AppleInsider Staff
In the online Apple Store's new "Answers from the Community," potential customers can ask questions to knowledgable device owners or contributors, allowing for pointed queries to be answered in a more timely manner when compared to the broad "frequently asked questions" system.
The new section, which can be found at the bottom of many Apple Store product pages, features a search bar as well as a list of links to the most-asked questions as well as a "popular topics" category for a given device.
Users who conduct a search for previously asked questions will be taken to a separate Answers from the Community webpage and, if a suitable answer is not yet in the database, can submit the specific query from there. Also on this dedicated community page is an option to answer proposed questions, which is done by selecting the "Answer Now" button and logging in with a valid Apple ID.
Although the Answers from the Community page has a dedicated URL that branches from the online Apple Store's, it seems that many of the submissions are integrated with Apple's Support Community.
The online Apple Store's new 'Answers from the Community' section. | Source: Apple.com
The new section brings more flexibility to the FAQ system already in place, and also exposes users to the densely populated Apple Support Community by presenting a gateway to the Q&A forums in a reformatted eye-pleasing UI.
Wesley Hilliard
Thomas Sibilly
Marko Zivkovic
Andrew O'Hara
Amber Neely
William Gallagher
Christine McKee
Andrew Orr
11 Comments
Sounds like a good addition. There are a lot of very helpful people on the Apple Support boards.
If it's not moderated and de-duplicated, I feel these kinds of efforts are usually well-intentioned, but a waste. No one wants to wade through hundreds of answers, many of which are useless or wrong. How many times have we seen responses like, "Well, I'm not sure, but....." Why do these idiots bother responding?
If it's not moderated and de-duplicated, I feel these kinds of efforts are usually well-intentioned, but a waste. No one wants to wade through hundreds of answers, many of which are useless or wrong. How many times have we seen responses like, "Well, I'm not sure, but....." Why do these idiots bother responding?
The worse ones for me are the overconfident ones talking out of their behind
Its an Apple device, so easy my newborn son and blind senile grandma can use it. What could possibly go wrong?
If it's not moderated and de-duplicated, I feel these kinds of efforts are usually well-intentioned, but a waste. No one wants to wade through hundreds of answers, many of which are useless or wrong. How many times have we seen responses like, "Well, I'm not sure, but....." Why do these idiots bother responding?
The Apple community discussions used to be a great place to solve an issue but they haven't been for a while. Apple made a handful of gradual changes over the past few years and it's degenerated quite a bit, but I hesitate to blame the posters too much. It's currently laid out terribly, the search function is nearly guaranteed to NOT give useful returns on a subject you already know is hotly discussed, and much as I'm an Apple devotee, there is no worse place to try to find out about some Apple hardware or software thing you need to find out about than to leap into their mire of byzantine "support" pages. One is much better going elsewhere for the answer.
Fortunately there are many other places to go, of which we all have our personal favorites. But I remember the days when I wouldn't hesitate, when my mother would call with some Mac problem, to tell her to go to the Apple discussion pages (just to get her into the swing of how to get Mac problems solved). Those days are long gone.