What's Up With Apple?

About four months ago, I had my first ever Apple Store experience. A friend took me in to the Apple Store Chicago, and at first I was all "why are we going into this computer store?" and then I found that it was filled with wonderful toys that you could touch and play with and cheerful staff who greeted us upon arrival and ran around happily explaining the features of each Mac product even before we had to ask. "Have you tried tapping the iPhone? Have you tried tapping it twice?"

Today, as I had promised to do in an earlier post, I went back to the Apple Store -- this time the DC version.

But this time it was not at all the same.

First of all, no one greeted me when I came in the door. In fact, no one noticed me. I tried to flag down an employee, but I couldn't tell who any of them were. Finally I figured out that they were the scruffy, kind of desultory-looking people wearing dark blue shirts. They were all busy either behind a register or at the Genius Bar; a few were on the floor, but they were assisting other customers.

So I found a computer and signed up for a Personal Shopper, since I assumed that was why some of the other customers had helpers. The next time slot was fifteen minutes away. The computer said that my name would be called when it was my turn, so I decided to settle in and start playing with the toys.

The second thing that troubled me was that very few of the toys were turned on. The majority of the laptops and iPhones weren't connected to the internet, and none of the iPods had sample earbuds attached. I found the single working iPhone and poked at it for a few minutes, but it wasn't all that fun.

My appointment time came and went, and no one called my name. No one called anyone's names. I started trying to catch the eye of one of the employees. No one would look at me, although a few people looked at my shoes. Finally, twenty minutes after my appointment and almost an hour after I had arrived in the Apple Store, someone asked me if I needed some help.

I mentioned that I had signed up for an appointment, and they were instantly apologetic, explaining that they were understaffed today... people had quit, some people hadn't shown up. In the end they hauled out one of the managers, who gave me a thorough tour of all of the laptops, but by then I felt pretty bad for him since I wasn't going to buy anything today anyway, and he knew it.

We did have an interesting conversation, however, about the MacBook Air. The manager was explaining to me all the virtues of the itty-bitty super-slender Macbook Air, and how the only thing you had to buy to go along with it was the $400 external hard drive.

"So I can't just... um... plug a thumb drive into this thing? Or any other external hard drive?" I asked.

"No." He looked at me like I was an idiot. "You have to buy this one."

Then I started asking "where's the speakers? where's the microphone jack? how do you burn a DVD on this thing?"

As I expected, all the parts of a laptop you might want to use were sold separately, at $100-500 a pop. The MacBook Air itself was a glorified paperweight, and an insubstantial one at that. ^__^ (Yes, I am ready for all MacBook Air-lovers to attack.)

"Do you see this as the future of laptops?" I asked my personal shopper. "In two years are they all going to be like this?"

"Probably," he said.

"You guys are brilliant," I said, winking. "Getting people to pay extra for all the stuff that used to come in a laptop for free."

Of course, there are benefits to this model, namely that if one thing breaks, you don't have to replace the entire laptop. ^__^ So it isn't completely bad. In fact, having a laptop shell (or... um... eggshell) that you can modify (and upgrade) as you want, pulling things in and out of the USB port as if it were a fast-processing Mr. Potato Head, probably will be beneficial -- and kinda cool -- in the end.

Still: at the end of the day, my time in the Apple Store was surprising and a little depressing. Does anyone know if there's something up with Apple? I mean, a year ago it was one of the best places to work retail (in terms of employee creativity, status, and pay scale) and the employees were, for the most part, happy. But the employees I saw today were overstressed and, worse, undercoiffed. They didn't look healthy, they didn't look taken care of, and they didn't look happy to be there.

Is it 'cause of the recession thing (is Apple, like everyone else, cutting back), or is there something else going on?

Want to Join the "Will It Last?" Laptop Pool?

My laptop crashed four times today.

It's a Compaq Presario M2000 series. Runs XP. The hard drive was completely replaced last year because... well, the guys said, "It's crashed so many times that your hard drive is completely worn out. Oh, and it's full of viruses."

I invested in some better anti-virus software (the university gives us all some free stuff, but clearly free wasn't doing the job), and haven't had a problem with viruses since.

However, my computer is crashing again. Repeatedly and annoyingly. Not to mention that since the beginning of the year, there's been some kinda problem with the monitor in which all of the parts of the screen that are supposed to be white show up pink, and all the parts that are supposed to be black show up green.

I've been telling myself "it only has to last for eight more weeks" (eight being the number of weeks until graduation), and have started backing up assiduously. In truth, it probably has to last for a little longer than eight weeks, since I probably won't be able to replace it until I get some money, and I won't be able to get some money until I get a job, etc. etc. etc.

But lord-a-mercy this is annoying. It took me twenty minutes this morning to print a paper for class.

