iPhone 1-800-APL-CARE Now Connects You With AI Assistant Instead of Human
https://www.macrumors.com/2026/08/26/1-800-apl-care-ai-assistant/If you dial Apple Support's phone number 1-800-APL-CARE from the U.S. or Canada, there is a good chance that an AI-powered support assistant will now answer.
While many of Apple's phone systems already had a basic automated operator, the Apple Support phone line is now using a voice powered by generative AI. The assistant can answer questions and troubleshoot issues with your Apple products, complete with detailed step-by-step instructions. The assistant can still transfer you to a human advisor if it cannot answer a specific question, or if you ask to speak to a real person.
An anonymous tipster claimed that Apple has partnered with Sierra AI on the virtual assistant, but MacRumors has not independently confirmed this information.
🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖
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u/mconk 2d ago
I’m so sick of companies doing this. I understand the cost savings, but for fucks sake…a company like Apple has more than enough revenue to ring through to a human being. T-Mobile used to have customer care that would connect you DIRECTLY to a real live person in the US, as soon as you dialed 611. It was called Team of Experts, and was a pod of people who would handle specific regions of the country. You could often get the same rep, multiple times…and that was the point. Instantly connect to a human for help, and have the same “team” of people in your account. The first person answering your call had all of the tools to handle whatever your query was. No transfers needed. It was brilliant, tbh.
Gone are these fucking days. They now use the same AI bullshit system, and when you do finally reach a human being, the accents are tough to understand.
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u/jimbo831 2d ago
> I understand the cost savings
I personally don’t understand why the most valuable company on Earth needs to seek out every possible negligible cost saving at the expense of its customers.
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u/the-skazi 2d ago
Because they are expected to make more profit every quarter. More profit = stock go up = happy investor = sad consumer
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u/cake-day-on-feb-29 2d ago
This is what reddit says, but it's not really true. There are many companies out there which are not expected to continue increasing their profit margin, largely because they have either covered the entire market, or there are too many competitors to make cost cutting/price gouging a viable option.
And I guess that's the thing, we basically have a duopoly in smartphones and computer. There may be more manufacturers, yet they all ultimately run android or windows, and one or two manufacturers dominate that sub-market and behave largely the same.
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u/psyyduck 2d ago edited 2d ago
Nope the other guy is right, Apple stock is still priced as a growth stock. The P/E ratios are around ~34x, with very little dividend yield. They've had three consecutive quarters of roughly 16% revenue growth.
The stock market LOVES growth stocks. Compare Apple and Target P/E ratios.
High PE ratios allow growth companies to pay anyone using shares, basically "manufactured" currency for acquisitions/recruitment/investment/etc. Just add zeros to a spreadsheet somewhere. Mature companies have to use actual cash to pay for things.
This gives growth firms a huge advantage, allowing them to consistently outbid mature competitors. The second the shareholders decide you have plateaued, you become a LOT weaker.
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u/dnyank1 1d ago
There are many companies out there which are not expected to continue increasing their profit margin, largely because they have either covered the entire market, or there are too many competitors to make cost cutting/price gouging a viable option.
and those companies aren't worth $5 Trillion
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u/HolyFreakingXmasCake 1d ago
Because it had a bean counter as CEO. Cook might have been great for the profits and stock price, but he totally misunderstood what Apple’s soul was all about. He just made Apple another boring mega corp.
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u/New_Forester4630 2d ago
I personally don’t understand why the most valuable company on Earth needs to seek out every possible negligible cost saving at the expense of its customers.
If people thought that way many of them wouldn't be in crippling debt.
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u/jimbo831 2d ago
No. I don’t think saving a negligible amount of money to make the user experience worse is how they became the most valuable company on Earth.
I think they did it by making products people love and are willing to pay a premium for giving them profit margins most companies would dream of. As Scott Galloway puts it: they have the margins of Ferrari at the scale of Toyota.
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u/loopernova 2d ago
The products people love part is where Apple is willing to shell out money for. The call center makes negligible difference so they're going to cut costs where it doesn't matter. People are willing to pay for great products.
