Waiting at the Genius Bar (Who'da Thunk it?)

...they are so cool (unlike refrigerators.)

Today I thought I needed a trip to the horrible Genius Bar (where you can't actually have a drink with a genius) at the horrible Apple Store. It's actually a lot less horrible than waiting on hold for hours with Dell and then talking to India to no good end, but much more horrible than just getting my problem fixed right away without a lot of temptation to spend money...

... in order to pass the time while waiting my turn and then waiting for them to figure out my problem (or not in this particular case.)

Here is one of the geniuses.

Ipod Minis can be especially intellectually challenging.

In short there was lots of time to look watch people and since I was thinking when I set off on this errand, I had my camera and could do a little more than watch.

I like to make up stories about the people I'm watching. Daughter accepted into a good college and wants Mom to buy her a computer for graduation present?

Or maybe want's to show Mom how great it would be if Mom uses some program or another instead of hassling Daugher all the time? Naw, probably the former.

You don't have to make up any stories about what's going on with the children.

Apple has figured out that (1) The longer they are happy in the store, the longer Mom or Dad will be able to hang out there and shop or wait their turn for the genius, (2) they are likely to drive some important purchase desisions,

(3) pretty soon they are going to be teenagers and will not only drive purchase decisions, but also define cool,

(4) they haven't yet figured out that all the cool games are on Windows, and Next page

(5) maybe that will even change by the time they are teenagers.

Apple and its shareholders hopes Steve Jobs lasts that long.

Apple can afford real customer service like this because it draws people into their stores and they spend money while they wait there, probably in proportion to the amount of time they wait around. You gotta pay for it one way or another. The phone service sucks unless the problem is very simple because they don't get anything from you over the phone. Dell has a different strategy. They want you to go away and not cost them anything, so they transfer you to India in hopes that you will get so frustrated that you'll give up. Steve is the real genius in this particular case, though Michael Dell is pretty darn rich.