So we visited our friends Jud & Suzanne last weekend and on our way to dinner on Saturday evening, all four of us brought my iMac into the Apple store to be looked over at the Genius Bar.
If you are not familiar with Apple, they have a Genius Bar and the people who work behind this bar are all called the Geniuses.
My iMac has not worked for the past few months. It simply would not turn on or power up. Even Mr. Basketmaker tried to get it running to no avail.
First of all, if you have been in an Apple store then you know that it is ALWAYS packed — Like a subway train at rush hour kind of packed. It’s maniacal. And if you are bringing in a computer older than a decade, like my eleven-year-old ‘apple antique,’ you are getting some stares.
This is my current iMac computer…
And here’s a screen shot of the latest iMac from the online Apple store…
Look at how thin the whole computer is! Even though mine is a 21-inch screen and is less than 2 inches thick, it might well have been two feet wide with how the other customers were looking at it, sitting there on the Genius Bar. Even the guy next to me leaned over and said “What year is that desktop?” With the same fascinated look as someone viewing an old relic from the 18th century would have.
I then lied and said “Hmmm… I think it’s a 2008.” A seven-year-old machine didn’t seem as distressing as bringing in an eleven-year-old machine to the Genius Bar. I mean, you can buy my same computer for 30 bucks on ebay! I never thought I’d see the day where I, me, was the one using an archaic machine!
Well, my uncomfortableness was about to turn into utter (genius bar) humiliation. The female Genius who was helping me out, took my power cord, plugged it in and when I heard the infamous “bong” coming from my computer, I wanted to simply crawl out of the store. Before she could ask me “Did you try plugging it in?” I quickly exclaimed “How could that be? We tried plugging it in at various outlets many times! It just wouldn’t turn on!”
Thankfully, she was not an obnoxious Genius. She replied, “you know… I had someone else who brought in a very old (very old? Come on! It’s not that old!) desktop like yours where it wouldn’t power up and when I plugged it in here, it turned right on, exactly how yours just did.”
Well, I don’t know if she was just saying that to make me feel better but I appreciated it. She then powered it off and Eric grabbed it and headed straight for the door, behind Jud. Suzanne and I were close behind them. I then leaned over, midway through the crowded store, and said to Suzanne, “Right about now, she (the Genius) is whispering in a fellow Genius’ ear, “there goes an idiot who forgot to plug in her eleven-year-old computer.”
I’m currently saving up for that beautiful new iMac pictured above. Since we are ‘artists on a budget’ hopefully I can get it before my antique one really breaks and doesn’t work again no matter what the Geniuses do to it!
