Apple Never Listens, Or Cares About Its Customers…

But just how true is that claim?

If you spend enough time on MacRumors and other Apple-related forums, which this article is inspired by, you’ll no doubt stumble upon a very long list of cynics, disillusioned fans and of course the obligatory trolls who will always conclude their point with either Apple not innovating any more, or the topic of this story — Apple never listening to its customers. Due to poor GDPR practices over on MacRumors, I decided not to ever post my thoughts there any more, so take this article as a culmination on everything that’s been building up in my mind over the last two years on the matter.

To help myself organise my thoughts, and also help you comment later, I decided to break down my points into three main categories: technical, legal and customer related. The alternative would have been a very long, disjointed and far too difficult to consume article while sitting on a toilet, so if nothing else, and while you might still consider me an Apple apologist, at least appreciate the effort I’m making in helping you digest this piece. Thank you, and don’t forget to wash your hands. With soap!

Technical nonsense

I’ll first touch on the technical aspects, as that seems to agitate the most vocal Apple customers. Notice how I didn’t say “the most customers” but rather “the most vocal”, because I think this point needs to be made. While Apple’s market share across its main products like wearables, PC and phones varies from 15–30%, which are all high numbers considering how competitive the space is globally, the overwhelming majority of customers are not technical people; therefore they will never have a technical opinion on Apple’s products. And that’s fair. I’m sure there is some obscure forum out there with very vocal washing machine experts and fans bashing Whirlpool and Bosch just as much, but I know nothing about these darned things. I just use them, so I have no reason to be vocal about them.

Apple has the very unfortunate disadvantage that it has a small but incredibly vocal segment of customers who will be either their biggest fans to the point of seeming cultists, or their sworn enemies. In the middle… oh, wait, there isn’t really anyone in the middle. The very few who try to take that spot, like myself, we can still agree we’re either in the pro or anti-Apple camp with at least one foot. There are however topics that sometimes bring the two camps together, and such is the “Apple never listens” remark.

I think, Apple listened more to its customers over the years, than many give it credit for. In fact, at times, it listened too much...

When people started saying “nobody asked for a thinner iPhone” in the wake of #bendgate, my knee-jerk but accurate response was “from where I’m standing, plenty people did”. The specs of the iPhone in terms of build materials and thinness got to the literal breaking point exactly because people wanted smaller, thinner, lighter devices. The same applies to the MacBooks too. Why do you think the Air became so popular despite its eye-watering price-tag back in the day? Because it got customers to that orgasmic point of satisfaction, and who doesn’t want to finally own a thin, light, sleek yet capable device? If Apple hadn’t listened to its customers, we’d still have thick and heavy everything. But oh, wait, we do…

In a twist of fate, Apple had no choice but to listen again and when customers got tired of shite battery-life on the thin iPhones, they reversed their own “innovations” and started releasing again thicker and heavier iPhones. While the marketing material focuses on how long the battery lasts, that’s also thanks to a thicker phone, not just the shrinking of electronics and better SOCs driving the phone’s brains. If you don’t believe me, just compare the latest iPhone SE and the latest iPhone 14 or 14 Pro. Apple listened when customers finally conceded that having thicker devices with more power and longer battery-life was worth more to them than thinness.

But let’s focus a bit on the PC market too. Looking back at the last two decades of Apple’s history, I see most of the changes as a direct result of Apple listening to its customers. We’re back to thicker MacBooks for the most part. Many ports are back, and while some might argue that removing them was dumb in the first place, remember how everyone was asking for lighter, smaller footprint machines? Well, as it turns out, you can’t have your cake and eat it.

Sometimes customers want the bad features so much, you just gotta give it to them to make them realise how much they hate them.

More screen real-estate, better screens, less power consumption, moving to Intel, then moving to Apple Silicon from Intel, improved webcams, Touch ID on the Macs, going back to the scissor mechanism on the keyboards, adopting USB-C, releasing a new, more affordable 27” monitor, ditching the TouchBar are all clear signs that Apple listens to both its vocal and less vocal customers.

Every single Apple device we currently own is largely based on customer feedback, whether you want to admit it, or not.

Legal clusterfucks

At the scale of Apple, I think it becomes impossible to do business and not piss off enough people at some point or another to find yourself in court. It’s also impossible to both please customers, the market, and shareholders without risks and known issues. If you ever worked in software development, you’ll be intimately familiar with the concept of non-blockers and known issues. If you’re not, you live in a fantasy-world.

Apple has had its more than fair share of class-action lawsuits. What often gets forgotten however, is that Apple very frequently loses the argument. If you scour the inter-web long enough, you’ll see that class-action lawsuit after class-action lawsuit, Apple ends up settling. Yes, it sometimes takes 6 years to get there, but they seem to settle more often than not. Sure, there’s self-serving motivation behind it too, not just choosing to agree with the customer, but nevertheless, the outcome is an agreement that they were wrong, and they’ll do something about it. Hence, the programs to fix devices with bad GPU, laminating screens, butterfly keyboard, bendy chassis, battery faults, etc.

If you consider the alternative of trying to release products that are 100% infallible, and do so at the cadence the market and shareholders expect them to, you might want to also consider not having Apple products at all, because I think by now they’d be bankrupt. It’s not sustainable. Not at this scale.

I’d rather live in a world where Apple messes up every so often, than a world without Apple.

The outcome of every lawsuit, just like the outcome of every air crash investigation, is a better product going forward. Yes, it’s noisy, potentially bad PR at times, but at the end of the day, it’s another form of listening to the customer.

Anti-customer attitude

Now, I already highlighted in much more detail than I can ever put here why Apple beats Google at every step when it comes to customer focus, so I won’t reiterate, but I think that with over 500 stores worldwide, one could easily argue that Apple wants to be where the customer is. Add to that all the Apple Premium Partners, and you have yourself one of the best represented brands across the globe, alongside LEGO, Nike, and some other big brands. Sure, there’s always space for more, but tell me how many Microsoft, Google, Samsung, or OnePlus stores do you stumble upon as you travel across Europe, for instance? All I hear is crickets…

Apple also has, just like cars, dedicated support and repair programs. Sure, it may not be at the level that many hard-core right to repair advocates such as Louis Rossman would like, but it’s something far-far better than the competition has. Their trade-in program that also works through many Premium Partners is also nothing to sneeze at, and I wrote about that too.

Nobody is arguing the fact that Apple couldn’t do more, but that it does not listen to its customers is a flat out lie.

So, regardless of whether you’re an Apple lover or hater, what is it that you think Apple hasn’t listened to in the last decade or so, that affected or still affects you?

Attila Vago — Software Engineer improving the world one line of code at a time. Cool nerd since forever, writer of codes and blogs. Web accessibility advocate, LEGO fan, vinyl record collector. Loves craft beer! Read my Hello story here! Subscribe and/or become a member for more stories about LEGO, tech, coding and accessibility! For my less regular readers, I also write about random bits and writing.