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Shop containing a Genius Bar – this wasn’t the one<\/em><\/p>\n (This story is four years old.\u00a0 I just never got round to publishing it but it’s a Friday).<\/p>\n So the next step was to see if we could fix it. \u00a0A brief Google search showed lots of images of exactly the same problem.\u00a0 There were also dozens of discussion threads with comments along the lines of \u201cthis is the sixth \u2018lightning\u2019 cable I\u2019ve had to buy \u2013 Apple knows about this problem, why doesn\u2019t it fix it ?\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 And there were videos explaining how you could cut the cable, find the break, and reconnect the wires.\u00a0 That at least might enable us to recharge it, allowing her to remain \u2018connected\u2019 while she got to a shop to buy a new cable.\u00a0 A lot of fiddling about ensued and by midnight, it half-worked but not well enough.\u00a0 So there was nothing for it but to change our plans to visit an Apple Store an hour away, first-thing in the morning.<\/p>\n Having read that Apple sometimes simply agreed to exchange the cables, knowing that they were made fault-prone \u00a0(ie ridiculously fragile considering their function), and that sometimes this simply involved showing the box, we took the phone, box, evidence of purchase (it was only a month old), and mangled cable.\u00a0 All we wanted was a new cable.<\/p>\n We found the store and walked in.\u00a0 I\u2019ve since read that someone should have been waiting at the door to explain to first-time visitors that the apparently random assembly of people in coloured tee-shirts, no visible counters and softly milling customers, all had a hidden purpose.\u00a0 But nobody did.\u00a0 Quite a\u00a0 lot of the Apple employees didn\u2019t appear to be talking to any customers but they were all busy, mostly talking to each other in a motivational sort of way.<\/p>\n I spotted one slightly older, and larger looking Apple person standing at the back of the store on his own.\u00a0 He gazed authoritatively across the room and was apparently doing no more than flexing his muscles or maybe some sort of secret jaw Pilates.\u00a0 We went over to him and managed to get his attention by standing quite close until he stopped talking on his earpiece phone, which explained the jaw movements.<\/p>\n I tried to explain what we wanted.\u00a0 He cut me off half way through the first sentence.\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cAppointment ?\u201d he snapped imperiously from behind his immaculately groomed half-beard, giving us a disdainful look.\u00a0 \u201cSorry ?\u201d I responded, not knowing that this shop required appointments.\u00a0 Indeed not realising that despite being in a large Shopping Mall and full of stuff apparently for sale, it wasn\u2019t really a shop at all, or didn\u2019t want to think so.<\/p>\n \u201cYou need an appointment \u2013 join that queue\u201d.\u00a0 He indicated a random looking queue in the middle of the \u2018shop\u2019, where people were lining up to talk to a young man in long gingham shorts who was do something with an i-pad.\u00a0 Now I\u2019d got my eye-in, things started to become clearer.\u00a0 There were people quietly waiting everywhere, many filling out personal details on screens, or answering questions so that apps or some other thing could do something online that might solve some invisible problem.<\/p>\n I tried to think what the scene reminded me of.\u00a0 The patient, often hopeless looking visitors, the positive uniformed employees, the sense that the latter were very in charge by being \u2018helpful\u2019 .. it wasn\u2019t \u2018retail\u2019 or \u2018service\u2019 it was more like a gathering to follow the script of some invisible Authority.<\/p>\n The Ministry in Terry Gilliam\u2019s Brazil<\/em> perhaps ?\u00a0\u00a0 Those old black and white photos of Muskovites queuing with optimism to buy something, anything, in Soviet era GUM stores ?\u00a0 Or, what I\u2019ve heard Indian tax offices or railway stations used to be like ?<\/p>\n The man in Gingham shorts looked like he had been specially selected for the most stressful job in the \u2018shop\u2019 because he was tall but quiet, stooped and unchallenging.\u00a0 His eyes rarely lifted from the screen.\u00a0 He had an expression like a mournful squirrel looking for lost nuts on a slow moving computer game.\u00a0 He reminded me of one of the wizards from Harry Potter, gamefully trying to engage with the ways of Muggles, never giving up, never quite connecting but not noticing it either.<\/p>\n By now we\u2019d been there about ten or fifteen minutes.\u00a0 No long but really long enough to buy a cable if we had to, or rather had had the opportunity.