Summer's Woes Solved By Genius at Bar

Sounds like a better story than it is, I suppose. I promised a friend I'd tell my long sordid tale of computer woe (as if everyone doesn't have one of their own), and here it is:

I’ve been in my share of Apple stores, although lately I’ve been avoiding them, hoping to keep my iPhone lust under control. The last time I walked by one, I saw the staff in color-coded t shirts and the big (but not ostentatious) Genius Bar sign in the back. Filed the info away for future reference and kept walking down the street.

But then, summer came and I was a single working parent away for the summer and without my in-house tech support (translation: spouse with a PhD in computer science should be able to fix anything). In a moment of weakness, I let the children use the iBook as a dvd player on a car ride to the beach, and cringed as it went slamming onto the floor sideways as we turned off the highway. Yeah, the pin inside the power slot was bent and the power head was mangled to boot. And with an old battery in there, I probably had all of about ten minutes worth of power with which I could retrieve my work files (important stuff, you know, like that week's class lectures and the proofread article that was due to the publisher the next day).

So I drop the girls off at the beach with their aunt, drive to work (from RI to Massachusetts. Ah, New England, how I miss your small and sturdy boundaries!), and stop at a mall with an Apple store on the way.

The mall is pretty quiet on a summer afternoon, but the Apple store is not. The nice person in the orange shirt ("conceirge," it says on his nametag) directs me to another nice person in an orange shirt who starts to take my name for an appointment – I can’t get near the guys in the bright blue shirts behind the Genius Bar without an appointment and the soonest one is in the evening of the next day. Geez! I make the appointment, but after teaching, I cross state lines on my way back to the beach and decide to call and see if I can get an appointment at another Apple store sooner. Indeed, they can see me right away and as soon as I pass the phalanx of orange shirts and make my way up confidently to the blue shirts, thrilled to be waited on by geniuses, I see why. These geniuses are not as genius as the ones I will eventually go back to see at the FIRST Apple store where I had the original appointment. This is a newer mall and a newer store and mine is, surprisingly, a slightly older Mac, and so they do not have the parts in stock or even a working battery so I can retrieve my Very Important But Not Backed Up Documents off my computer. While this Genius Bar worker was honest, he was less of a Genius than I needed. Can guys like that solve the problems of the life of a working, single mother? I think not. (okay, well, maybe if he had figured out a quick way to fix my computer!)

I’m only in this state at the beach for another day or so and can’t wait for the 2nd State Apple Store to fix it (especially when they tell me that have to send out for "parts." There's only one part that needs to be replaced and no one in a two hour radius had it??) Honestly, I am reluctant to leave my computer with them – so I keep it and the next day, crossing state lines again for work, I head to the original appointment, where they DO have a battery, so I can retrieve my stupidly not saved work, and they can fix it in the next day or so because in THIS state, the Apple stores can call each other and have parts sent over from one to the other so it doesn’t take a week of waiting. Whew. I relinquish the baby, I mean computer, for two days, head to work with most of my livelihood on a USB stick, and look forward to standing back at the genius bar another day.

If that were the end of the story, you’d say everyone can have one good retail experience, right? Well, like all good stories, this one has a moral: never yell at your kids today for something you might just as easily do wrong tomorrow. Back in Pennsylvania after a long summer, I walk into the home office in the dark, trip over a power cord that is inexplicably draped across the room, and guess which Mac goes flying and lands on its side again. Amazingly, the power port and plugs were fine, but of course, the screen and one of the hinges took some collateral damage. Sigh. Well, the end result is that the Pittsburgh Geniuses are as reassuring, helpful, smart, and capable as the ones in Boston and that yes, it is possible to walk in and out of an Apple store four times without buying an iPhone, especially if your entire focus is on the desperate need for technical and mechanical help.

The same week my brother called with a story about the complete lack of helpfulness of Geek Squad members at a Best Buy in California. He went with a one-man computer repair service instead and is very satisfied. And now, Gates is getting into the act: Microsoft announced that it’s going to introduce Gurus into major retail stores to help consumers with their PC problems.

I don't see myself making use of the Gurus any time soon, even if the computer scientist will soon have an office in brand new Gates funded building. I'm happy to let Gates spread his money around as long as his immense wealth and power do not mean that I have to give up my love affair with Apple.