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Consumer Affairs

Consumers Rally Around Apple in Wake of Jobs' Retirement

Iconic executive's departure doesn't dim enthusiasts' love for the company

09/05/2011 | By | ConsumerAffairs.com | Computers

PhotoSteve Jobs' sudden retirement as CEO of Apple shocked the stock market, rattled the company's employees and sparked endless thumb-sucking op-eds by columnists of all stripes.

But if anyone thinks Jobs' retirement is an ill omen for the Apple brand, it may be time to think again. 

A computerized analysis of consumer sentiment by ConsumerAffairs.com finds that positive sentiment peaked during August, when Jobs announced that he was stepping aside because of chronic health issues.

An analysis of 27 million sentiments expressed over the last year on Facebook, Twitter and other social media and public forums finds that positive sentiment hit a high for the year in August, when Jobs made his announcement.  

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Positive & negative consumer sentiments about Apple

During August, nearly 50% of all analyzed comments were positive while slightly less than 20% were negative -- about 170,000 positives  against 64,000 negatives in August. Typical comments:

  • "Apple will be fine thanks to his leadership."
  • "Apple is incredibly solid thanks to him." 

 

The most frequent comment in August was: "Apple all the way," expressed by hundreds of consumers in various venues.  An exact count was not possible because of variations in punctuation and spelling.

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While the positive comments tended to focus on Jobs and his leadership, negative comments mostly revolved around technical and pricing issues.  A few samples:

  • Apple freaks me out
  • Apple is screwing over web developers with iOS 4.3

 

Many of the comments deemed negative actually concerned external events that had afflicted Apple, including an attack by hackers.  The most frequent negative comment was a re-post of a previously published headline: "Apple suffers from hackers' Mac attack."
 
Consumer reviews submitted to ConsumerAffairs.com, which tend to be negative for all companies and products, were fairly typical in August. Most concerned problems with iPhones, MacBooks and other Apple products.
 
A California consumer said he left his iPhone on the seat of a BART train.  After watching the train -- and his phone -- leave the station, he went to an Apple store, only to learn that he would have to shell out $600 for a new phone.
 
Several consumers, including Paul of Raleigh, N.C., reported experiencing "kernal panics" on their MacBook Pros but complained that the Apple Store "genius" disputed their diagnosis and said it was a failed logic board.
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Sentiment analysis powered by NetBase

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Danny Kelly (Tue, 06 Sep 2011 02:36:48 +0000): So long Steve...
Nickie Price (Tue, 06 Sep 2011 17:14:47 +0000): Thanks for all your hard work Steve... you do make beautiful and elegant products, but it's too bad that off-shoring iPhone production adds approx $2 billion annually to the our trade deficit and is costing us 20-40,000 American jobs.
Thomas Tiongson (Thu, 08 Sep 2011 21:43:18 +0000): enjoy your retirement.
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