I just wanted to share my experience with the Apple Store’s Genius Bar. I had a problem with my Apple Mighty Mouse and tried to get it looked at by my local Apple reseller (the place I bought my iMac), they basically said that it would take about 3 weeks to get it fixed or replaced as they don’t carry stock (they have a service centre on premises!!) in the meantime I could try an alcohol wipe to try and make the scroll wheel work again.
I tried the wipe and of course it didn’t work, I could have told them that! Anyway, I thought to myself, we have an Apple store in Sydney now and it has the highly talked about Genius Bar and the iMac carries an international warranty so I should be able to go anywhere to get it fixed.
I went to Apple.com to find out the procedure, you can book an appointment right on the site. Cool. When can I get an appointment? Wow, today! I live in Australia, nothing moves that fast. So I make my appointment for 3pm (it was 12pm at the time) and hop a bus for the city. When I arrive at the Apple Store, I am greeted by the concierge who directs me upstairs to the Genius Bar. Once upstairs, I am greeted by another concierge who checks off my name on a MacBook Air she is carrying around and sits me down. I notice that the large LCD screens above the Genius Bar show helpful tips on how to do everything Apple and a list of who’s next and low and behold there is my name!
Within minutes the concierge introduces me to my genius (who actually comes out to greet me!!) and we move to the bar. He looks at my mouse, tests it and agrees that it is cactus. He gets me a new mouse and that’s it … done! Wait, I think to myself, that can’t be it. That was too easy!
The Apple Store has renewed my faith in a good retail experience, it was probably the single most satisfying retail experience in my 41 years of existence! Friendly, helpful and satisfying.
One quick note though, I out geniused the genius! I asked him two questions that he couldn’t answer. First I told him about a mishap I’d had with iCal and during all my screwing around I had deleted the iCal widget and I wanted to know if there was a way to get it back. He said you can’t delete that widget. I told him I had and he just kept telling me that I can’t delete the iCal widget. It was almost like I had thrown him into some infinite loop and it just didn’t compute :-)
My second question was about MobileMe, my sister is currently overseas and would like to start a blog of her adventures. She has one of my family pack accounts and I wondered if she could use the webspace that is part of her account to do this. My genius said she had to use iWeb. I explained that she was on a Windows laptop and could she use anything else? No, he replied, you have to use iWeb. I then told him that on the MobileMe website it says you can create a site using Homesite and could he give me any information about that. To this he said he had no knowledge of and would look into it.
I think the moral of this story is the geniuses are amazing at fixing Apple problems for the masses, do try to move outside of these parameters as it just confuses them :-)
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[…] My second visit to the Genius Bar in the Sydney Apple Store was even more satisfying than the previous visit (which you can read about here). […]