Marvyn+Mary

If you haven’t noticed by now, I’m not very fond of Apple products. I have given them years of support only to experience premature failure on numerous devices ranging from iMacs to iPhones to Macbooks. Over the last few years I’ve been phasing out Apple products from both my personal and business life whereas my main work PC has been chugging along nicely. Give me more PC and Microsoft products. Enter a new era of PC heavy ecosystem.

Maybe. Mary’s Macbook — the last standing Apple device in the house — froze a lot and became pinwheel happy. For Christmas I surprised her with an Asus Vivo Tab RT. It has delivered a very positive Windows 8 RT experience, but I’ll leave that review for another post. What this post is about is the support at our local Microsoft Store.

This morning Mary’s tablet displayed the hated blue screen of death. Off to the Microsoft Store we go. We walked in, were met with smiles, and set up a Microsoft technician immediately. A much more positive experience compared to the stuffy, overcrowded Apple Store where you keep your fingers crossed that there’s an available appointment. But that’s about where things flip between good and bad. Despite all the issues I have had with Apple products, I’ve always been able to walk out with either a replacement product or a 1 day wait. Not so at the Microsoft Store. We were told at least 7-10 days with a worst case scenario of 3 weeks. WHAT?!

I’m sure Mary will be fine this week rotating between her phone, her dying Macbook, and my laptop, but what if this Asus was in heavy business use? I can’t shut my company down for a week while my computer is in service. This business model isn’t going to survive Apple if this is the norm. Sorry Microsoft, but you just lost a point to Apple on this one.