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Apple Discussion Boards to receive major overhaul

by Keith M Aug 17th 2010 at 5:00PM

apple discussion boardThe Apple Discussion Boards have long been a great source of help for Apple end-users and professionals looking for both Apple-supplied and community-supplied assistance. In my personal experience, though, it can sometimes be a frustrating place to visit.

Apple has announced that what has been known as "Apple Discussion Boards" will be renamed "Apple Support Communities" and sport some new functionality and design elements.

One of the biggest changes will be the concept of a user-designed homepage, where one can customize it with social sharing elements, widgets and discussion activity alerts. Another new feature will be user avatars, which is likely meant to make the site feel more social and friendly and less like a place where pros will tell the novices to get the hell off their lawn.

What's been your experience with the Apple boards up until now? What do you hope they'll address in the update?

[via MacFixIt]


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The Apple Discussion Boards have long been a great source of help for Apple end-users and professionals looking for both Apple-supplied and...
 

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studio

Good news? Well let's hope!!! I would much rather they did something like "NOT DELETE POSTS" that speak about things that "Apple" doesn't like. Real issues that people are having! To me, the site is like an "Apple PR Site", meant only to say "GOOD THINGS ONLY" about Apple. They need to do away with the post count so the police over there will stop rushing to respond to you in a rude and condescending tone. If Apple was really paying attention, that site doesn't do any "DAMAGE CONTROL" but rather provides the need for it! We don't need gimmicks, fancy fonts or colorful avatars we need real advice and ours issues to be "ACKNOWLEDGED" instead of ignored or dismissed with nasty responses like "your the only one having that issue" or "that is not an issue", "just restore your device"....

Apple is a great company, but they are failing in the area of "ACCOUNTABILITY" and "INTEGRITY".

Great products, great packaging but poor "CUSTOMER RELATIONS". Your integrity comes into play when I have a problem and the "PR machine" starts responding to my issue.

August 18 2010 at 5:19 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Gillan

What is up with TUAW being DAYS late in writing things?

It's degrading.

August 17 2010 at 6:23 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to Gillan's comment
redcard

It may have been days late but you still read and commented in it.

And that, sweety, is the whole point

August 17 2010 at 7:43 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
LGgeek

overhaul - like allow dissent or ban the pompous asses.
oh I forgot we're talking about Apple a company that has gone from "think different" to the ultimate borg company.

August 17 2010 at 6:07 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
owenmhv

there are too many know-it-all 20,000 posts apple defenders that won't allow any dissent.

August 17 2010 at 5:30 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to owenmhv's comment
david

Why should you be permitted to dissent in a HELP forum? People aren't going there to gossip or debate, they are going there to find answers to their problems. I don't want to browse through 20 pages of iWeb sux and Steve is gay to find out how to keep the Finder from crashing when I empty the trash.

August 22 2010 at 8:34 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
SM

Personally I have found it is full of arrogant idiots, who have their head stuck incredibly far up their a**. I feel everytime I post I am made to feel stupid for asking, I have yet to resolve a single issue on their.

From my experience Macrumours forums are by far the most helpful.

August 17 2010 at 5:22 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to SM's comment
Jenny

I agree. There's one pompous French ass that thinks he knows everything about Numbers. My question dealt with going from Windows Excel to either Numbers or OpenOffice. I was trying to get advice from someone who has used all three, or at least went from Excel to Numbers. A simple here's how you do it in Excel vs here's how you do it in Numbers was all that I was looking for.

This ass went on to say that I have my computer's dates set wrong, and since he can't stand behind me to see what I'm doing wrong, that I'm just stupid and can't follow his directions. First of all, his English is extremely terrible, my computer isn't set wrong, it's set for my needs. FYI, I ended up getting OpenOffice because it was more like MS Office.

It seems like other people just post something they got out of their ass just to see their name on the screen. I've posted a lot of questions only to have these morons go totally off topic and I never could get an answer to my original question.

What Apple needs to do is add a block button, and also a way to mark "off topic" to whatever post is in your thread.

August 18 2010 at 8:20 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
RobbyT

Lets hope it doesn't turn into a case of fixing something that aint broke...

August 17 2010 at 5:19 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Bill Mac

All that "social crap" aside I hope the boards continue to be the great wealth of user experience that I've found them to be in the past.

Many questions and problems I've had with various Macs over the years have been at least answered (if not solved) by the helpful folks on those boards!!

August 17 2010 at 5:05 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
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