Lately, my Titanium PowerBook has been acting up a bit. Apparently with the early run of TiBooks, there was a battery contact problem that would cause power loss to the system when you flexed the case. This problem manifested itself in my TiBook only recently, even though it was one of the first ones made. There’s nothing like loosing power when you pick up your laptop to run to a meeting. However, I didn’t want to give up my laptop for any amount of time to send it in. So, I decided to pay the newly opened local Apple Store in Palo Alto a visit and see if they could help.
This was the first time that I had made it down from San Francisco to check out the store, and I was impressed with what I saw. Like some of the online reviews have said, it shares a resemblance to the Gap. Clean wood floors. Nice displays. And lots of Macs and accessories to play with. But I was on a mission to get my TiBook fixed, so I walked back to the “Genius Bar” to see if they could help.
I was met by a employee who was friendly and listened as I described my problem. After hearing enough information to diagnose the issue, he pulled out a tester battery from a drawer and had me try it out with my TiBook. Sure enough, it worked. No matter how I held the laptop, the power stayed on. Problem solved in less than 5 minutes. It only took another 10 minutes for the person helping me to get a replacement battery and to fill out the paperwork required for the warranty process.
Did I like that my TiBook had a problem? Not at all. Did I like that I could walk into a retail store, talk with somebody that knew about Macs, and walk out again in 15 minutes with everything fixed? You better believe it.
What do you think about Apple’s new retail stores?
Interesting Anecdote in Light of Alsin's Slam on Apple's Retail Stores
At lunch today, I was catching up on the news, and I read an article titled, Apple's Scraping the Bottom of the Barrel
by Arne Alsin. In the article he says that, "It's desperation time in Cupertino, Calif., as Apple is going into the retail store business to ensure that its products receive enough attention." He goes on to say that Apple products just aren't moving in regular stores, so they have to open their own.
The point that Alsin, and many others, might be missing is, that the retail stores are also there to support existing customers with hands on service. Your experience here illustrates that nicely. I think this is going to be an interesting story to follow in 2002.
Terrible article
I have to say...the article you mentioned was one of the worst I've seen in a long time. Sure, I am a long time Mac user (and a bit biased)...but there are so many errors in that piece I can't believe the editor even allowed it to run. It was purely one of those inflammatory pieces meant to get attention, but not to really enlighten.