good lord-does anyone ever respond?

Hello falcoy,

When you write to these forums you are not communicating with Apple. Apart from monitoring the service and providing the hosts, Apple rarely gets involved here.

We are volunteers, people much like yourself, and our main interest is to answer member’s technical questions. There is not always a member looking in who has the knowledge your question requires.

Yes.

But sometimes you have to wait longer than 7 minutes.

So, what's the problem then?

If by any chance you mean "does anyone from Apple ever respond here", then I can tell you: "No, they never do." This is a user-to-user forum.