Apple Support Community Forums
After a brief exchange with a Level 10 expert [in the Apple Support Community Forums], they were told that they could delete a large snapshot on their Mac’s Fusion Drive ‘to free up space’. The snapshot in question was clearly the Signed and Sealed System Volume (SSV) from which their Mac was currently booted.
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Recently, I’ve heard of other disturbing problems occurring on those same forums. One concerns recommending solutions which involve turning SIP off, and similar essential manoeuvres. Much as we all dislike doing that, there are times when you can’t solve a problem with SIP turned on, and that’s an intentional security feature. However, it’s apparently well known that if you post a solution there explaining how to do that, your response will be removed. It seems that, as a matter of unwritten policy, that’s not allowed.
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Getting sage support for Macs is becoming increasingly difficult. Other places offer forums, in which a mixture of the excellent and absurd abound in equal measure. Telling them apart is just as hard whether they flaunt hundreds of thousands of points, many awarded for attending Communities meet ups (25 points) or someone liking your User Tips (10 points), or just give the air of knowing what they’re talking about. That Level 10 expert might have earned most of those points from their deep knowledge of Mail or Photos, and be completely unaware of huge swathes of macOS.
Forums have always been somewhat hit-or-miss, hilariously bad advice mixed in with really insightful stuff that you wouldn’t get from an official source. From my perspective, what has been getting worse lately is that it’s harder to find solutions via general Web searches. I keep running into outdated advice and pages that are filler/SEO content that doesn’t answer the question, even incorrectly.
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This is because companies are purposely siloing their KB and solutions from search in an effort to force the usage of official support channels and thus ensuring traffic shaping to their enclave on the web.
A perfect example is Jamf. Their support has become horrendous by any objective measure. Searching for Jamf related info, via Google, results in outdated info. And the eventual act of opening a ticket has one speaking with an intern level person in support reading a script. At least they’re based in MN, and have a you betcha attitude but you’ll never get anyone past Tier 1. And when they escalate to Tier 2 it’s someone who has been in tech for 2 years…based on their LinkedIn bio.
Search has become like shopping on Amazon. The results are a mile wide but an inch deep. It’s the Bezosfication of information. All search results are treated equally.