If I have some time during my DC tour, I'm going to hit up an Apple Store. (And I've got to figure out if this "make a reservation for a Personal Shopping Assistant" deal is free.) Obviously I'm not going to buy anything; I've got $271.21 in my bank account and it's got to last through April. But I... want to fantasize about buying something.* Actually, I want to begin to look at my options. There must be an Apple employee ready and willing to talk about reasonably-priced laptops for the newly graduated.

'Cause it's going to be a Mac this time, people. Seriously.



* I also want to play with the iPhones. Did you know that in those Apple stores, they just let you... play with all the stuff, for as long as you want? ^__^

I Heart iGoogle

I heart iGoogle.

Here I was, thinking day after day "If there only was a way to put all the things I look at (which take up all the tabs on my Firefox) on a single page, in individual boxes... and top it with a picture of a kitty. That would be nice."

I heart iGoogle.

Also kitties. I heart kitties too.


Editor's Note: Yes, she knows this just means the Google monopoly is getting stronger. Yes, she knows that Google is probably tracking everything she does. But... that kitty is so friggin' cute. I mean, it's so cute.

Hyderabadi Internet is Eating My Cookies!!!

Paging blogosphere tech support:

I've got wireless internet now, thanks to the Indira Gandhi Memorial Library. However, something very strange is happening. Every time I start it up, I get an error message telling me Firefox is not working. (IE doesn't work either.) So I have to repair the connection -- but not just once. I have to hit "repair" two or three times until it finally clicks (I check "ping 172.16.32.9" after each repair to see when the data starts moving again).

And then when I start up Firefox, all of my cookies are gone. Bookmarks, passwords, etc. I re-linked a bunch of bookmarks last night after they disappeared the first time and then today they all disappeared again...

So, my nerdy friends, is this a serious problem? And how do I fix it?

(I've already enabled the laptop to automatically configure TCP/IP and DNS. Just so you know. I know my way around a computer just a bit... but am really only half geek so I still need a lot of help.)

Battery-Charging Not Included

After I posted about my laptop battery not recharging, my father went to talk to the IT people at his place of employment to ask whether the Geeks at Best Buy had the right idea.

His IT people told him that the problem was probably not in my power cord; in fact, if my power cord had enough juice to allow me to run the laptop, it ought to have enough juice to charge the battery. (This is what I told the Geek; S. can verify. I'm not a CS person, but I do have a fair command of logic.)

The IT people said that the problem was probably in the computer's motherboard, which would cost more to replace than the laptop itself.

Hmmm. Before I start proposing solutions (and before I turn to the "IT back office for the world" for advice), I want to take a brief moment to comment on batteries.

Not a single piece of electronic equipment I own can hold a charge. My cellphone must be fully recharged after every two phone calls. I have worn out *two* cellphone rechargers in two years from recharging my phone so often. Perhaps I should get a new phone -- but getting a new recharger and carrying it with me in my purse is so much cheaper.

Not to mention that the problem is nowhere near isolated. I received a digital camera for a Christmas present in 2004. My parents included a battery charger as well.

The batteries that came with the phone lasted for about two months (or 50-odd pictures) before needing to be recharged. So I popped them into the charger. Immediately their working capacity was more than halved. For a while I could get about ten shots off of the camera before the batteries died; now it's fewer than five. Because the recharger is cumbersome, I don't often bother taking the camera outside of the apartment, and so (except for my food pictures) it's rather like not having a camera at all.

And the battery on my laptop (or the motherboard -- a more unnerving thought) stopped recharging one year after I purchased the laptop. (Right after the warranty expired, of course. ^__^) My laptop became a desktop for over a year until I finally had enough disposable cash to purchase the new battery (cash that seems, at this point, wasted).

For a while I floated around the theory that the problem had something to do with me -- not that I was abusing my electronics (because I don't! honest!) but that I was somehow absorbing the battery power of everything around me. Like, you know, one of those Indigo Kids. ("My giant intelligence attracts all the batteries around me and uses them to power my brain!")

But the other thing I use every day that requires a battery (which shall remain nameless, for knock-on-wood purposes) has never experienced such failure. Which renders the "I'm magic" theory moot.

Now that I've finished my rant, I have two questions:

1. What do y'all think? Is it the motherboard after all?

2. If "everything is cheaper in India," should I buy my next laptop there?

How did Lucy Maud manage it?

There is a piece of peanut stuck underneath the "m" key of my laptop. I cannot get it out. It makes typing words that begin with an m (such as mouse-trap, moon, memory, and muchness -- sorry, did I just mix literary references there?) somewhat difficult. I have to hit the key two or three times to get it to send.

So... I've tried the "holding the computer upside down and shaking it like Etch-a-Sketch" trick, and I've tried the "banging on the back of the computer" trick, and now I'm looking for ideas.

What should I do?