Tangentially related:

I bought a used MacBook air from my colleague to give to my girlfriend. It's the first apple device I've owned for more than a decade.

I was expecting smooth sailing. From afar it's supposed to be so well integrated and smooth.

What we experienced was the opposite. Even just the experience in macOS feels extremely janky. Lots of different UI paradigms, lack of feedback when logging into your apple account when it doesn't work in some cases.

Anyway, we updated everything and my gf even purchased something almost immediately - a nearly 100 dollar license for software from the app store.

She puts the laptop away for a couple of days and then we want to use it in the kitchen.. and we are told there's an issue with the account. We end up logging in online where we are finally told that its been blocked and we need to verify it. Whatever, I thought, it's probably just some filter. We verify with phone number and are told we'll need to wait a couple of days.

The result is that her apple id is just banned, and there is no recourse. No one can tell us anything at all except that we broke the terms of service. They can't even refund our purchase because they literally can't find our account in their system. We're literally instructed to do a charge back.

So we end up using another apple id that my girlfriend had, which she had forgotten about since it was only used for Apple tv... And it doesn't work. We are unable to login with it, and when we go online, we enter some sort of verification flow.. which just breaks. The final step is a website with a button which literally doesn't do anything when you press it. Except it does - it sends a request and I can see it return a 500.

We end up having to talk to support on the phone and they tell us this is all intentional, and he just needs to flip a switch in his system and we're good to go.

Literally the most asinine experience I've ever had with any tech company. Also the last time I'm buying anything Apple.