Leave it to Apple to find a unique way to serve its customers: the local area Apple Stores complete with green-shirted, humorous, highly efficient Mac Geniuses--and a Genius Bar. I had to wait about 30 minutes yesterday with all my new equipment (thank God Mac Minis are so light to carry around) in the Manhattan Beach store. For people who take delight in all things made by Apple, it's a trip to the Chocolate Factory.
This is Mike, my technician. When you enter the store, you sign in on a computer and a big screen over the bar lists the next five people and the times they will probably be served. When it's your turn, the tech works right on the spot--plugging in all your equipment, makes the diagnosis, fixes it if he or she can, at no charge. The hairier problems go into the unseen back room where you can periodically hear roars of laughter and the work rooms swing open to bring yet another Mac Genius to the floor. It has to be a blast to work for Apple.
My problem? Well, apparently my new Airport Extreme Base Station is defective and it will be traded for another--only the station is back ordered. Hopefully it will be in today or tomorrow and then this non-techie is going to follow Mike's directions to self-install. "Piece of cake," he smiles when I say that I am a real dork about hardware. "Even I can do it?" I say. "Sure can; guarantee it." He did admit that all the settings given by the Verizon techs over the past few days were garbage--and that the Verizon tech who finally said Airport Extreme and Verizon aren't compatible was totally wrong. Mike says when I try again the router will automatically configure from Verizon. One Verizon tech kept throwing out the term Mac Cloning. Mike, my Mac Genius, guffawed when I told him. "Never heard that one before," he said.
