Real geniuses avoid Apple...

Cate's already gotten the sneak preview of this, and Andrea I am sorry for insulting the company you so proudly work for but... I loathe Apple.

I haven't ever really cared much about the Mac v PC debate. I am not an architect or musician or moviemaker that needs what the Mac offers, but in college I had to use PC's while I was there and the only sense I had was that it sucked to use Macs because when you went home to your PC you couldn't do much with those files. I do think Justin Long is cuter and funnier in the commercials than John Hodgeman, but that is as far as my preference runs. Even with oodles of robbery money, we bought Dell PC's this fall to replace our laptops. But like anyone else, we have the iPods and shuffles. And when they aren't stolen first, they inherently break.

Off to the Apple store I had to go. I tried to figure out where to ship it, but the instructions were all about how I probably screwed up and try this and try that and never anything like a clear address. So I dragged Little D and to the Galleria we went.

We'll start with the employees. They are referred to as geniuses, and I am pretty sure it has less to do with IQ or college degrees but more to do with barista experience and tattoos. (No offense Andrea, you're like corporate or something. You speak 95 languages, this isn't you). I walk into the overly flourescent lit store and there are too many apple groupies to count. They are using the technology mostly to make funny pics of themselves and looking around I see some mother-teen couples where mom is obviously buying the computer for college use. There are immediately two Geniuses flanking the door to welcome me into the world of pretensiousness and lameness. There are more, here and there, vultures walking around in hopes of a sale and eager twenty somethings dying to have the next combination of metal and micro technology that will hopefully make up for their social inadequacies.

I'm there too. I can't figure out where the register is, but I see a Genius bar with a black rope, so I leave Dylan at the children's commercialism corner and get in line. There are several geniuses bopping their heads to some ridiculous beat that has to be their posterchild/bald odd guy Moby and sort of not doing much. One genius finally asks what I need and I said I had a broken iPod. She tells me I must go over to the wall and make an appt. Really?! I point out that there are like eight Geniuses back there, but my sunny disposition has caught no takers. I walk over to the computers and really they might as well have been electron microscopes for all I knew about them. Adding to my charm, I announced to the genius that someone would have to come help me because I had no idea how to work the things. It was true, but I used the most obnoxious tone I could. By my estimation, she could have dealt with my iPod in the time it took her to set up my appointment for twenty minutes later. So now that I've made the effort to come in, I get to wander around with a toddler to kill time. Great. I've never wanted Dylan to face his demons and destroy a store like I did, but he must be saving that energy for a future trip to Bath and Body Works.

We came back and basically the genius realized it was broken and gave me a new one. Yay on that. The whole time I am standing there, groupies are sitting there on the stools (you could have offered me one, loser) playing on their macs and interupting our work to ask nerd questions like "Will Program X run on my Mac" to which the Genius must report that no, it cannot, but maybe someone has a fix out there on google. Wow, that is a superior product. Why don't the groupies get an appointment and leave me alone? Why do I buy iPods? Why?

In conclusion, my slight distate for Apple has flourished into an all out loathing that really made me want to never buy anything else from them again. I already hate the interface for loading music, I've never gotten the hang of it and refuse to update my playlist but every couple months because I think it is such a pain. Come to think of it, John Hodgeman is funny and cute in his own way...