crazyskillsbloginitiative

Veee has a habit of laying on the keyboard of any computer not immediately in use by a human.  Today, she tried to “Permanently Delete” 12 items off my main workstation…  But what’s more fascinating is that she caused my Mac to start announcing everything (verbally) that I (or she) does with it.  I initially thought it was just noise from some site I was visiting, but after a minute or two, I could tell that it was speaking specifically about applications and menus that Veee was accessing on the Mac.  “Firefox.  Firefox.  Crazyskills Portal window.  Edit.  Closing menu.”  And all in this sci-fi “computer” voice.  Fascinating and amusing.

Update:  Seems ⌘ - F5 toggles the Voiceover feature.

That’s it.  That’s all the time the local Mac store had my Mac.  They called me an hour ago and said it was ready to be picked up.  They swapped out my “logic board.”  No charges, no surprises; everything is working just as it should - just like nothing ever happened.  I’m amazed.  I’m impressed.

“Soon there will be 2 kinds of people. Those who use computers, and those who use Apples.”
-Apple, ~1980

I had a really curious experience today.  My Mac stopped working last night - blew a couple capacitors as it turns out - so upon discovering that it wouldn’t boot properly this morning, I did what any respectable citizen would do and threw it out the window.  Just kidding.  I called the local Mac Store.  In any case, the gentleman I spoke with said he could fit me in today at 3:00.  Okfine.  I got there about 2:45 and within a few minutes, they saw me.  Now, this is an account of how the procedure worked out for me today.  I am not in any way an affiliate or employee of Apple Computer and am presenting information here just to share my experiences, as I have been known to do from time to time.  A couple of minutes went by - long enough for me to find the 160M Apple TVs and lots (for Apple anyway) of software.

They called me up to the desk and asked me what was happening with my poor broken iMac and I told them it was not booting up properly and had worked fine until this morning.  Anyway, I am not going to bore you with all of the details, but I really want to share this experience.  The Genuis™ who helped me out - should have made a better mental note of her name - opened it up right there in front of me, said I had blown a few capacitors and that the logic board would need to be replaced.  She said she wasn’t sure if they had one in stock, but she would check; she checked; they did.  She told me that my machine was no longer under warranty, but that this was a known issue and they’d had a recall on the boards, which was unfortunately now over.  The part would cost $665, but not to worry - I wasn’t going to be charged for the part or for the service and my machine would be ready in three to five days.  I am not suggesting that all you Mac users out there start to expect that repairs to Macs will be free.  This is probably the exception and not the rule, but I walked away from the store with a really positive feeling about the company.

They say if you have a positive experience, you tell someone; if you have a negative one, you tell five people.  I just wanted to share my exemplary experience with all you crazies.  I am impressed.  Will I be going back to that Apple store when I get my next AppleTV or iPhone?  No question about it.