I had a nice hour long journey through the Apple store in Bethesda today. My iPod’s hard drive stopped working, and although I don’t expect the “geniuses” there to know my particular ability to diagnose such a problem, I also don’t expect them to take 25 minutes to diagnose it themselves. (By the way, they eventually couldn’t figure out what was wrong until one thought to hold it to his ear, and the periodic clicking seems to have given him some inkling.) So I waited patiently as I always do at these places, and my patience allowed me some time to observe some interesting behavior. Three types of people struck me as most perfectly capturing the image Apple wants to achieve (think PC vs. Mac ads).
- “That Apple Guy”
- “The Country Club Mom”
- “The Popular girl”
This guy comes in, right away I can tell I hate him. Got some nice Berkenstocks, light khaki colored pants, and a mountain man beard. Only he wasn’t a rugged mountain, man. No, he was “in sales”. I know this because he thought he was so savvy in the way of Mac, talking about programs and cables and the tricks of the trade. “You’re not in sales, buddy, you work in a fast food store”, thought I. But waiting patiently is what I do, and so its what I did. He walked up to the guy “working on my iPod” and asked him if he could just hop back there and reformat his hard drive. The Mac guy, dumbfounded, awkwardly told him that the computers were for employees only. My man responded that he knew what he was doing, and would just need this and that cable. I may have started laughing at this point, I’m not sure. The guy left, his problem remained unsolved.
I felt sorry for this one. Her hard drive had died on her computer AND on her iPod (note: Apple sucks), and after spending some ridiculous amount to come in and have a genius replace it, and then move all her files (thank God for external HDs) back to it, she had the fun time of learning about the iTunes “protected format”. She had been legally sharing her music with her husband, which meant that she had authorized his computer, his iPod, her computer and her iPod for the music. Now that she had two more devices and only one authorization left, she could choose to listen to the music on her iPod OR her computer AND NOT BOTH. Well played Apple. She left happy.
(Side note: if this happens to you, you can legally use a program called QT Fair Use available from the hymn project.
This one is a quickie. I was #2 on the Great Apple Next User Queue which tells a user how long they have to wait (in eons). Jacqueline was #1. They called Sam S., please come forward. Jacqueline came forward and said “the board says my name is first.” The guy who had called my name said, “sorry my screen says you aren’t here on time. You can take the next available appointment. It’s at 3pm”. It was then 10:55. She left.
Of course there are more people than just those. But the whole experience made me laugh, cry, and really hate Apple. You’re so user friendly, unless you aren’t, and then, hey, they can figure it out themselves, right?
Right.
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