Apple tech support MP3s of yesteryear
Today is organization day, both in meat-space and on the computers. In particular, my Dock has gotten backed up with things I wanted handy, either because I was going to post them or wanted to pass them on...
One of them was a collection of old Apple tech support MP3s which nugget-san passed onto me around Thanksgiving, and even made a "full" .zip file of them for you to download -- and then I got distracted and didn't post them. They're basically recorded conversations of people calling in for help back during the earlier era of Apple, and there were a few I thought just had to be made up.
They're a serious spin in the wayback machine.
They have a habit of popping up every few years and every time they do I get to roll around in the schadenfreude. There were even a few of them I hadn't heard, and I didn't have any luck pinning down exactly what the story behind them was -- about the best I got out of someone who used to be an upper-up in support for Apple was "Often a disgruntled employee."
It may have something to do with having peanut brittle and coffee for breakfast, but I just can't listen to Heavy Breather without laughing out loud, and even x years later I want to find the guy working the phone and offer him a case. Maybe I'm just an easy mark for these types of things.
Posted by drunkenbatmanDecember 23, 2005, at 08:33 AM
Comments (15)
Posted by: Dan at December 23, 2005 11:39 AM
Oh, thank you! I had a number of these some years back and didn't think I'd ever hear them again.
Support: Honestly, the customer is usually wrong. You have to swallow your pride and pretend you want to help them as they abuse you.
Posted by: Roland at December 23, 2005 11:52 AM
The link's not working :(
Posted by: gorman Christian at December 23, 2005 11:54 AM
I think the site has been drunkenbatmanned, i can't get it to load.
Posted by: Hagar the Slowable at December 23, 2005 11:55 AM
You knocked it offline man!
Posted by: drunkenbatman at December 23, 2005 12:13 PM
Yeah, that got picked up and nailed hard. I pinged nugget-san about it, and it's being moved to a faster pipe with the original page redirected. Sorries.
Posted by: Nick at December 23, 2005 03:19 PM
BitTorrent Mirror:
http://www.filerush.com/download.php?target=Hilarious%20Apple%20Support%20Calls
Posted by: Small Paul at December 23, 2005 04:12 PM
Man. Those were... harrowing.
Humanity. Surely, ye be doomed.
Posted by: Axel at December 23, 2005 10:47 PM
The story behind the call recordings...
The Apple Assitance callcenter in Austin in the early 90's had a phone system that allowed the support rep to hit a button and start recording the call. Ostensibly this was to allow phone reps to record abusive callers for legal reasons. The far more common usage was to record calls that had the potential to be funny or had just totally run off the rails in some other way.
At the end of the call the recording was emailed to the support rep. At some point someone inside the callcenter set up a file server for people to share their favorites. My recollection is that the server contained hundreds of these recordings. Some were funny, some were simply terrifying (threats, the mentally ill, etc.).
While I don't recognize all the call recordings in this group, some are definitely from that era. I remember hearing them (in System 7 sound file format no less) way back then. The sad thing is there were hundreds more that were probably lost forever (or just never leaked out).
Axel
Posted by: Dustin Sacks at December 24, 2005 12:24 AM
Good stuff. My fav was Support For Non Apple Software.mp3
Posted by: matt at December 24, 2005 06:09 AM
Perhaps I am the only one, but these were not interesting. Sorry db, love your site, think you are f***iing brilliant.
This was just not funny/scary/anything.
Posted by: Cap'n Hector at December 25, 2005 02:46 AM
Wow, I've heard these before…sounds a lot like what I do, in some ways.
Except my customers are always nice and I'm the President of All Creation for life.
Posted by: jeremy at December 27, 2005 03:20 AM
this is actually missing a few that i remeber from having these years back, unlcuding one called "I can't print" anyone know where more of these hide?
Posted by: Malte at December 28, 2005 03:58 AM
You gotta love working as tech support.. some people can be real assholes.
Posted by: erik at January 21, 2006 12:10 AM
jeremy, was it the one discussing ClarisWorks? If so, I might have a copy floating around somewhere here. If I can dig it up, I'll email it to you.
You know what you need? A URL management app. Either that or a multi-tiered dock.
Nice sound files, I recall hearing one or two of these in the distant past.