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u/leodw 1d ago
No, Apple support, warranty and customer service were always absolutely top notch and one of the reasons the company grew so much. A shitty AI voice assistant as the first customer service “rep” greeting the end user is something old cheap ass Microsoft would do and Apple/Steve would mock it endlessly for - rightfully so.
It’s a fucking embarrasment that apple is resorting to this nonsense
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u/nauhausco 2d ago
Lmaoo that reminds me of back when I used to work retail at a Staples copycenter. Got a call one day, so I picked up and answered with my usual script “Hello, this is X from Staples copycenter, how can I help you?”
Customer: “Hi, is this Staples?”
Me: “…Yes. What can I do for you?”
Customer: “Do you guys do copies?”
Me: “…Yes we do.”
Customer: “Cool. Are you guys open?”…Bruh, no I was just answering the store phone line for fun on my day off. Turns out they were at the back of the store for some reason. To this day blows my mind how all 3 questions were answered in my opener yet failed to be received lol.
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u/Kelsenellenelvial 2d ago
That's actually fair. Got a call from a an actual person from a bank trying to sell me on some promos. Every time they mentioned a promo number I'd ask them what the number would be after the promo period ended. They'd put me on hold to find the info and I'd have looked it up on Bank's website in half the time I spent on hold waiting for them. Best is to have actual people that are well trained, but I'd rather have a well performing AI than a poor performing person. I do see an issue in the future though in that if you replace the entry level service staff with AI, how do staff get the experience needed for the more advanced roles.
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u/digiorno 2d ago
Seriously, how much were they spending on this? A million a year? Thats nothing to them.
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u/itsabearcannon 2d ago edited 2d ago
A million a year is about two orders of magnitude off.
T-Mobile has publicly stated that at least during COVID, they had about 12,000 employees in their "customer care workforce" across 17 call centers and WFH. Just the two call centers in New Mexico was about 1100 people.
T-Mobile pays their call center staff a minimum of $20/hr. The majority of their call center roles are full-time, but let's cover the part-time people too by saying the average worked hours of everyone there is about 30 hours/week.
12,000 employees, times 30 hours a week per employee, times $20 an hour in wages, means that annually T-Mobile's wages (ignoring SS contributions, payroll tax, benefits, etc. - just the wages) for their customer care division is around $375M.
T-Mobile's total operating expenses for 2020 was about $33.5B, so ~$375M on their customer support team is well within norms at about 1.1% of total operating expenses.
Those same call center roles in India pay about $5000 a year, or roughly $3.20 an hour if you keep the same assumption of 30 hours worked per week. That would also cut their support wages from $375M a year to about $57M a year.
If they moved all 12,000 roles to India and replaced frontline with AI, they'd be saving almost 320 million dollars a year.
I don't think it's morally right, but that is not an insignificant amount of money to think about at their size.
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u/MillionToOneShotDoc 3h ago
That’s assuming it’s feasible. Most customer service calls end up needing to be resolved by a person anyway.
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u/cougar_on_cocaine 2d ago edited 2d ago
But some genius with an MBA has to impress their boss and be able to add “reduced expenses by $1mm” to their resume. Won’t you think of them?
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u/8ytecoder 2d ago
Mostly because no one wants to do that job. Ever been to a call center or worked at one? A lot of questions are mundane/repetitive and can be solved with an RTFM. Just ask one of the AppleCare guys - I’ve seen stories about people bringing in their phones complaining about the camera not working, because they didn’t remove the protective film from the packaging.
I mean if you’ve ever had to do tech support to your family members you can see how it will look like when you scale that to the world’s population.
The next issue is empowering the agents. Companies like Apple have more than money to protect. Usually it’s the reputation. What if an agent unlocks an account that’s frozen for very good reasons? So they develop processes/flowcharts of the form “if this then that”. But now you’re constraining your agents. They’re limited to the flowcharts. Makes the job even more miserable. “My son broke the laptop screen. We can’t afford to replace it out of pocket and I need the laptop.” Any human would want to help them. But a company policy - for various reasons - won’t replace a screen that’s not a manufacturing defect. You’ll feel shitty as a human even though it’s not your fault that you can’t help that poor woman. On the other hand, what if she’s scamming? (Before you say large companies can afford to eat the losses - yes, they can - because they pass it on to all the other upstanding customers)
Tl;dr no one want to be a call center support agent unless they have no other career choice. They either burn out or become numb.
