Sunday, 17 June 2007
Apple Genius?
My peeps know me as a huge Mac Fanboy.
The Mac OS is the fabled “Linux Desktop”: debate over. Ubuntu? Nope. Beryl and Ubuntu? Nope. Let the flame war start. I'm the final arbiter of all comments, so bring it on.
That debate settled, let me say that the “Apple Genius” I had last week at the Christana Mall Apple Store was anything other than a “genius.” Poser is more like it.
The sole purpose of his training by Apple was to be able to use “I’m a genius.” in a conversation. Or was it to refine innate condescension. Actual conversion to a customer query:
Customer: Can I get some assistance with checking out?
Apple Genius: I’m a genius.
You’ll have to get someone on the floor.
Translation: “Please get one of the untrained peons on the floor and do not bother me.”
And just like that, my pretentious meter pegged. I suddenly couldn’t see him for anything other than a freckled-faced, ginger-kid with a mop cut and all the trappings of a young, college know-it-all elitist, right down to the green and yellow “Global Warming” wrist band to clash with the black “genius” tee.
But first impressions should not set the tone. I would allow him to perform his magic with my iMac. What was wrong with my iMac?
A documented power supply failure.
The iMac functioned, but the power supply would intermittently fail and the system would restart.
How do you diagnose this? Well, there are a couple of ways, but the common one is: document the restarting, then examine the logs for AppleSMU -- shutdown cause = -122. Having found this, you can learn, with Google, that the code is linked to a power supply problem, and from there you can trace this to the power supply recall by Apple.
How does an Apple Genius diagnose this problem? By overloading the CPU and VM/Swap. Dumbass. Disk I/O and CPU load is not a method of diagnosing a power supply problem. The iMac could have been idle, no user logged in (save root), fresh from a restart, and restart again. Never did I ever see this problem described as a processing problem. Now, assuming that Apple has a database for a genius to turn too, you would expect that performing some log analysis would have been recommended. No. I was left pondering the reasons I was there for 30 minutes while he busied himself with something behind a terminal and my iMac was dutifully swapping memory for the 40 or so applications launched. Whatever. Not one time did he look at the logs. He just said, “I’m going to turn on all the applications now to duplicate the problem.”
WTF? I thought. You just determined my iMac was qualified by looking at the EMC No., so what else needs to be done? You could look at the logs, maybe.
All said, I got a case number for the power supply. It’s user-serviceable. Thank God. I wouldn’t want him cracking the case of my iMac.
He’s an idiot, not a genius.
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@Amanda: first, thanks for the comment; second, I think that the axiom, "You had to be there" holds true. The event without context is no doubt lost in translation.
While I never thought I was the first to use "Apple Genius" in quotes, you should not take it so personally. I'm a Mac fanboy, as you seem to be a Mac fangirl. Naturally, the use of quotes around a word or phrase is a tried and true writing device; just as it makes me laugh when I see To Serve and Protect quoted on police cars, I quoted "Apple Genius." I hope that elementary English is still teaching the context of such writing devices.
And so, I stand by my words: the young man at the genius bar was an idiot, trained or otherwise, he had no skill for diagnosing or troubleshooting computer problem. He carried himself as an elitist; one that relishes, daily, the opportunity to tell his parents, friends, drinking buddies, and anonymous Mac users, "I'm a Genius."
As far as ringing out sales...Genii are not equipped to process sales. They're for technical support. Mac Specialists and Cashiers are for sales items. You can't get mad at him because he dosen't walk around with an EasyPay and he's not trained for and not supposed to ring out sales.
...the young man at the genius bar was an idiot, trained or otherwise, he had no skill for diagnosing or troubleshooting computer problem. He carried himself as an elitist; one that relishes, daily, the opportunity to tell his parents, friends, drinking buddies, and anonymous Mac users, "I'm a Genius."
I meant it before. I mean it now. This is not about what his "role" is in the Apple Store. It is his elitist and condescending posture/delivery. Add the complete lack of troubleshooting personal computer 101 skills and you might have a better picture.
Maybe not. As I said ... "You had to be there"
instead of negative remarks... perhaps you might offer some constructive suggestions. In Apple parlance, "fearless feedback", so that the person you encountered and others could better handle a similar situation in the future. Just my $.02
Wow, you don't sound pretentious at all.
Please, why does everyone enjoy putting genius in quotation marks- you think you're the first to do that?
You sound a lot more rude than someone saying "I'm a genius. You'll have to get someone on the floor"...