|
|
|
Jewish World Review May 23, 2011 / 19 Iyar, 5771 Apple Store Like a Land Far, Far Away By Mitch Albom
On this planet, no one has a job or anyplace to go. They simply drift all day in an endless swirl of new products, most of them white. You need no food, no water; you can stay there for years with your mouth hanging open. Some have gone and never returned, forgetting they have a family, a house or other clothes to wear. They spend the rest of their lives lifting a MacBook Air and yelling, "Feel how light this is!" I am quite intimidated by Naturally, I was embarrassed. I believed that Apple products never broke -- and if they did, it was your fault. You were an idiot who did something mean to the nice white machine, you big clumsy oaf, what on earth is wrong with you? So I carried my Mac into
A PLACE LIKE NO OTHER
Wrong. One such Genius signed me in (on a hand-held device, which I'm sure took my vital signs and spat out my SAT scores) and another summoned me to the Genius Bar, where the Geniuses presumably pour each other blue drinks like those "Star Wars" creatures, and where a redheaded female Genius with the tattoo of a something crawling up her arm looked me in the eye, smiled sweetly and said, "You pathetic imbecile." She didn't say those words. That's just how I felt. Actually, once I told her what the problem was, she nodded pleasantly, gave a brief explanation of several possibilities, and told me "Don't worry." I felt like a man whose doctor looks at a troublesome X-ray and says, "It's nothing." I wanted to kiss her sneakers.
A LESSON IN TIME
Then came the questions. GENIUS: "Do you back up your data?" ME: "Sure." GENIUS: "Do you have a Time Machine?" ME: "Who doesn't?" GENIUS: "You may need to bring it in." ME: "Sure, no problem." I did not realize a Time Machine was a device Apple sold for data storage. I just figured the Geniuses had mastered time travel and assumed the rest of us dummies dropped by from the 17th century. "After we reload the Time Machine, we can add RAM, upgrade the graphics card, increase the memory, maybe click in a terabyte," she said. "Good, good, yeah, yeah," I said, nodding as if I had the slightest clue what she was talking about. A friend reminded me to be grateful because at least she lived in this country and wasn't talking to me over the phone. She then wrote me a prescription, told me to drink lots of fluids and had me make an appointment with the nurse on the way out. As I write this, I still don't have my Mac computer working. But that may be my own fault for not driving a time machine. On my way out of Too late. It was already out of style. Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
© 2011, THE DETROIT FREE PRESS DISTRIBUTED BY TMS, INC. |
Arnold Ahlert | |||||||||||
