Tuesday, April 18, 2006

Here are ten words never heard:

Welcome to the Apple Store. How can I help you?

You see, the letters on my iBook's keyboard are starting to wear off. It started with the "s," then went the "e," then the "l." The "a" is in mid-fade like Marty McFly's brother just before his dad-to-be finally completes the slowest fist-clench in screen history. I've been meaning to stop in to an Apple store to see if you can get replacement keys. I figure since it's unlikely that mine is the only iBook with this particular strain of keyboard alopecia (Christ, this is quite the metaphorical jambalaya I've got going here, isn't it? Shit. There's another one), Apple may have a solution. Maybe they've got a supply of replacement keys you can get. Hell, I'd pay a buck a key.

Unfortunately, every time I go to an Apple store, I feel like a gate crasher. Is there some sort of procedure I'm supposed to be following? Am I supposed to sign in someplace? Is there one of those bakery number dispensers, and I keep missing it? Is this somehow related to the fact that I don't have iLife or a .mac account? Are those two things even related? I'll never know, because no matter how folorn and/or needy I look when I stand at the genius bar, they steadfastly refuse to acknowledge my presence.

Good God, you may be thinking, just approach one of the employees, and they'll tell you what you need to do. Hey, you're right. I should do that. Unfortunately, there is something about the place that makes me feel as though that would somehow violate the gloriously austere environment they have worked so hard to achieve. Direct action has no place there and might somehow cause a rift in the space-time continuum of the Appleverse, and my iBook will revert to one of those Apple IIEs we used in high school, and me without any floppies.

Fortunately, for me anyway, I know how to type by touch. They haven't reinvented that wheel yet. They will though. Mark my words. Five years from now, Apple will have found a way to reduce the keyboard to five keys. How would you use such a thing?

Hey, just ask one of the geniuses. Then tell me, would you? I'll be the one standing behind you wondering how to get their attention.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

There IS a sort of sign in thingy. I only know because it befuddled me for ages, I'd stand there and nobody would ever, ever talk to me. Finally, somehow, miraculously I sussed out that there's a line of macs ACROSS from the genius bar (or near it) that has a little sign-in thingy as one of the desktop icons. You have to sign up for a time, and THEN they'll make you wait for two hours, and THEN they'll take someone right before you with a horrible problem with their mac that requires all three of them to huddle around it and poke at it while you sweat and fume. And finally they actually get to you, and they can't help you.

But yeah. Little sign in thingy.