AppleCare for Enterprise With On-Site Support From IBM Now Live

I'm glad to see Apple pushing their way into the enterprise.

General consumer preference is a dangerous place to be. Consumer trends can shift rapidly, but once you get a business ingrained in your ecosystem it is difficult and costly for them to switch.

Apple has about 93,000 employees, about $130 billion in the bank & had about $180 billion in revenue for their fiscal year 2014

This isn't a contest to see who's making more money. He's simply stating that IBM is still doing quite well for itself.

Is IBM still alive ? :eek:

Serious? 430,000+ employees, $126+ billion in assets, $99+ billion in revenue last year...

Now I wish the consumer could get Applecare from someone beside what you get at the "genius" bar. I absolutely can not stand going in the Apple Store to get some arrogant kid who knows less about computers than I do and gives me his bull about Apple policy, etc. Professional Applecare is a welcome change. Now if they would offer 4 or 5 year warranty options, they could convince me that they are company that does more than sell soon to be obsolete products.

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How sad for IBM, now they are just Apple's repair guy.

Thank god I sold their stocks year ago.

IBM is HUGE in the corporate enterprise world. Apple is not and will never be when they could only offer "genius" bar warranty work. Applecare is laughable to any major corporation potentially until now.

does it cover gold watches?

How sad for IBM, now they are just Apple's repair guy.

Thank god I sold their stocks year ago.

IBM's business support has always run circles around Apple's so called "world class customer care". It's two different worlds.

I had a display scratch in one of my Thinkpads on a business trip somewhere abroad. Called the service hotline and they sent me a guy with a new display into my hotel room the next day. He swapped the components on site.

On another occasion (before the internet era) i needed an Ethernet driver. IBM sent a guy with the CDs to my office within hours.

This service level cost me about 200 dollars for three years. How much does the "world class" Apple Care cost for a Macbook Pro and what do you get for it ?

How sad for IBM, now they are just Apple's repair guy.

Thank god I sold their stocks year ago.

IBM's business support has always run circles around Apple's so called "world class customer care". It's two different worlds.

I had a display scratch in one of my Thinkpads on a business trip somewhere abroad. Called the service hotline and they sent me a guy with a new display into my hotel room the next day. He swapped the components on site.

On another occasion (before the internet era) i needed an Ethernet driver. IBM sent a guy with the CDs to my office within hours.

This service level cost me about 200 dollars for three years. How much does the "world class" Apple Care cost for a Macbook Pro and what do you get for it ?

This.

This is a great partnership and all-around good for Apple in their making a real foray into the enterprise market.

You guys mocking it just don't realize.

I don't think that was what he meant?

I think he was talking about actually USING an AppleCare warranty to get a corporate Mac or product serviced.

We run into that nonsense all the time where I work. We purchase extended AppleCare on new machines for employees when we first order them (often from a vendor like CDW). No problem there, and we even get a discounted price.

The problem is, when someone comes in and hands us a Macbook Air with a dead screen, screaming "Help! I need this back up and running ASAP!"

Unlike service agreements from companies like Dell, we can't just call and have a technician come out on site the next day to repair it. One of us is expected to hand deliver the machine to a local Apple store AFTER making a Genius Bar appointment for it first. Sometimes, if they're busy ... that may be several days out.

THEN, you have to sit through the Apple Genius troubleshooting things (steps you've likely already taken since you work in corporate I.T. and have a pretty good idea what to do to get someone's Mac going again). After that, they may fix the machine in-house, but depends if that store happens to have the repair part(s) needed. If not, they send it out for service with a, "Dunno when it will be back... but we'll call you when it's ready to pick up." promise. When it's fixed? You better bring a major credit card or other form of payment too. They're not gonna just let you pick it up and bill the repair to a corporate account with NET terms.

Oh, and almost forgot ... Apple will also caution you that you might lose any data on the machine as part of the repair. (Why on earth they'd touch what's on the hard drive when the problem is clearly the LCD display, I have no clue ... but they do warn you of exactly that for this type of repair!)

All the way around, it's the type of service that's fine for a typical retail consumer ... but clashes with the needs of corporate I.T.

You can buy applecare from amazon or ebay. The seller will email you the registration number. You won't get the physical stupid box but that's not needed if you have the registration number. The box is just an extra tree that was cut down anyway. It's way way cheaper through those websites as well.

How sad for IBM, now they are just Apple's repair guy.

Thank god I sold their stocks year ago.

I don't feel bad for them, they're still doing well. I do wish they hadn't sold their Point -of-Sale hardware division. Their hardware still reigns king in major retailers and restaurants across the country. I still see new establishments installing IBM surePOS 500 systems. Keep in mind, Toshiba now owns the new division, which means customers are buying refurbished IBM hardware, instead of buying the newer Toshiba systems.