Saturday, May 9, 2009

Apple Adventures

This morning I had an appointment with an Apple Genius. If you don't know what these are, these are the people who you speak with at an Apple Store when you have a technical issue with one of the Apple products.




Please see the video above for a better explanation.

Secretly, I think I want to be an Apple Genius. It just looks like so much fun to me. But, what a surprise, I am a geek.

So I go down to Chandler Fashion Mall this morning for my Genius appointment. My iPod touch has not been able to access the internet for the last few months, and it's less than a year old.

The Genius got the wi-fi working again, which was something I was able to accomplish with some work on my own, but the Safari would not pull up web pages, saying it was not connected to the internet. This was something between a hardware or programming problem. After resetting the network and the entire iPod, it finally worked, but when we restored it to the factory settings, it quit again. The Genius realized this was going to be an ongoing problem so it was switched out for me. Since I had bought this at Fry's Electronics, I also purchased from Apple an extra year of service on this, in case something else goes wrong with it.

I spent roughly an hour there, and thankfully I was smart enough to bring my macbook along for the ride in case I needed to do any synchronizing of my iPod. I'm glad I did, and the Genius indicated he was also thrilled that I had brought it. Who thinks to bring their laptop along for an iPod problem? Yeah, the geek.

The really funny part, though, came at the end. I asked the Genius about the workshops that the Apple Stores have, and he gave me some basic information on how to get in on one, and answered my question that yes, there would be classes offered during the summer. Then I asked about the widget that Apple has (and I have downloaded on my macbook) that lists for a week the classes coming up for the store. I asked if there was an app for this for the iPod Touch/ iPhone to also do this. The lightbulb went off and he gave me the biggest grin. He said "no, no one had thought of that". I asked him if he could recommend this through Apple, but he told me Apple listens to the customers more than they do the employees, and very strongly encouraged me to submit the idea. He was impressed!

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