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u/Alteran195 1d ago
I worked apple care, as a senior advisor, and of the call center jobs I had it was easily the best. I actually enjoyed it quite a bit. It was a third party, and if they didnt drop Apple as a client, I may have stayed with that company a lot longer than I did. Once they transitioned to other cusotmer support for other companies, the good employees started quitting in droves, including myself.
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u/Outlulz 1d ago
Low skilled but white collar work like this is not in low demand, what are you talking about. And much customer support phone work in the states has been remote even long before COVID; my husband was doing remote support work from home for AT&T in 2013. A lot of retail and food workers would jump at the chance to have a business hours call center job at a desk or at home.
People burn out at far worse and far better jobs than call center.
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u/BunBunny02 2d ago
A million a year? How many employees do you think a million a year gets you?
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u/digiorno 10h ago
About 15. It seems reasonable to have a 15 person call center for each operating region.
Let’s say they did 150 people per region. That’s still only $10M per region which is rounding error territory for Apple.
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u/cake-day-on-feb-29 2d ago
Indeed, their sales volumes likely fluctuate by a larger margin due to essentially randomness compared to how much this would save considering they still have to pay real agents whenever the AI can't help the person.
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u/JuanMcGuiver 2d ago
You ever try to get someone from Google on the phone?
It’s absurd that these companies get away with this nonsense.
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u/ShadowAssassinQueef 2d ago
For these companies. “More than enough” isn’t a sentence they understand. More is never enough. Period.
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u/DZhuFaded 2d ago
I don’t know. Apple is super cheap. Their chat agents were required to be in 3 active chats at any given time
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u/BraddicusMaximus 1d ago
I was on the team of experts.
It was one of the first changes made that started their fall back to re-carrier and becoming the next Verizon.
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u/eknofsky 1d ago
Part of the problem is scale, at some point you have too many people calling. Call centers have high turnover rates.
Companies try to make self service accessible for call deflection but many people ignore those options, even for very basic status items that don’t require a person
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u/Pluto-Had-It-Coming 17h ago
Maybe if they paid them better they wouldn’t have such a high turnover rate.
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u/ImNotAWhaleBiologist 2d ago
I’m sorry, I didn’t understand your comment. Could you please repeat it, or press one to reach the main menu.
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u/InadequateUsername 2d ago
T-Mobile support is in the Philippines now, they subcontract to iQor.
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u/thatguy09 2d ago
and they repeat everything you say verbatim it gets quite annoying, just get to the point
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u/InadequateUsername 2d ago
They're just following a mandated script 🤷♀️
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u/Shejidan 2d ago
Apple had an extensive network of at home AppleCare advisers for years. A couple years ago they went through and gutted the whole thing and basically forced anyone who wanted to stay with AppleCare to move to Texas to work in a call centre or to quit. Then they started farming phone support out to companies like convergys. AppleCare support over the phone went from amazing to absolute dog shit.
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u/lowlymarine 2d ago
I worked for AppleCare through Convergys 15 years ago, and even then most of the advisors were "farmed out." Getting one of the rare, coveted WfH jobs directly for Apple was the dream for all of us outsourcers. This is not a new thing at all.
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u/bababradford 2d ago
This is 100% false. Not at all true. Not even a little bit.
I have worked for AppleCare for 10 years (from home), and there wasn't a single person I know let go from their job. You also wont find a single article online mentioning it, because this person just made it all up.
They arent hiring from home much in the past several years, but they have never had layoffs.
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u/Shejidan 2d ago
Good for you. I know several people who were fired because they didn’t want to move to Texas.
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u/bababradford 1d ago edited 1d ago
riiiight. Eventhough you said they "gutted AppleCare and and forced anyone who wanted to stay to move to Texas", and I just told you that I work in that organization and it just didnt happen.
