My Issue with Apple

I went to the Apple Store in Cher­ry Hill yes­ter­day morn­ing to get my Mac­book top­case repaired for the third time. I went to the Genius Bar and told the guy that my key­board cracked while they replaced my fried hard dri­ve. I fig­ured they’d hear me out, under­stand that there was some­thing fun­da­men­tal­ly wrong with my com­put­er and replace the unit alto­geth­er. What was there to lose, right? It’s pret­ty much a blank slate since I haven’t uploaded but a hand­ful of pho­tos to it.

Fat chance.

I was told the stock top­case was faulty, but that the sub­se­quent replace­ments were rein­forced. Then why have I been back twice since, I asked. Must’ve been some­thing I did wrong, although the Apple rep was care­ful not to blame me out­right. Sil­ly me. What could I know about a prod­uct that’s been noth­ing but an annoy­ance since I bought it. The cus­tomer is nev­er right, huh?

The fun did­n’t end there. When I asked if he could show me how to sync my iPhone to my repaired Mac­book, he almost laughed. Not only did he tell me that my iPhone looked pret­ty beat­en and bat­tered — I guess that’s what all Apple employ­ees are trained to say about prod­ucts that are a whop­ping two years old — he told me that I would­n’t be able to sync my phone to the new com­put­er with­out restor­ing it to fac­to­ry set­tings. Sweet! You mean I can lose all of my apps? Great!

Need­less to say, it’s a mess, and I’m not sure what recourse I have. I guess this is what I get for jump­ing aboard the Apple band­wag­on just as the com­pa­ny was rock­et­ing into the stratos­phere. Fun­nier still, this nev­er hap­pened to me with all the PCs I’ve owned since 1996.

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My Macbook Problems

Tomor­row I’m head­ed back to the Apple Store at the Cher­ry Hill Mall to fix a prob­lem that began late last year when my hard dri­ve cooked right inside my Mac­book. I went and got the disk replaced in April, but I haven’t real­ly recov­ered from the expe­ri­ence. Sure, my com­put­er works and has a brand spankin’ new OS, but you know what, that’s not good enough.

I went in there and got great ser­vice, no ques­tion, but it did­n’t go above and beyond. While my com­put­er was being repaired, the key­board cracked for the third time. The third time! I know this is a design flaw that was fixed when they rolled out the new Mac­book. You’d think if they’re replac­ing the hard dri­ve any­way, they’d notice the crack in the key­board and just toss the whole thing. There’s noth­ing to save, right?

That’s my aim when I go in tomor­row. I’m going to be upfront with them and let them know that the issues I’ve had with this com­put­er were nev­er prob­lems with the PCs I’ve owned, even the cooked hard dri­ve. It’s frus­trat­ing to pay a pre­mi­um for a supe­ri­or machine, love it, and have so many issues. Wish me luck!

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Erykah Badu — “Window Seat”

Helen and I are going to see Erykah Badu June 8th at the Tow­er The­ater. Janelle Mon­ae is open­ing. Am I excit­ed? Hell yeah! Just picked up Erykah’s lat­est LP at AKA Music. Love her music so much. She’s also one of my favorite enter­tain­ers these days. Does­n’t hurt that she’s play­ing fast and loose with the great sounds Par­lia­ment Funkadel­ic intro­duced either.

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Free Energy — “Bang Pop”

[myspace]http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=105056239[/myspace]

I know I haven’t post­ed any­thing music-relat­ed here late­ly. I got myself wrapped around the axle there for a bit about the future of music and could­n’t find a way to unwind. Pret­ty sure I’ve put that behind me and will hap­pi­ly be post­ing more stuff that I like here.

So Free Ener­gy? I’m real­ly into their lead sin­gle, “Bang Pop.” I know it got a whop­ping 8.1 on Pitch­fork, yet it’s failed to real­ly catch fire online, at least from where I sit. Does it rein­vent rock music? Nope. Is it still a ton of fun? Yup! If I weren’t on baby duty tonight I might’ve snuck over to the First Uni­tar­i­an Church tonight to see them in per­son. If you were look­ing for a sum­mer jam that’s not by Ludacris or Katie Per­ry, you’ve prob­a­bly found it in this gem.

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The Future of Television

I work for a tele­vi­sion com­pa­ny. When I start­ed at Com­cast three years ago, I was real­ly in the dark about just how com­pet­i­tive tele­vi­sion and film would become. Sure, lots of peo­ple were beat­ing their chests, root­ing for Hulu like the G.E.-owned prod­uct was some kind of under­dog, but then Com­cast bought that. Aside from Net­flix’s efforts with stream­ing video — some­thing I love watch­ing on my HDTV via my Xbox 360 — there weren’t real­ly any oth­er com­pa­nies real­ly try­ing to make hay online.

How times have changed. Just as Com­cast jumped in the pool with Fan­cast Xfin­i­ty TV, so has every­one else. The basic con­cept was always sim­ple, but how do you get your tele­vi­sion to play nice with the Inter­net? There are pesky rights issues! That seems to be chang­ing, too. Now that com­pa­nies like Google and Apple are involved, you can bet that it’s going to be all out war and con­sumers may come out winners.

But is it too much noise? Let’s talk about music for just a sec­ond. Think back about, oh, two years. Remem­ber when every Tom, Dick, and Har­ry jumped into stream­ing music online. It was a ver­i­ta­ble bonan­za. The ser­vices may have been wonky and were like­ly incom­plete, but users could cob­ble togeth­er a pret­ty exten­sive online music library that as total­ly legit. Flash back to the present: effec­tive this week­end, the num­ber of full length free stream­ing on-demand music ser­vices will be zero.

Maybe it’ll be dif­fer­ent this time and we’ll all be liv­ing in a la carte utopia in just a year or two. It’s great that some of the big tech­nol­o­gy play­ers like Google and Apple are in the mix. You know them for their most prod­ucts, but it’s some­times easy to for­get that both of them have armies of lawyers who are try­ing to gain any toe­hold they can against the big cable providers. Ulti­mate­ly, it push­es every­one in the right direc­tion and we will all reap the benefits.

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