[NewsPoster]

For the first time, Apple has fallen behind Samsung, Microsoft, and Sony in an annual Forrester Research survey of customer satisfaction. The firm polled 7,500 Americans, asking them how enjoyable it was to do business with a company, how easy it was, and how effective the company was at meeting needs. Amazon led the consumer electronics category, picking up a score of 91 for its Kindle devices.

Sony placed second at 83, while Microsoft and Samsung tied at 82. Apple was close behind at 81, but in the past years Forrester has had a consumer electronics category, Apple was used to occupying second place. Sony has advanced considerably, jumping 10 points since 2012. Microsoft's score is a bound-back from a dip to 74 in 2013.

Apple's score is actually slightly higher than it was in 2012 or 2013, but didn't grow fast enough to beat out rivals. Much of Apple's success has been credited to its customer service, particularly at Apple Stores.

[LenE]

Really?!?!

Microsoft higher than Apple with the self-inflicted cancer that is Windows 8.x?

This looks like an intentional step-change in methodology to "level the playing field" for paying customers.

[vintagegeek]

Hard to tell what they're actually measuring. But, I can tell you as the resident techy to friends and family I've heard more complaints about Apple Service in the last few months than in the last 7 years total. For the most part it's focused on the iPhone. Bricked phones with iOS7, or iPhone 5 5c 5s battery draining madly, etc. Apple needs to perform better testing on old and new generation phones with new iOS versions. They also need to tell there people if someone walks in with a iPhone where the chrage screen pops up but it no longer will charge to swap it out no questions asked.

[godrifle]

I'm a lifelong Apple customer. Except for the period just before Steve Jobs took over, this is the least happy I've been with Apple products. We're a fully Apple household, and my business is 100% Apple, but the integration between devices is just terrible. Mavericks is flaky as all get out. And Mail... don't get me started. For the love of Pete, spend some of that cash on making mail a decent app!

[vintagegeek]

iTunes has become a disaster for handling movies, tv shows and podcasts. Thank goodness they split out iBooks...although iBooks lost the renaming feature in the process (I used that for PDF downloads). I, and others from the forums I'm on have started using 3rd party APPS for Handling Videos and Podcasts. The top 2 or 3 APPs in these categories are ALL BETTER than APPLE's Apps, I'll include Mail and iCal in there too. The more they push the Cloud Sync service between devices the further behind their apps get and the worse the integration becomes.

[mojkarma]

I'm not really wondering. My experiens with Mavericks is also not really stellar. The movies from my Photo Camera doesn't work anymore in Mavericks. I don't know the reason but none of the movie that I have in my iphoto is playable. Mail still behaves erratic, the way how the files are labeled now with colored dots instead of putting a whole label around the file name is a joke IMHO and renders the great label function completely useless, the iwork apps were released without telling us that a significant number of functions was simply put away... this is definitely not something that makes me a happy and content apple user.

[vintagegeek]

mojkarma: Your Movies issue has impacted many users as Apple dropped some of the supported "codecs" for playing movie files. No reason given. We use to be able to hit the space bar and preview most movie formats. I have many mp4 format files which are industry standard but Preview will no longer show them. I'm forced to use Quicktime or other app. And I too agree with you on the color dot issue. You can't even see the dots most of the time. I much prefered the color line. I'd settle for a dot thats twice the size though at this point.

[bobolicious]

...why I appreciate the design of mavericks, yet remain with what works and simply wish users had more OS choice (for each individual's needs) independent of the many compelling hardware upgrades...

[graxspoo]

I'm not surprised by this. I've been a fan of Apple since the '80s and used to be one of those guys that would get into heated Mac vs PC debates with friends (on the pro Mac side), but a bit over a year ago I switched from iPhone to Android, and I'm still nursing along my Snow Leopard installs hoping that Apple will do something in an OS update that will actually get me excited about upgrading. I can't stand the new iTunes and the "iOS-ification" of Mac OS was a step backwards IMO.

[Feathers]

The issue of Quicklook (spacebar) not playing certain video files is an installer error that accidentally deletes the com.apple.xpchelper.cache file when updating your OSX. If you replace this file (google it) quicklook of all video types should return. I had this problem and fixed it. The issue first arose with 10.8.x

That being said, as a longtime Apple user, I am the least happy with Apple that I have ever been, and that's saying something considering I lived through MacOS 7.5!

[PTPro225]

Having been a long time Mac Pro myself, I am not surprised either. Ever since Apple abandoned its professional software, i.e. Final Cut Pro Studio, Shake, etc., Apple pursued short term profits (iPhone, iPad, iPod) instead. But, customers can change out their smart phones, tablets, and mp3 players as easily as they change their socks -- not so with the Mac Pro users and their hardware and software. I wish Apple would of spun off its professional software into its own division (e.g. FileMaker) instead of letting its professional software wither away. Sad.