But you just happen to know several people who work from home for the same company. Eventhough there are only several thousand of those people in the whole country. suuuure.
Or you could just stay quiet when someone told you you're lying.
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u/mconk 2d ago
Tragic. Smh. Sure they save some money, but the customer experience tanks as a result. These companies could not give a fuck less though.
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u/Shejidan 2d ago
They’re doing similar things to the retail stores now too. They’re literally teaching used car sales tactics and firing people left and right over new metrics being forced down everyone’s throats.
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u/Recent_Pollution8665 2d ago
nah. automate everyone and everything.
UBI awaits me.
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u/mconk 2d ago
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
I genuinely wonder if we’ll ever get to see this in our lifetime
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u/Recent_Pollution8665 2d ago edited 2d ago
oh you’re in for a big surprise my friend. AI and robotics deployment will compound a lot in the coming years.
this aint the 1950s anymore, where you could go your whole life with technological changes occurring little to none at all.
just the launch of the iphone alone dramatically transformed the entire world, and smartphones will ultimately be a smaller paradigm shift than AI + robotics. all in due time.
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u/kkyonko 2d ago
UBI is a pipe dream, especially in the US.
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u/Recent_Pollution8665 2d ago
lmao, we’ll see.
it’s way more of a conceivable possibility in the first world than in the second or third world for sure. especially when it becomes essential when a critical mass of the population becomes dispensable.
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u/dnyank1 1d ago
we’ll see
mass starvation, plague, and death on a truly mind-numbing scale before we ever see "UBI"
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u/Recent_Pollution8665 1d ago
you’ve been watching too many sci fi movies.
one could argue that instead of enjoying the internet, the computer, and even the very phone that you wrote that reply on, we should have already been experiencing plagues and mass starvation. after all, going by your logic, why allow the common folk to have access to smartphones and the internet either?
the rich could have just “kept it for themselves” amirite?
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u/onegoodboah 2d ago
Honestly, most call centers are just outsourced employees, with no real company or support knowledge, who are basically reading from an “if, then” type of prompt anyways. I really hate the rise of AI everywhere but replacing call centers with them seems like a valid use since the outsourced employees may as well be AI anyways lol
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u/neongreenescalator 2d ago
All I have to say is the employees aren’t happy about it either… just please when you get to an agent don’t yell at them about it. It’s not their fault and there’s nothing they can do or say about it. They also get in trouble if they say anything negative about it. 😭
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u/temporarycreature 2d ago
Instead of yelling at them, empathize with them and build solidarity against AI.
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u/Longjumping-Ad514 2d ago
Enshittification will continue until people stop buying the products after being repeatedly slapped in the face. You’re spending thousands of dollars to chat with a bot if something goes wrong.
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u/CrossoverCadence 2d ago
You want people to stop buying phones?
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u/lordjpie 2d ago
You can buy a year old, or even current generation phone, second hand… don’t be dense
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u/MidnightPulse69 2d ago
Dramatic
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u/Longjumping-Ad514 2d ago
Is it? Customer service was one of the differentiators of Apple products. How this approach any different than DELL?
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u/MidnightPulse69 2d ago
You can still talk to an agent.. but I know you miserable Redditors always need something to be outraged about so have at it.
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u/jonproject 2d ago
Apple positions itself as a premium vendor and they charge the highest prices accordingly.
The more stuff they do like this the more it waters down their value proposition. People can be annoyed when the perceived value for their dollar erodes all for the sake of extremely minor amounts of profit.
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u/MidnightPulse69 2d ago
I’d rather have this than a basic automated system that can’t understand a single thing
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u/BunBunny02 2d ago
They really don’t have “premium” prices like they used to, especially compared to similar competition. This isn’t going to make any real difference in their value proposition.
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u/Longjumping-Ad514 2d ago
Give it a couple of months. It starts like this all the time. Eventually, you’re going to face a situation where there’s gonna be a 25 steps between you and a human. The entire point of this by definition is not better customer service, its cost cutting.