\u00a0 In front of us was a 30-something mother with her young daughter tugging at her.\u00a0 Her phone wouldn\u2019t charge.\u00a0 Why couldn\u2019t she see someone now ?\u00a0 No she couldn\u2019t come back then as she worked shifts in a hospital and couldn\u2019t take time off work.\u00a0 No she lived too far away, she had to get a bus.\u00a0 She\u2019d already taken time off to come here, and so on.\u00a0 I tried not to listen.\u00a0\u00a0 You could hear the despair in her voice.\u00a0 Beaten by her need to have the phone working, in the end she accepted what sounded like a distant appointment and left.<\/p>\n Did we have an appointment ?\u00a0 No.\u00a0 He would make us one, with Phil (not his name I think) on the table right over here, who was \u201cdoing cable swaps today\u201d.\u00a0 I guess the words \u2018broken\u2019 or \u2018faulty\u2019 or \u2018failed\u2019 are scripted out in the Apple training.\u00a0 \u201cDoing cable swaps\u201d sounded like something you didn\u2019t realise you wanted but having been introduced to it on an office bonding trip, might quite enjoy, a bit like a free zip wire experience in an adventure park.\u00a0 The appointment was for about three minutes time.<\/p>\n Having given my name, I was invited to sit on a special chair, possibly to increase the sense of control, possibly to make me feel like a Superhero which is apparently the Apple customer strategy.\u00a0 Or maybe just to tidy things up a bit.<\/p>\n Our Genius Phil turned to us next.\u00a0 First a check with the appointment on his device, to make sure the handover had gone to plan.\u00a0 Ah. He diagnosed the problem immediately.\u00a0 Our cable was broken.\u00a0 Indeed it was.\u00a0 Severed in fact. \u00a0No longer connected to the bit that went in the phone.<\/p>\n \u201cThat means it is recorded as damaged\u201d he explained (or words to that effect), tapping his screen.\u00a0 We agreed.\u00a0 It was indeed damaged because we\u2019d tried to repair it.\u00a0 Before that it was broken. \u00a0That had invalidated the guarantee. \u00a0We were not surprised.\u00a0\u00a0 The Genius said nothing to suggest that we had been stupid enough to try operating on a fully functioning power cable but sensibly left the possibility open.<\/p>\n Could we buy one ?\u00a0 Was that possible (or would it require an other appointment, \u00a0possibly an email of absolution from the Vatican or Palo Alto ?)\u00a0 He\u2019d fix us up with help from Jeb (standing about one metre away).<\/p>\n We left the table and entered what I now realise was the Sales Zone.\u00a0 Was this another appointment ?\u00a0 Jeb was all smiles.\u00a0 After a quick check to enter my email into his device (something about having a longer guarantee), we bought the Lightning-to-USB cable for \u00a315, making a mental note to maybe get its next replacement from a company like Belkin.<\/p>\n It seemed we were free to go. \u00a0The whole thing had only taken about 25 minutes. \u00a0We had a brief look at a new case for the iphone but they were about \u00a335 and my daughter advised that she could get a cheaper one from a supermarket.\u00a0 We got one for \u00a310 in Sainsburys.<\/p>\n No Tea<\/p>\n Yeas ago a frustrated advertising executive charged with improving the image of the nationalised British Rail, famously invited his clients, who were more concerned with relationships with the Trade Unions and \u2018running the railway\u2019 than they were with passengers, to his offices.\u00a0 They were made to wait.\u00a0 Invited to sit on uncomfortable furniture.\u00a0\u00a0 Given cold tea in chipped cups.\u00a0 He made his point though I don\u2019t remember what happened next.<\/p>\n Apple isn\u2019t like that of course.\u00a0 There\u2019s no tea for a start.\u00a0 The staff are full of Appleness, in a preppy (this is England) pseudo American sort of way, hinting at time spent in the \u2018States or wishing to be closer to Cupertino.\u00a0 \u201cHe wasn\u2019t American was he ?\u201d my daughter asked me, doubtful about the strange accent of our Genius.\u00a0 No but he clearly wanted to give the impression that he might be.\u00a0 Maybe to himself.<\/p>\n Indeed Apple is more like GUM than BR.\u00a0 Faced with no choice but the unthinkable risks of attempting defection<\/em>, staff and customers collude in telling themselves that they are having the best of possible experiences.\u00a0 Read any of the many vituperative exchanges that break out online when an Apple customer dares to question The Product, and you can feel the power of the Brand, even through a screen.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Believers descend on those who have strayed and smother them like antibodies on an aberrant antigen.\u00a0 Apple doesn\u2019t have to organise it, hope does it for them, hope that the dream will (one day) be matched by the reality.