Depends, a small protip, if you have an apple product that died because of water. Go to an apple reseller in a country without apple store. Most of the times they will turn a blind eye on the water damage and just repair it since they get paid by repairs.

At least this was my experience a few years back.

I live in a country without an Apple store (Iceland) and I have no problems. There are multiple Apple Authorized Service Providers here that provide excellent support and service. And Iceland is a teeny tiny market so I imagine it's even easier in most parts of the world.

My local AASP is one of the reasons I contend with some of Apple's dubious choices.

It's the best service shop I've dealt with.

I'm living in a country without Apple Store. When my Macbook broke, I went to authorized service center. They replaced SSD. It took over a month. So if it would be my work machine, I wouldn't be able to work for over a month. This is just unacceptable.

If you are a professional it's unacceptable to only have one work machine and no backup machine.

What if it was stolen or broken entirely instead of "SSD needs replacement"?

Then there would be nobody to replace it for you (in a month or a day), but you'd still have work to do. At best you would buy a new one, set it up again, and lose a few days to get back on track while your customers wait.

And that's assuming you have the credit at hand then and there (and you don't need to do any market research, but can just grab a machine).

Backups (both hardware and data) or not, a month turnaround is still awful and unacceptable, and reason enough to switch suppliers. Companies that take business customers seriously offer same-day on-site service.

You can send in a computer to Apple for a turn around of less than a week in most cases. Because they decided to go to a physical location, it probably caused a delay. I'm not defending the store in any way but that definitely isn't the best place to go if you know there is not a store in your area.

If a business needs a particular level of service, perhaps they should only deal with a company/reseller that offers an acceptable SLA.

My nearest Apple Store (not a third party reseller - they're bloody useless) is a 3 hour round trip, and they never have any appointments any way.

Granted that's still better support as non-business you'd get from one of the PC OEMs, but still crap.

>not a third party reseller - they're bloody useless

Where I'm from, all official Apple premium resellers do the job just fine.

They're absolutely terrible here.

replacement of batter and screen was done in two days, given that parts were ordered and shipped from another city. not bad. But I understand what original article owner writes. sometimes non usb keyboards stop working and only plugging them in into the port on the hub and replugging them back into the system block gets them recognized again.

> So, Apple products should not be used in towns without an Apple Store. Sounds about right.

FTFY.

I don’t care if there’s an Apple-store 50km away if I need my computer working now.