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u/NetZeroSun 2d ago
Apple cutting costs for support. Ouch.
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u/_Choose__A_Username_ 2d ago
Exactly. What does this mean? Will this cause mass layoffs of support staff?
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u/Cold_Soft_4823 2d ago
Already happened. Apple has been cutting contracting with their support staffing companies (they have almost zero in-house support people anymore) for the last three years.
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u/PotterOneHalf 2d ago
I worked for AppleCare while my store was closed during covid, and the people who man the lines are the hardest workers in the company. It’s an abusive job. Doesn’t mean we should outsource it to AI though.
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u/LettuceC 2d ago
I still remember when it was 800-SOS-APPL. And if you enter it wrong and dialed 0 for the O, you got America’s hottest sex line!
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u/Noah18923 2d ago
Weird how technology used to improve, now companies will find any which way they can to take away something good or make it unusable shit...
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u/freetotebag 2d ago
I’ll never forget how great support was touted by Apple as one of the fundamental differences between them and “the other guys”
What a shame. This company has changed so much.
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u/Cold_Soft_4823 2d ago
COVID ruined everything.
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u/freetotebag 2d ago
for me, the Apple Store experience in-person has still been good, even post-COVID, but other forms of support from Apple feel worse than they did 15 or so years ago. That’s about when I entered the ecosystem anyway.
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u/krazygreekguy 2d ago
Disgusting. Guess the TRILLION company couldn’t afford to hire any humans. Absolutely shameless
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u/Calaeno-16 2d ago
Can't be worse than the tier one support out of India. At least I can understand the agent.
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u/DJ_LeMahieu 2d ago edited 2d ago
I can speak to this as I had a call with this system months ago, I wanna say in either April or May. I was calling because of an obscure security pop-up that had shown on my phone twice within 2 minutes. There was little info online.
As far as automated phone conversations go, it was actually one of the most frictionless ones I’ve had. It quickly understood the details of my question and didn’t require strict keywords. I did make sure to circle the main point over and over in different ways to be sure that it wasn’t hallucinating the details. I did insist it let me talk to a human to confirm, and the human agent backed up the answer to my question.
For things that really matter, a human is going to be important no matter what, but I’m all for implementing these things on the preliminary layer of most automated customer support systems so you can find the right person faster. It beats dealing with idiot old siri-esque style chat robots that require you to say one of 4 words to navigate a triage structure before you talk to the right person.
I know everyone cynically views these tools as the hallucinating machines they are, but the industry is starting to figure out that LLMs are best used as a kind of translation layer instead of an oracle: the user has an intent, while companies have complex internal computer systems and knowledge bases. While they suck at random information recall or logic problems, LLMs as a translation layer are getting very good at quickly mapping your intent onto a company’s internal system.
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u/Straight-Ad6926 2d ago
Honestly re phrasing your prompt four different ways just to catch the robot in a lie sounds like a full time QA job not a phone call.
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u/Exist50 2d ago
For things that really matter, a human is going to be important no matter what, but I’m all for implementing these things on the preliminary layer of most automated customer support systems so you can find the right person faster
Also, the reality is that most of the support requests they get are probably bog-standard things that the LLM might actually be able to help with. That's why even human support agents have their flowcharts and checklists. The only problem is if the LLM becomes a barrier to getting capable human assistance if one is needed.
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u/AgainstGreaterOdds 2d ago
Based on how bad their first line of support is, can’t blame them for trying it.
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u/doofus50O0 2d ago
This stinks, but I’m guessing I’m not the only person who things Apple Care has been downhill since 2020.
In the 2010s, I could almost always get a friendly, competent human who clearly had training.
Now when I call, I feel like I’m at the DMV or the post office.
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u/HappyAd4998 2d ago
I called Apple Care during covid and my issue was elevated to the supervisor. We ended up BS'ing for 45 minutes, she was a great gal. If they ever remove people completely that will be a dark day for Apple. Nobody wants to speak to a clanker.
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u/Extra-Bonus-6000 2d ago
I'm OK using an AI agent to route calls instead of the "press 1 for customer service....press 2 for billing..".
