
| iPhone has been around for 15 years so there almost isn't a
| person on this planet who doesn't know (a) what it is, (b)
| what the competition is and (c) whether it's a right fit
| for them.
|
| So if you're surveying existing users you're talking to
| people who knew _before_ they purchased the iPhone that it
| was going to be a suitable fit for them. So of course the
| survey is going to be highly biased in favour of a positive
| rating.
| ars wrote:
| People buy things all the time that are not a perfect
| fit, just the best they are able to get at that time. Or
| they are forced into it for other reason.
|
| 99% is not possible. Nothing on Earth has a 99%
| satisfaction rating - not even breathing.
| [deleted]
| autoexec wrote:
| There are people who practically worship apple. A new iphone
| could ship broken and a certain percentage of buyers would praise
| it as being brilliant. They'll never be unsatisfied with an apple
| product. There's another group whose satisfaction has nothing to
| do with the phone itself and everything to do with knowing that
| it was new and highly expensive and out of reach for many. As
| long as they can pull it out of their pocket and show it off
| they'll be happy.
|
| Adding to that, people already have a tendency to convince
| themselves after the fact that an expensive purchase was a good
| deal, and that companies pay for fake reviews and I'm not
| surprised iphone reviews seem inflated.
| nowooski wrote:
| I do think there is something to the idea that people want to
| satisfied by something they spend a lot of money on. Though,
| 99% is a bit much.
| razemio wrote:
| "They opened our email 73 times, but didn't respond."
|
| This counter does not work right? I know it is a minor thing, but
| I immediately stopped reading further. I have a problem...
| jonas-w wrote:
| Later on they said they use Mailtrack [0]. I looked at their
| FAQ and they just use a tracking pixel. I don't really think
| that mail clients in a coorporate environment (i.e. Apple)
| download external images automatically. Mailtrack seems to be
| confident, that only 5-10% of recipients aren't "trackable"
| [1], but I haven't seen a mail client that by default downloads
| external media in a while.
|
| [0] https://mailtrack.io [1] https://mailtrack.io/hc/en-
| us/articles/360005941037-Why-is-M...
| ridiculous_fish wrote:
| See my peer comment: Apple Mail really does download external
| images automatically, on a server to hide your IP address. It
| then rewrites those emails to reference the cached images
| from the server. Every tracker pixel sent to a mail account
| with this feature will be counted as read, whether or not the
| user opens it.
| ComputerGuru wrote:
| Gmail does that too, no? I remember an HN discussion on
| this many years ago.
|
| Here, I found a corroborating link from 2013:
| https://www.litmus.com/blog/gmail-adds-image-caching-what-
| yo...
| jonas-w wrote:
| Ah I didn't see that one, they mention this on another
| page [0] (scroll a bit down). But they mention also that
| it still reliably detects views and that google released
| a new feature a while ago "dynamic email", which
| automatically loads but can also be disabled.
|
| [0] https://mailtrack.io/blog/google-email-tracking-
| gmail/
| jonas-w wrote:
| Maybe my knowledge about Mail clients is a bit skewed,
| because I'm using open source Mail clients on every
| platform (Thunderbird, K-9 Mail, Evolution), and they
| always block External content by default. But I thought
| this was the standard today, but I guess loading them on
| the server is a bit more UX friendly instead of blocking
| remote content, although I wouldn't want it.
| withinrafael wrote:
| The Windows Mail app still does this by default. And I know
| folks that use it over the thick Outlook in corporate
| environments. (Yikes, I know.)
| minsc_and_boo wrote:
| Email pixel tracking is an industry standard these days. Every
| time the email loads the pixel, it counts +1.
|
| Some platforms like Gmail partially obfuscate it.
| razemio wrote:
| I am totally out of the loop when it comes to these things.
| My client always opens in plain text or html render with JS
| and external content disabled. I believe this is true for
| most clients. On the other hand security scanners, browsers
| engines and other Middleware stuff can trigger such a counter
| without any user interaction if I am not mistaken.
| minsc_and_boo wrote:
| The pixel is just an image, so unless you disable email
| images loading by default, the server will still count you.
|
| Pre-caching will sometimes mess with the counters though,
| making the counts lower than the actual.
| razemio wrote:
| I understand. The last 3 email clients I used do not load
| images by default (that what's included in external
| sources [previous comment]).
| [deleted]
| ridiculous_fish wrote:
| Right, especially with Apple.
|
| Apple's Protect Mail Activity feature, which is on by default,
| "opens" all emails received on a server, to hide the user's IP
| address. This causes emails with tracker pixels to be falsely
| reported as read.
