Differentiating an Apple from Oranges.

To start off this topic I want to make one thing very clear , I am not a Fanboy. By term Fanboy, I mean I don't preach or bind myself to some group, faith or consumer level product. I am writing something that I have experienced myself and my conclusion of it.

I usually buy stuff which I feel is good, useful and of-course awesome, During last one year two of the stuff that I bought which are worth mentioning are Refurbished Microsoft's Xbox 360(March' 08) and Apple iPhone( Sept'07). Both of them are pretty good in their area, for gaming Xbox 360 is way better than technologically advance Sony's Playstation 3 for which not many games were there when I bought though Sony is gaining ground but I did not want a gaming console which is approximately 20 times faster than normal home computers but difficult to program and hence not many games for it, plus being a poor graduate student I did not want to spend ~$424 on this super computer and hence settled down on refurbished Xbox 360 from ecost.com which set me back to $199 but I found it to be pretty good deal.

Everything with Xbox 360 was well and good for 3 weeks but after that nightmare started, I got acquainted to what 33% of the Xbox 360 suffer from which most people call "RRoD" which stands for Red Ring of Death, 3 red lights started blinking and console became inoperable. I called Microsoft and they sent me an empty box to send them back Xbox for repair, the box they sent me took approximately 3 days to come which is fine but the box could not be picked up by UPS from my door and the nearest UPS is like 2 miles away from my place so I had to walk there carrying my xbox. I was happy at-least they would be repairing it and I would be playing it again. After a long 3 weeks, I received back my Xbox, I was so happy thinking of playing next generation games such as Halo 3, Call of Duty 4, Bio Shock again. But guess what, when I opened the box there was a letter saying that "Dear Xbox customer, your xbox has been opened before(seal broken) and therefore we are not repairing it". Those dumb a**holes did'nt knew even after registering with them that I bought a refurbished Xbox and it might be possible ecost.com might have opened it for repair and when I called Microsoft's customer care they were totally unhelpful when I told they sent me back console without repairing it and they said they could not do anything with this console, which means I have to throw this thing into bin and buy the same thing again. I searched internet and I found a way to temporarily make Xbox 360 work for like 2 weeks every-time I do Towel trick with it, since then I am playing happily with my xbox without paying Microsoft anything from my pocket again.


Now comes my after sales experience with Apple, I was going to library and it started raining heavily and in my pocket was my iPhone and it got wet and when I reached library I tried calling to one my friends, the screen started showing vertical and horizontal lines and after a while it switched off automatically, I knew my iPhone is now useless, I was very much disappointed and got little depressed since being a student and spending ~$324 on this thing and it died within 9 months but I knew it was all my fault and nobody else's. Then I called Apple Customer Care and told them that my iPhone is not working and lines are coming on the screen. They sent me an empty box which reached at my place the next day and they picked up( FedEx) from my door and it reached their service center the next day. On the 5th day after sending my useless iPhone, I received a box from Apple, when I opened it, it had a letter saying "Dear Mr. Singh, we could not repair your iPhone that's why we are sending you a new iPhone". I was so happy and delighted since I had left hopes of reusing an iPhone again and with my prior sore and apathetic experience received from Microsoft customer service but I always knew Apple is not Microsoft and they take good care of their customers. Such kind and gentle care instills good amount of faith and loyalty of a customer towards the company( in this case Apple).

To sum it all, most of you will agree Microsoft products sucks a big time to name a few Windows Vista ( damn 2 GB RAM to run a personal computer and not a server :O), Microsoft Zune( ever heard of it, it was(is) an MP3 player), Xbox 360 (check out the virginity seal before buying this dumb machine otherwise your towels would be used for more than one thing). If Microsoft had ever designed a car then most probably it's engine or breaks would have failed leading to an accident and in their defense they would have said the car owner once opened it's bonnet or why the owner ever started and driving a car at first place (was'nt a car meant to be driven :P). They will never improve and will keep on dereferencing the "NULL POINTER", leading to blue screen of death( BSoD).