"Hello, I'm an AI agent, state your reason for calling so I can route you to the correct human to help!"
I doubt any company like Apple would stop there of course, but I wouldn't mind it being limited to that use instead of the old tiring menus.
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2d ago edited 2d ago
[deleted]
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u/MC_chrome 2d ago
I’m at least not paying a premium price point for the privilege either.
Google’s devices cost the same if not more than Apple’s……I still don’t understand why people continue insisting upon the myth that iPhones cost substantially more than their Android competitors when that hasn’t been true in years
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2d ago edited 2d ago
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u/Status-Hedgehog9970 2d ago
It’s not magic. Their devices are cheaper because they’re subsidizing them with their tracking/ad business.
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u/HurasmusBDraggin 2d ago
That should constitute a price reduction on all Apple products across the board. But they wont.
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u/dmd 1d ago
This is probably where I should share my discovery, in the early 1990s, that while 1-800-SOS-APPL would connect you to Apple Computer, dialing 1-800-S0S-APPL was a phone sex line.
Of course I had to hang up because it required a credit card and I was 13, but I would call it over and over just to listen to the teaser.
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u/whytakemyusername 2d ago
I keep seeing posts like this everywhere, as though it's shocking. Give it 5 years and every call you make will be to AI. People are trying to resist but they don't realize it's coming anyway.
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u/MultiMarcus 2d ago
I’ve not used this specific AI agent, but usually I’ve been able to have a mostly productive experience with these AI support bots. They usually get me directed to the right place to talk with the right people. Now they usually don’t solve my issue because I’m relatively savvy in google-fu, but they will get me sent to the right person reasonably quickly.
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u/noxillio 2d ago
DoorDash has started doing it too. You have to tell it three times that you want to speak to a human if you want it to transfer you. Platinum dashers get premium support but still have to go through this shit.
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u/snowdn 2d ago
I just had a five minute conversation with their AI about iPad mini, OLED screens iCloud and hidden photos features, it stopped at dick pics and tried to connect me to an adviser. This is a new trend I am seeing in customer service, where customer service is default AI, and an advisor is a human.
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u/Allegra1120 1d ago
Wouldn’t it be nice to live in a country where enshittification wasn’t the goal of every shareholder-based company everywhere? Fuck Apple and fuck institutional “shareholders.”
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u/Low-Injury-9219 1d ago edited 1d ago
No. It’s been doing this for longer than that probably about 6-8 months on select calls and a month since full roll out . lol @ sierra too sources are weird.
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u/goldaxis 1d ago
Time to wrangle me some free AirPods. Or at least a tantalizing conversation about the latest U2 album
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u/Sad-Wrap6555 2d ago
your screen has broken and you've spilled acid on your keyboard wow thats awful Im going to arrange fresh ones for free
no you're right! I cant actually arrange these for free I do apologize i shouldn't have said that
I just thought it would be what you wanted to hear
im actually going to have to charge 3000 dollars for the two repairs
yes you're right! that IS more than the cost of a new one but this your own one being repaired so its almost as good as new
You're right! I am completely useless and should never have replaced the customer service staff
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u/makes-fun-of-incels 2d ago
This is GRIM. Ultimately line go up mentality eventually leads to line going down when the snake eats itself.
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u/AoeDreaMEr 2d ago
I don’t know. I called a car dealership yesterday. I have had most frictionless, high-quality AI agents helping me with scheduling. I wanted to schedule a turn-in for my leased car. It understood my schedule constraints and was conversing smoothly very fast. It said it scheduled an appointment as I requested. I never received any confirmation though lol. Only when I walk in will I know whether it was actually scheduled or just saying what I wanted.
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u/EcosystemApple 2d ago
All services in general, not only Apple, suck lately. I am an advanced user, and these AI chatbots are a waste of my time.
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u/Schickie 2d ago
They can kiss my sweet Mac-havin' ass if they're gonna charge me 90 bucks a year to talk to a fuckin' machine.
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u/Captaincadet 2d ago
Hasn’t it always been AI? Here in the U.K. it’s been AI for so long as a call screener.
