It’s been nearly a year since I blogged here.  Time flies, eh?

Remember when I complained about my terrible time with Apple’s “genius bar” experience?  Same laptop, same shenanigans (mostly).  I needed the machine to do a week long class far from home.  I normally use my smaller MacBook for these classes, but horsepower was emphasized.  So I brought the MacBook Pro.  I didn’t realize it until I got to the city hosting the class, but the laptop was wobbling.  You literally couldn’t lay it on a flat surface and type on it without it wobbling.  Annoying, but not world ending.

There was an Apple Store in the town I was visiting.  They told me to bring it in as a walk-in.  I spent an hour in the zoo known as an Apple Store before I was turned away.  The geniuses weren’t taking any more people.  I wish I knew that before I committed the time.  All the while, I was really hoping it was the pentalobe screws being lose or the internal case snaps not being connected.  I’d seen plenty of these issues doing IT work for a big company.  I almost bit the bullet and attempted a fix myself, but I didn’t want to endanger the AppleCare warranty.

I was able to score an appointment for the following day.  Surprisingly, the appointment time was right on the mark.  Normally, I feel like you wait ~30-60 minutes after your scheduled time.  The genius was pretty confident the battery had swollen.  Unfortunately, they had no top cases (with batteries) on hand.  3-5 days to ship it to Texas and have it return.  If you’re an Apple Joint Venture member you can at least get a loaner.  This isn’t worth $500/year to me.  I ask the genius if I can drop it off the day before I leave for home and have it returned to my local Apple Store.  Nope! It can only return to the originating Apple Store.  Welp.

Rather than dealing with another genius reservation back home, I just had the remote AppleCare folks send a box to my home.  When I returned, I ran a backup – verified said backup – and wiped the machine before sending it off to Texas.  Two days to get there, a day in repair, and two days to make it back to me.  If I didn’t have another machine, I’d be hurting.  Five days is a long time to wait to fix a battery.  The worst part is that I didn’t even have to go to the store to get resolution.  It makes me ponder why the Genius Bar is even a thing for things that are clearly hardware related.  Either stock enough on hand to do common repairs or just divert customers when they book genius bar reservations online or over the phone.

All you do with these in-person “repairs” at the genius bar is piss people off.  If it had to be mailed off anyway, I’d rather have skipped both visits to the Apple Store and just had the box mailed to me.  I suppose in-person gives the opportunity for the less savvy to get backed up or maybe get talking into buying an upgraded machine.  For the more tech savvy, it’s just a time sink and a visit to a very hectic, very crowded, and very noisy environment.

Funny enough, I actually interviewed with Apple the year I posted my original rant.  One of the interviewers actually read it! Disappointingly, while he agreed with me; two of the other interviewers did not.  Full disclosure: I didn’t get the job.  I’m about 99.99% sure me griping had absolutely nothing to do with it.  It is funny to think about though! I’m told retail and corporate are very, very different animals and virtually have zero interaction with one another.

Maybe someday the genius bar experience will make more sense.  Someday…

Last summer, I bought a mid-2015 MacBook Pro Retina that I absolutely love.  The machine doubles as my travel laptop and my primary desktop (in clamshell mode).  I backup using Time Machine to my ZFS backed storage and I keep my Mac fairly pristine.  Recently though, I began experiencing kernel panics that were file system related.  After much head banging, I discovered this was due to a corrupt “sparsebundle” that Time Machine uses.  Unfortunately, my Mac already had its logic board replaced before I made this discovery.

My first trip to the Apple Genius Bar with this Mac was unremarkable.  The service was relatively prompt and the shipping/receiving estimates were on par.  I was able to pickup my laptop and get back on the road fairly quick.  Unfortunately, the refurbished logic board used by Apple’s repair depot had a faulty GPU.  I had moved and swapped several monitors and cables before making this frustrating discovery.  This is honestly why I hate refurbished equipment.  The testing never feels sufficiently rigorous and my luck often leaves me revisiting failed repairs all too often.  The worst was probably going through four iPod Touch units before the store admitted that their refurbs weren’t up to spec and gave me a new-in-the-box iPod.

I return to the store, hoping I can just get a new machine or at least have my existing one repaired in the store.  The Genius exams my videos and stills of the display completely freaking out and doesn’t waste much time.  The machine has to return to the repair center in Texas.  *Sigh.*  Now the trouble begins.  The Genius won’t treat this as a failed repair.  To them, this is like a first attempt.  No need to empathize/sympathize with me.  The Genius writes the machine’s status up in their ticket.  We quickly squabble over two points.  The Genius put that they couldn’t replicate the issue (they didn’t try) and that the machine has scratches and scuffs (it didn’t and was listed as “no damage” on the last repair ticket).  We battle over something that should be relatively simple and the machine is eventually taken back, pending shipment to the repair depot.

For the first time in a long while, I’m leaving Apple negative feedback.  If you botch a repair, you need to make good on it.  You don’t just give standard service and expect the customer to appreciate that you did the bare minimums.  I’m not expecting Apple to listen, but if they do, maybe this will be another point in favor of changing some support policies at the Genius Bar.  If you tried once and failed, you need to help me keep faith in Apple.  I’m not asking for the whole cow, but I am asking for something to prove that my time is at least somewhat valued by the store staff.