\u00a0 Who cares about a badly designed cable and its costly replacement when the Bigger Picture draws us towards the horizon ?<\/p>\n There\u2019s lots of online debate about Genius Bars.\u00a0 One Apple Antibody points out that although it\u2019s not obvious to the un-initiated, they are mainly for tech-support unmatched by other IT retailers.\u00a0 You wouldn\u2019t expect to see a doctor without an appointment, so why expect to see a Genius without one ?\u00a0 But what if you only wanted to buy a plaster ? Would you expect to have to make an appoitnment to visit the pharmacy (= Drug Store) ?\u00a0 And what if it\u2019s an emergency doctor you need ?\u00a0 Apple it seems, doesn\u2019t do urgent just because it is.<\/p>\n And if the tech is so great, how come it needs so much \u2018support\u2019 ?\u00a0 But those are questions only asked by non-believers.\u00a0\u00a0 Hands up.\u00a0 I used to have a Mac.\u00a0 Several in fact. I wrote a book on the first, a 1980s musuem piece still in my loft.\u00a0 All went well until it went \u201cboing\u201d and crashed, taking the book with it. I had to write it all again and you know what ?\u00a0 It was better the second time. \u00a0That\u2019s the mac genius I guess.<\/p>\n Then I went to work in an organisation that only used PCs and after a short struggle with IT, capitulated.\u00a0 I said goodbye to my much loved little Powerbook (grey, lumpy).\u00a0\u00a0 Before that I used to run a media charity and Mac (Apple) actually gave us a lot of (then even more expensive) computers.\u00a0 Media folk visited just to look at them.\u00a0 I remember that in true eccentric Apple style they arrived unannounced and were almost left outside in boxes, on a London pavement.\u00a0 Later they were properly stolen from our offices by a gang robbing to order.<\/p>\n Real Genius<\/p>\n So decades later, am I just a grumpy old apostate, out of step with the Genii ?\u00a0 Is there really anything awry with the Genius Bar experience ?\u00a0\u00a0 My fifteen year old seemed to think so.\u00a0 \u201cThey aren\u2019t geniuses, they\u2019re just hipsters\u201d said my daughter.\u00a0 \u201cThey are not even proper geeks, they\u2019re just pretending to be\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0 Perhaps that\u2019s it.\u00a0 It has an authenticity deficit.<\/p>\n There\u2019s a little electrical shop on Tottenham Court Road* in London resembling something out of Bladerunner.\u00a0 It\u2019s one of several in the street run and owned by a fraternity (all men, and it seems, many related) of British-Asians who appear to be actual wizards, able to do almost anything electrical, incredibly quickly.\u00a0 These shops sell and fix dozens and brands and do anything from installing components to unblocking phones.\u00a0 My phone (a cheap blackberry) developed a fault a while ago and as I was walking past, I took it in.\u00a0 Within about one minute they had prized it to bits, diagnosed the problem and giving me the SIM card, suggested I get a cup of tea and come back in five minutes.\u00a0 I did, and it was fixed.\u00a0 I\u2019m not sure how they did it but I\u2019d call that magical.\u00a0 Real genii, it seems, don\u2019t need appointments.<\/p>\n (* For non UK readers that\u2019s the road in where the caf\u00e9 scene takes place in the movie Deathly Hallows<\/em>).<\/p>\n My old mended Mac, recently rescued from the loft in order to amuse young visitors.\u00a0 We tried plugging it in.\u00a0 A lot of smoke emerged from the back.\u00a0 It smelt strangely organic: a mouse nest maybe?.\u00a0 Then with a loud ping and a small flash, it finally died for a second time.\u00a0 Electrowaste I guess.<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Shop containing a Genius Bar – this wasn’t the one (This story is four years old.\u00a0 I just never got round to publishing it but it’s a Friday). A few nights ago I was working at my PC when my … Continue reading A few nights ago I was working at my PC when my 15 year old daughter came into the office and waved her new iphone at me.\u00a0 The charger cable was slightly twisted and it looked like a nematode worm with a rupture.\u00a0 It definitely wasn\u2019t working. \u00a0It was 9 pm at night, and we were due to leave to get on a train so she could make a long journey, early next morning.<\/h2>\n
She was distraught that she might not have a working phone with her.\u00a0 I tried to argue that seeing as I would accompany her to the train, and a friend would meet her off it, the need to have a phone for the time in between, was minimal, especially seeing as trains very rarely strayed from their intended course.\u00a0 All, of course, to no avail …<\/h2>\n
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