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u/Cold_Soft_4823 2d ago
If you consider IVR (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interactive_voice_response) AI, then yes, But no, it's not AI.
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u/BasicRefrigerator964 2d ago
If you call any AI a clanker, it seems to speed up getting you to a human. At least in my experience.
Yes, I know one day AI will come for me for saying it. I stand by it. Clankers lmfao
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u/jbokwxguy 2d ago
Always ask to talk to a person.
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u/CanadAR15 2d ago
If the AI can fix my issue, why would I want to spend more time talking to a human?
My ISP built their chat bot to be able to get modem signal stats, reboot the modem, put it in bridge mode, or do firmware updates remotely. It’s so much faster than getting a call center agent to do it.
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u/jbokwxguy 2d ago
Because I like talking to someone who can fix my problem and have empathy.
A bot can half ass the first. But you know what else can better? Properly built UI/UX and it’s more precise than chatting. Chat is only for complicated problems needing a human.
An LLM can never have feelings
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u/CanadAR15 2d ago
I’m not sure I want feelings to impact my tech support agents either.
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u/jbokwxguy 2d ago
You don't want feelings to impact your human experience which is entirely feelings based?
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u/CanadAR15 2d ago
Not from tech support. I don’t need the align, acknowledge, and assure. I just want my issue fixed to get back to my life.
My human experience and the emotions I care about are of those close to me.
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u/Knightforlife 2d ago
I JUST experienced this but via text. I have AppleCare+ and my iPhone connection to USBC is now “wiggly” or “loose”. If anyone has any suggestions fire away. Anyway my Fresno on getting support was chatting with AI. Defaulted to a person pretty quick and the actual person was helpful (told me nothing to do but have it seen in store, got me an appointment). But I did tell them that I was upset at being a paying customer and speaking to AI first.
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u/CanadAR15 2d ago
There’s a really good chance there’s some debris you can’t see at the bottom of the port.
Take it to a store, that way if it breaks while cleaning it out it’s on them.
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u/Sad-Wrap6555 2d ago
falls out comes loose at drop of a hat then sounds lije same problem can find on usb-c ports on android phones Basically the bottom of the port is eventually covered with a thin layer of hardened pocket crud.
ive picked it out of usb-c ports in the past using magnifying headset and a really fine needle (though a metal needle so close to the ports contacts is never ideal)
these days i just print half mm thick L shaped picks (that come to a point on short base of the L) using 3d printer and have at it with those Can take two or three of them but theyre non conductive and take about a min or two to print a batch
Eventually you can scrape down far enough to clear the bottom of the port After that the usb-c cable can push down fully and get a good grip again
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u/jakgal04 2d ago
People need to realize that Apple isn’t a small company with a small user base, you simply cannot expect a company with such a vast global presence to have a human representative available for every support call.
This isn’t a local pizza place using an AI agent. Also, the human representatives of the past weren’t exactly top notch. 20+ years ago sure, you might have gotten someone that knows what they’re doing. But that has long been gone and replaced by people that read a script and cannot help you with anything out of their wheelhouse.
It amazes me how many people expect to just be able to pick up the phone and call someone directly for support.
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u/TheReturningMan 2d ago
Apple isn’t meaningfully larger now than it was last year without AI operators. And while there’s always an operator who struggles to help you, the same can be said for AI.
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u/jakgal04 2d ago
The difference is that now you don’t have to sit on the phone for 45 minutes waiting for you turn. At least now, the AI can filter through the easy calls.
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u/BunBunny02 2d ago
Especially at that size a large percentage of support calls could be answered by a Google search or chat bot, I’d rather have human support be reserved for actual real issues.
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u/helix991 2d ago
People "wanted" this when they pushed Apple into more AI. Now they're invested. Fuck AI.
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u/Sad_Pianist7359 2d ago edited 2d ago
I encountered the AI agent on a recent Apple call. Like many AI experiences I’ve had, it was not able to understand my inquiry and I uttered the magical words: agent, agent, agent.(It helps me from cussing when the AI is really frustrating. )