support

If you were one of the millions following along today (hopefully on CNET's Live Blog) as Apple released its latest iteration of the iPad and have now decided you must buy it, be sure to add AppleCare+ to your order (pricing has not yet been made available).

First, everyone should know what sort of coverage is offered with every new iPad purchase. For included coverage, Apple shows that it truly believes in its products. Your new iPad will get one year of hardware coverage against manufacturer defects and malfunctions. That means, if your hard drive dies, some of your … Read more

Consumers running any edition of Windows 7 or Vista now have a few more years of support to look forward to.

Microsoft recently tacked on five additional years in the form of Extended support for all editions of both operating systems for individual users. Full support for every edition of each OS will now last for approximately 10 years from release date, pointing ahead to January 14, 2020, for Windows 7 and April 11, 2017, for Vista.

Microsoft offers both Mainstream and Extended support for its operating systems and other products. Mainstream support lasts for five years and covers all … Read more

According to a new rumor, Siri may gain support for Japanese, Mandarin, and Russian as early as next month.

The news comes from a Chinese technology news site, DoNews (via Penn Olson), claiming to have spoken to an Apple engineer working on the Chinese-language version of Apple's voice-controlled personal assistant, Siri. The source told DoNews that internal testing has already begun and should result in a public product by next month.

With Apple widely expected to release a new iPad model next month (one that should include Siri functionality), having Chinese (Mandarin), Japanese, and Russian in Siri's arsenal … Read more

Apple's knowledgebase articles are an excellent source for troubleshooting aspects of Mac systems and Apple's software. Apple links to them from numerous locations on its Support Web site, but recently a number of people have noted problems with accessing the knowledgebase articles.

In some instances when loading an article, the page will state that the requested information cannot be found on Apple's servers, but at other times the connection to the site has been refused or encountered errors with too many redirects or other problems that prevent the articles from loading.

When you are able to connect … Read more

The quality of Apple's tech support by telephone "declined significantly" from 2010 to 2011 according to a new customer study.

Vocal Laboratories (Vocalabs) this morning published findings from its National Customer Service Survey, saying that while Apple continued to beat out competitors like Dell and HP when it came to customer service on the phone, customer satisfaction dropped a full 10 percent since the firm surveyed customers in the first half of 2010.

The study, which ran from May 2008 to December 2011 was based on 4,852 telephone interviews made following calls to the support lines … Read more

I didn't get how important support was. Then, recently, I had back-to-back experiences dealing with both great and terrible support for products that failed. If you make a consumer product, there are important lessons in these experiences.

Experience number 1: Dell

I bought a cheap computer for my mother, for her birthday. A few months later, but still during the warranty period, it died. Utterly. Power supply, I think, although maybe the motherboard. I started the support process, eventually did a frustrating online chat (we've all been there, right?), and against my wishes agreed to have a Dell … Read more

Starting January 30, T-Mobile plans to offer additional support for the over 1 million iPhone users that have unlocked their device for use on its network. T-Mobile watchblog TmoNews was able to obtain company documents detailing the new support policies.

According to the document (pictured above), the additional support will include "common procedures, information about feature and specifications, and other device questions."

To help iPhone users feel even more welcome, T-Mobile plans to create the support pages to look like the current T-Mobile Community pages. Other benefits of the increased support listed on the document include:

The ancient browser wars have nothing on the current competition for top honors. Firefox has responded to stiff challenges with a variety of changes and upgrades, but here's the thing about changes: Not everyone likes them. While no one's calling for a performance downgrade, those users who prefer a more classic look can indulge their retro (or retrogrouch) impulse with Nautipolis for Firefox. This free theme for Mozilla Firefox uses high-quality icons from art.gnome.org to give the Firefox interface a sleek, retro-inspired look without sacrificing up-to-date rendering and features. Nautipolis also supports a wide range of … Read more

Though the biggest gripe for most iPhone 4S users has been an abnormally short battery life, an issue that could prove to be just as frustrating is gaining vocal ground in support forums across the Web.

These iPhone 4S owners are experiencing random muting during phone calls, an issue that has reportedly been ignored in the forthcoming iOS 5.1 update.

The problem happens as calls are placed. You tap the appropriate contact or dial the number you wish to call and at some point during the connection, the audio on the caller's end fails.

Interestingly, on the other … Read more