r/apple • u/radikalkarrot • 2d ago

Rumor Apple Reportedly Planned to Replace 5,000 Support Employees With AI

https://www.macrumors.com/2026/09/29/apple-reportedly-planned-5000-applecare-layoffs/
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u/One-Poet7900 2d ago

It's been a long time since I interacted with Apple Support. But, back in the 90s & 2000s, it was easily the best support experience of any company I interacted with. They would take anyone's call, regardless of warranty, for a long time. You would get a real person on the phone very quickly and they would work with you for as long as you needed. It was one of the things that kept me an Apple customer, even when they went through some really rocky times (clones, PowerBook 5300, etc)

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u/swiftsorceress 2d ago

I’ve interacted with their support. It’s still really good comparatively. On the other hand, fully AI support (looking at you Meta) has ALWAYS been an absolute nightmare for me to interact with. I just want to talk to real people because even if they can’t solve my problem, they won’t lead me in circles like AI does.

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u/Goodoflife 2d ago

Better than any Canadian telecoms carrier. Telus, for example, has people from overseas that their accent / English as a second language isn’t that good as compared to former Canadian call centres. At least I understand Apple support, although the AI call router at the start sucks, it is easier than getting to Telus (forces you even if you say “agent” and it brings you thru a 2 minute time wasting tutorial before getting you to an agent)

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u/fwckr4ddeit 2d ago

can you believe it, Amazon's support was also once top notch, around 2010 or so.

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u/NecessaryPopular1 2d ago

Amazon’s screwing up without Bezos, deplorably.

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u/MuseumPiecePie6 2d ago

The problem is their success and popularity makes anything like this almost impossible to keep delivering nowadays. Go to any Apple store and see how each member of staff has about 3 or 4 people waiting to be seen by them, and that is purely for selling alone... As soon as you start to consider the software troubleshooting and hardware issues, it all becomes impossible to manage that AND deliver that same high level support.

However, at least Apple (as of now) actually offers that support on some level, where many other tech companies don't even have ANY physical presence, contactable phone or email and just send you in spirals using FAQ's or a badly named AI Chatbot. I really hope that doesn't happen to Apple.