Wrote books on Apple software. Bought five figures of gear over decades. Then bought an Apple giftcard, & suddenly permabanned in spite of raising issue with internal contacts.
932 comments: news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46252114
In my experience, the best way to get Apple to listen is to get legal involved. I spent hours on the phone trying to resolve a laptop that was damaged by a certified service provider. Apple support was rude, they lied to me, they bounced me between departments. So I wrote one email requesting all the recordings for the calls with support. Immediately someone from legal contacts me, apologizes, and 2 weeks later I have a brand new laptop 2 generations newer in hand.
Impressive. And perhaps also clever, depending on whether that was what you predicted would happen! :)
And you never mentioned anything related to litigation, it was just a polite recording request? Maybe you mentioned the dishonesty, or kept it generic…
Now that I’m thinking about it, I wonder if it was actually public relations and not legal. This was back when M1 was just coming out. Regardless, just ask them for all the call recordings and make them think you’re gonna do something with those recordings (sue, go to the press, etc.). It was crazy how their tone shifted immediately from we’re not gonna give you anything to how can we make this right.
But maybe it doesn’t always work, as your Apple ID story was obviously published. Maybe it depends on who you get it maybe Apple is different today 🤷
Maybe reach out to Apple with a link to the blog post, and ask if they would like to comment before you reach out to Gizmodo or something. I’m not a lawyer so don’t sue me if it goes badly.
deleted by creator
It is worth highlighting that this sort of thing is not just an Apple issue. It happens frequently to peoples Google accounts, and probably Microsoft accounts, as well.
The only sane advice to anyone is always have another copy of the data. Preferably locally, but in another cloud provider at least.
If it only exists in one place you might as well be using the recycling bin to store you important data.
@flop_leash_973 @brbposting Best advice you can give. I’ve got stuff in iCloud, OneDrive and locally. Never keep your data in just one place.
I feel bad for them and hope they get their access back. Besides losing data that could have been backed up elsewhere, to some degree, having your hardware made useless and losing access to your digital purchases is expensive as heck.
Something like this shouldn’t happen. Period.
Food for thought:
![Hacker News comment thread: rvnx: "Lot of arrogant people here who think they are safe and better than anybody and blame OP. It is totally normal in today’s world to depend on cloud services and reasonably difficult to do without it. In China: no WeChat you are practically dead. […]" | Waterluvian: "I’ve interpreted it as a sort of head-in-sand coping mechanism for those low-likelihood, high-consequence events people feel powerless over. It’s less distressing to be powerless if you decide that the real issue was a fault by the victim and not a powerlessness you have in common with the victim."](https://sh.itjust.works/pictrs/image/221333f8-60cc-4eed-a1a1-837c99f6f996.jpeg)
Always room for disagreement
This is actually a known psychological phenomenon called the Just World Fallacy
I’m quite prone to this. Even as I’m consciously resisting slipping into this fallacy, I can still feel that there is a pernicious and persistent kernel at my core that clings to the idea of a just world. For me, it is less about a moral kind of justice, more like a deep belief in some sense of underlying, teleological order to the world.
I know that this is silly, in every way that it is possible to know a thing. And yet, I can’t seem to sway that deep down part of me that devoutly believes that actually, everything makes sense.
I mean I’m not in any danger of losing my personal documents because I have 3 copies stored on various media/services.
I’m also not so heavily invested into any one media or software distribution ecosystem that I would be devastated if lost access to it.
You aren’t powerless unless you make the choice to be. (Either intentionally or just out of not knowing the alternatives)
Not everyone can afford to have a back up plan.
Look this must really suck for them but god this is some peak leopard-on-face-action. Like yeah, this is the issue with the apple ecosystem; you’re completely at the mercy of one uncaring amoral megacorp. It happening to someone who’s shilled so hard for them, for so long, is a perfect demonstration of this concern.
I don’t think this is exclusive to Apple.
Sure, but this article is about apple, hence talking about apple.
I get that. I’m just saying that the sentence “this is the problem with apple ecosystem” isn’t accurate, since all mega corps behave the same.
… This is the problem with the apple ecosystem, though? It isn’t a problem unique to the apple ecosystem (though apple is the worst about tying features and services into a single ID) but you realize you’re doing a whattaboutism in defense of a megacorp right?
The topic here is apple, not google or M$ or samsung or etc, hence why I’m not discussing them. It doesn’t devalue the other companies and their contributions to shitty business practices to not bring them up in every discussion about shitty business practices.
Alternate headlines:
“I put all my data in the cloud without creating a local backup, then complained when something went wrong.”
“I could have emailed Tim Cook to possibly get this fixed, but wrote a blog post instead.”
“I claim to be a programmer and Apple expert but for some reason don’t know how to create a local backup of my photos or important data.”
Escalation to their buddies inside the company failed, that’s the wild bit in a huge way.
Most interesting speculation was probably someone saying something about anti-money laundering laws more or less including gag order-style provisions. So if the gift card thing tripped a filter, then maybe no one at the company would be able to help, and at that point, I suppose they’d need to take it to the courts(?)
After nearly 30 years as a loyal customer
This is why loyalty to companies is stupid and weird.
Cause they don’t give a fuck about you. They don’t give a fuck about what you spent. You are a meaningless blip to them.
Stop putting your eggs in one basket, and tying your entire on and offline life to a single corporate ID/Username/Account/Whatever.
This is the price you pay for your laziness and “convenience”
I’m most shocked that at the time of this posting, you have 2 downvotes. Wtf?
Corporate loyalists don’t like when you point out how dangerous/dumb/weird their blind loyalty to multi-billion dollar companies is.
I can imagine a world where big tech is proud of being so enticing, so invaluable, that a country codifies a right to use their kinds of services into law. - My two cents there on a different HN comment talking about regulating some service providers like utilities.
I use cloud services but I also have everything vital backed up in 3 places. It would suck to get locked out but I won’t lose everything because I don’t trust anyone that much.
Dumbshit