|
| For a while, I was confused why all of my GitHub notifications
| were being marked as read!
|
| https://twitter.com/ridiculous_fish/status/14604379978667376...
| YetAnotherNick wrote:
| Apple has 14 days return policy in many countries. Wouldn't non
| return count as satisfaction? Does Apple announce that number?
| winstonreggie5 wrote:
| [dead]
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| What is "satisfaction"? Minor gripes are still "satisfaction",
| IMHO. At the price point I would expect someone not satisfied to
| return the phone.
| hedgehog wrote:
| For what alternative? My 14 Pro is way too big, and the camera
| software is meh, but the lower models have really nerfed
| cameras and I'm too entangled in the Apple ecosystem to switch
| to Android even if there were better options. 80% satisfaction
| seems reasonable, most people seem to like the big phones, and
| 20% of people with some major complaint or other sounds
| plausible.
| loeg wrote:
| The original title, "Apple claims 99% iPhone 14 satisfaction. Is
| that possible? (No). We investigate" (which this was submitted
| under originally) is less click-baity than the current version:
| "Is Apple making implausible iPhone satisfaction claims?"
| addisonl wrote:
| These both seem the same to me as far as click bait goes...
| tgv wrote:
| The advantage is that the answer to the title question is yes
| for once.
| [deleted]
| lolinder wrote:
| I pinged dang to ask him to change the title to match the title
| of the actual article, because it was obvious from the rate of
| upvotes and the quality of comments that the title as submitted
| was inflamatory.
|
| I can't measure clicks, but the pace of upvotes on this
| submission slowed dramatically after dang changed it: it had
| reached ~50 upvotes in about half an hour (~100 upvotes an
| hour), and now it's been here for another hour with only ~30
| more upvotes (~15 upvotes an hour).
| BSEdlMMldESB wrote:
| maybe they're also considering the satisfaction of the slate of
| hardware?
|
| /joking
| ars wrote:
| I can't remember what it's called (Edit: Lizardman's Constant)
| but around 4 to 20% of people will give nonsense replies to any
| survey.
|
| Like if you asked Are you Human? 4% (or more) of people will
| reply "No" just for fun, or because they don't read.
|
| So you can try to adjust for this by asking a silly question, and
| if they reply that way ignore their entire survey, but that could
| lead to issues where they reply correctly on most of it, but
| false on the "fun" question.
| fsociety999 wrote:
| I have received Apple satisfaction surveys before and the options
| are basically this:
|
| How satisfied are you with your new iPhone?
|
| * Insanely satisfied
|
| * Extremely satisfied
|
| * Very very satisfied
|
| * Quite satisfied
|
| * Satisfied
|
| * Mostly satisfied
|
| * Somewhat satisfied
|
| * Neither satisfied or dissatisfied
|
| * Neutral
|
| * No opinion
|
| * Dissatisfied
|
| I'm exaggerating a little to make my point, but I suspect that's
| more or less how they get these insanely high scores. Also I'm
| not sure they send the satisfaction surveys to everyone. Probably
| you have to have a history of purchasing Apple products.
|
| I don't think they are manipulating the data itself as this
| article seems to suggest though. I think the survey methodology
| itself is skewed.
| nowooski wrote:
| Hey - I'm the post author.
|
| Thank you for reading! I don't think they are manipulating the
| data, rather that they are surveying an unrepresentative
| population of tech enthusiasts, and presenting it as if
| representative of the entire customer base.
| throw47474777j wrote:
| They don't present it as if it's representative of the entire
| base, nor do they ever compare it to anyone else's metrics,
| and your claim is based on information openly disclosed about
| how they create their metric.
|
| The piece is just clickbait.
|
| Your final paragraph is this decontextualized "Quote":
|
| > "We're not calling on the SEC to investigate these customer
| satisfaction claims, since they have more important cases to
| go after," Golden said. "But extraordinary claims require
| extraordinary evidence, and we believe Apple should review
| the survey results they trumpet on every earnings call. If
| they truly think they are valid, they should publish their
| methodology, and if not, they should issue retractions."
|
| Which is inherently disingenuous in the way it is written.
| (We're not threatening you..) but worse, it's a quote from
| your own CEO.
|
| The piece is in far worse faith than anything Apple is doing.
| Please take it down.
| barbariangrunge wrote:
| Give me an iPhone 5 that's fast enough to run an os that has all
| the software bloat we have today. Then, stop adding more bloat to
| force us to buy newer hardware
| asutekku wrote:
| Ironically, in one of their other articles (also based on
| google reviews) they claim iPhone 5 is the least liked iPhone.
