Genius Bar and the Geek Squad

One of Apple’s genius is marketing. I consume with some tech savvy since I left my Atari for the Mac in ‘84. A friend in the ‘60s attended a community college close to Palo Alto, Sunnyvale, and Cupertino. He often mentioned the garage efforts of two enterprising guys.

I lugged one of Wozniak’s Mac portables in ‘84 to Siquijor in the Philippines, and other points of NEDA Region VI’s coverage, cut stencils on a dot matrix printer, and ran them on the local mimeos. This was for community development programs with a watershed focus from the upland to the nearshore, devolutionizing program development from the national to the local agency level. The portable came in handy and my regret is not holding on to the Mac that sat in my sister’s garage for a while until the kids decided to help clean it up. It now commands considerable collector’s value.

Those unfamiliar with Apple Stores that Jobs inspired for its products before he disappeared to the virtual sky in cyberspace’s Cloud can imagine tables displaying computers that the sales staff, now attired in light blue, are only too glad to acquaint consumers of their virtues without mentioning the price. (I bought the Mac portable sans sight in Manila for a fifth more than its advertised cost.)

I stayed Apple faithful until an iPad in 2012, my last whimsical purchase. It was not useful to me in China unless I paid a monthly fee in Hong Kong. It made for an impressive but expensive gift. I used my MacBook Pro and Air enough, except when I bought a Bose speaker that could not Bluetooth-connect both simultaneously.

I also picked up an external HD that I did not have any problem using, at first. However, after I upgraded OS in NA, I no longer could read the NT-windows pre-formatted HD. So, I moseyed over to Apple to chat with the folks in blue.

I counted eight unoccupied blue shirts, four Genius Bar associates, and a lone customer. When I got to the bar, I was told that they could not talk to me without an appointment. “Are you busy?” I asked. “No. But it is our policy not to talk to anyone without an appointment,” an associate rather arrogantly replied.

Rules are rules, I graciously conceded, capping my seething displeasure, so I went outside the store to connect for an appointment. The mall was WiFi equipped. I sought my host son’s buddy working at Apple but he was not there. A sales associate deigned to talk to me. He clarified the issue on the Bose speaker as only capable of one Bluetooth connection at a time.

As to the HD, that took more technical familiarity. No one among the sale’s force could help. I needed to talk to a techie at the Genius Bar but I could not do so without an appointment so I kept the next slot available.

I had been eyeing another external HD for my burgeoning files anyway, so I went to Best Buy, a retailer of consumer electronics and entertainment software from where I bought one of my laptops in a branch in Honolulu. I presented my HD situation to their Geek Squad, a technical info desk. The “geek” was a young girl of South Indian-descent, later joined by a haole who looked ready to play jolly St. Nick.

Deciding to initiate the transaction on my own, I bought a Mac-formatted HD and asked them to move the data off my Windows-HD and reformat the latter so it is Mac friendly. “No problem,” I was told. I waited out the transfer but the female geek did not look in a hurry, so I took a long lunch.

When I returned, the haole technician was looking at my stuff, and the Hindu girl told me that 1.4T of data transfer was not going to be quick. I returned the following day. The HDs waited for me but their icons did not appear on my screen, though I could locate them with my disk utility, but unable to open them. I asked the staff to reformat them again.

I went back to Apple, for old times’ sake. I was prepared to buy an iPad Air and an iPhone S for China now that Apple is servicing the market. I engaged a sales person, Adam of Chinese descent, to help but he was oblivious to my questions. I inquired but he was trained to demo his iPhone so that the unit I asked about was brought out immediately for my look-see, an admirable but pressure-laden sales tactic. I already knew what I wanted. I already checked the Internet price; I just wanted him to tell me the store price so I can wiggle it into my budget. But he would not until he scanned the items in his iPhone, perhaps to demo the unit’s capability. As an associate at a computer store outside D.C. in the ’80s, I saw his customer service manners as less than accommodating. He failed to notice the quirks of his customer in his eagerness to sell.

The Geek Squad came through a day later. In retrospect, a genius cast a laser beam on a situation and Apple served me well in the past. A geek is familiar with tons of procedures ze can navigate through. In this particular event, the geek prevailed. I never got close to a genius. Nor did I purchase my iPad and iPhone. Score MINUS ONE for Calgary Apple’s sales staff and its Genius Bar.