My First Genius Bar Experience

Being that I can figure out most stuff all on my own, I've never needed to make a trip to a genius bar. However, the hard drive problems I've been having have been well beyond my means.

You might have noticed that the posts on this blog have been a little sparse over the past two months. Well, that's thanks to the dead hard drive on my PowerBook. Back in September, my hard drive was making funny noises. Instead of listening to these warning bells and shipping it off to be fixed, I delayed. This was disastrous. In the beginning of October, things got worse and worse, so I tried to make a back-up. However, I was getting all sorts of permissions errors and what not. I couldn't get the data off.

So I turned to my friend Juan, a programmer with a lot more computer know-how than I've got. He was able to get a lot of the data off by writing a perl script and accessing the PowerBook as a target drive from his G5. He managed to get much of the stuff off the computer, although it's unclear whether that was all of it or not. However, one of the things I was most interested in were pictures of Felicia over the past year, which were only partially backed-up. Those he was unable to confirm that he got all and he knew for sure that he missed a bunch of them, perhaps as much as 40%. The hard drive was getting harder and harder to work with, so we decided to call his efforts and see if I'd need to call in the pros.

I had called Apple Support and they told me that if I took my computer into an Apple Store, assuming the necessary drive was in stock they would be able to replace my hard drive and give the damaged one right back to me for me to get the data off of it.

So I go to the Apple Store in Soho. The page from the reservation said I should go and wait for my name to be called. I asked the people where I was suppose to go to wait for my name to be called at the genius bar. They said upstairs and on the left. So I went up. And waited. And waited. It turns out that you had to check in. Nice that anyone told me that. That was the first mark against Apple in my genius bar experience.

Eventually I get my certified genius. He starts fiddling with the computer but ultimately comes to the conclusion that nothing's gonna happen. I tell him AppleCare said I could get a new hard drive and take my old one to get the data off of it. He says that they don't do that. His manager agrees. Something about losing money... although I don't see how that pans out when you're dealing with a crapped out hard drive like mine with the only thing on there of any value being my data, which is only of any value to me. Apple needs to get its story straight. That was the second mark against Apple in my genius bar experience.

However, beyond that, things went very well. The geniuses are very helpful and hook you up with whatever resources - even outside of the Apple empire - to get what you need to get done. The ultimate resolution was that they would try to get the data off of my computer, something that would cost about $50. (Data back-up is not covered under AppleCare.) They also pointed me to another Apple-certified repair shop that could both repair the computer and do that hard-core data recovery that might be necessary if the genius bar troops couldn't pull it off. So they're in the process of fixing it now, and once done they're going to tell me the results, whether recovery is not at all, partial or complete. Then I can either opt to take it to the other place (which is cheaper than most data-recovery places) or I can just let Apple do it's business.

So ultimately I came away pleased, despite the typical corporate bureaucratic confusion between the genius bar and Apple Care and the disorganization of the genius bar sign-in process. The core reasons for going there - to get my computer fixed - were met and the genius bar people met my expectations for knowledge. Overall, I'll jot this down as a mark for Apple.