| rottencupcakes wrote:
| Give me an Intel Celeron that's fast enough to run Windows XP
| and then stop changing anything.
|
| Give me a 386 that's fast enough to run DOS and stop changing
| anything.
|
| I'm surprised you've made it from mailing lists all the way to
| Hacker News.
| wilg wrote:
| Bloat is often just things you don't care about.
| barbariangrunge wrote:
| What are you talking about? Computers are thousands of times
| faster than they used to be, but performance is like half.
| Look up videos of people running old operating systems on old
| hardware, how everything happens instantly, even without
| ssds. The only improvement we've had is in games and web
| apps, and web apps are a mess
| bell-cot wrote:
| At what age is it reasonable to assume that a modern western
| consumer understands that Marketing routinely uses some
| torturously contorted standards for "truth"?
|
| Family lore: My kid brother was ~5 years old when he bit into a
| spoonful of a breakfast cereal that he had asked for after having
| seen it advertised - and unhappily blurted out "it tasted good on
| TV!".
| rickstanley wrote:
| Prime Day I bought my first iPhone, iPhone 14, with a good
| discount and cashback, I was between it and Zenfone 9. Not sure
| what to expect in general to be honest, but I expect a good
| battery life and updates, these were two factors that contributed
| to my final choice.
|
| I'll sure miss sideloading certain apps, but that's the price for
| a walled garden and security (I guess?).
|
| Let's see if I'm going to be one of the "99%"...
| NineStarPoint wrote:
| So obviously 99% is impossibly high, but iPhones (and well made
| flagship phones in general) being some of the most popular things
| ever made wouldn't be very surprising to me. People's lives
| revolve around their phones. They're probably people's most used
| item after their bed. And for the most part they work really
| well. That 20% of people don't like Thanksgiving and the
| Shawshank redemption isn't surprising to me, and I don't think
| that means the iPhone couldn't have higher than 90% approval
| rating.
|
| (Especially since a lot of people who don't like iPhones would
| have gone to Androids at this point anyway, so current iPhone
| customers is a somewhat self selecting demographic)
| jrockway wrote:
| Yeah, I agree with that. The article asks:
|
| > If Apple's claims of 99% satisfaction were true, it would
| mean the iPhone 14 was not only the most popular mass market
| consumer product of all time, but it would also probably make
| it the most popular anything of all time.
|
| Is it not the most popular mass market consumer product of all
| time? People spend their lives on their phone these days, and
| I've never heard anyone say anything about their iPhone. I have
| one and it's fine. I'm satisfied. I have end-to-end encrypted
| backups, the battery lasts long enough, the screen is nice to
| look at, etc. If I like some sort of tech product, it's
| probably hard to find people that don't.
| bredren wrote:
| > I don't think that means the iPhone couldn't have higher than
| 90% approval rating.
|
| I would be surprised if iPhone didn't have 90%+ customer
| satisfaction narrowly scoped to usage of the phone.
|
| The product as hardware combined with software and supporting
| services are the best money can buy. Apple regularly pushes the
| smartphone category forward on fronts neglected by other
| companies.
|
| That said, consumers seem to think more broadly about their
| experience than just the phone. For example an unexpected
| failure of an official or 3rd party case might influence
| overall satisfaction. The article mentions a 3% difference
| based on 5G availability, as another.
|
| So without an explanation of the carve out, 99% does seem a bit
| too good to be true.
|
| Apple should publish how these numbers are arrived at. If its a
| decent measurement it could help set an evolving standard for
| the category.
| hiccuphippo wrote:
| My thinking is maybe iPhone 14 customers are satisfied by it,
| but I'm satisfied by my phone, not because it's a great phone
| but because any modern phone has the bare minimum I need to get
| satisfied by it.
|
| Those people aren't using other phones so they wouldn't know if
| they'd be satisfied by them.
| goldenjm wrote:
| I'm quoted in the post. I agree, it is plausible that iPhones
| have a 90%+ satisfaction rate. Apple's claim isn't 90%, or 92%
| or even 95%, but 99%. I agree that 99% is impossibly high.
| havelhovel wrote:
| > Trader Joe's fans will stand in line for hours for groceries
| but still give the store just an 84% satisfaction rating,
| according to a survey by the American Customer Satisfaction
| Institute.
|
| It's tough competition, but I think this is the most absurd
| sentence in the article. Nevermind the difference between a
| premium consumer good and a grocery store, my takeaway is that
| reported satisfaction could be much higher among TJ shoppers
| without the hours long waits.
| tedunangst wrote:
| Satisfaction might even be higher among people waiting an hour
| in line; if they weren't happy they wouldn't wait.
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