stevenberlinjohnson.com: My Love Affair With The Genius Bar

Part of being a great consumer technology company is not screwing up the products you sell people. But sometimes the measure of a great company lies in how it deals with the inevitable screw-ups that do occur. On Friday night -- after a day of waiting, literally, at the window for the Airborne Express guy to come -- my Winter Solstice present to myself finally showed up: a new dual processor PowerMac G5. I spend an hour in that blissful, unpacking-my-new-computer mode: plugging everything in, inspecting the design, launching a few built-in apps to marvel at the speed. And then I go to insert a CD to start installing applications, and -- clunk! -- the optical drive won't open. After a little inspection, I determine that it's been installed just a fraction of an inch too high, and so the CD tray is banging into the case when it tries to open.

My mood darkens.

Then I open up the case, and it's clear that the drive has been mounted at a slight angle, causing the front of it to be higher than the opening. But for the life of me I can't pull the thing out to re-mount it. I try wiggling it around for about half an hour to no avail. (An annoying process: wiggle drive, close up box, restart computer, then press eject. Then shut down computer, pull out power, open up box, wiggle drive, etc.) With each failed wiggle, I can see the next week unfold with increasing clarity: I have to wait until Monday to send the box back to Apple, and if I'm lucky, a repaired machine comes back four or five days later. It's an infuriating thought, because I know this is a problem that a technician could probably fix in five minutes, and now I'm going to lose an entire week with my beautiful new machine.

But as it turns out, when I finally call Apple the next day, they say: "Just take it down to the nearest Apple store and they should be able to fix it right there." So I hope into a cab with my 40-pound machine propped up on the seat next to me, and head into the Soho Apple store, and then lug the box up to the Genius Bar. Sure enough, they whisk it away for all of seven minutes, and come back with the drive reinstalled perfectly. No charge, no paperwork, no wait. The trickiest thing about the whole operation was trying to hail a cab in the middle of Soho on a Saturday afternoon with a $2,000 computer in one hand.

Since then everything has been fine. Not just fine, actually -- blazingly fast. With all this horsepower on my desk, I should easily be able to post to the blog twice a week from now on. Maybe even three times.

The Basics

I'm a father of three boys, husband of one wife, and author of eight books, and co-founder of three web sites. We spend most of the year in Marin County, California though I'm on the road a lot giving talks. (You can see the full story here.) Personal correspondence should go to sbeej68 at gmail dot com. If you're interested in having me speak at an event, drop a line to Wesley Neff at the Leigh Bureau (WesN at Leighbureau dot com.)

My Books

Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation
An exploration of environments that lead to breakthrough innovation, in science, technology, business, and the arts. I conceived it as the closing book in a trilogy on innovative thinking, after Ghost Map and Invention. But in a way, it completes an investigation that runs through all the books. Sold more copies in hardcover than anything else I've written.
The Invention of Air
The story of the British radical chemist Joseph Priestley, who ended up having a Zelig-like role in the American Revolution. My version of a founding fathers book, and a reminder that most of the Enlightenment was driven by open source ideals.
The Ghost Map
The latest: the story of a terrifying outbreak of cholera in 1854 London 1854 that ended up changing the world. An idea book wrapped around a page-turner. I like to think of it as a sequel to Emergence if Emergence had been a disease thriller. You can see a trailer for the book here.
Everything Bad Is Good for You: How Today's Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter
The title says it all. This one sparked a slightly insane international conversation about the state of pop culture -- and particularly games. There were more than a few dissenters, but the response was more positive than I had expected. And it got me on The Daily Show, which made it all worthwhile.
Mind Wide Open : Your Brain and the Neuroscience of Everyday Life
My first best-seller, and the only book I've written in which I appear as a recurring character, subjecting myself to a battery of humiliating brain scans. The last chapter on Freud and the neuroscientific model of the mind is one of my personal favorites.
Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software
The story of bottom-up intelligence, from slime mold to Slashdot. Probably the most critically well-received all my books, and the one that has influenced the most eclectic mix of fields: political campaigns, web business models, urban planning, the war on terror.
Interface Culture : How New Technology Transforms the Way We Create and Communicate
My first. The book I wrote instead of finishing my dissertation. Still in print almost a decade later, and still relevant, I think. But I haven't read it in a while, so who knows what's in there!

Comments

Was the cab fee paid by Apple ?

Posted by: Claudio | January 05, 2004 at 04:13 AM

If I had found myself in the same predicament, I'd have to either ship the box off to Apple or take a 200 mile "cab ride" to the nearest Apple Store. It sounds like they need some quality control help over at Apple.

Posted by: Scott Johnson | January 05, 2004 at 10:16 AM

I have the same exact problem with my G5 optical disc drive! Thanks for the tip, I'll have to bring it to my nearest Apple store.

Still, you'd think they'd catch such a basic glitch with some basic quality control.

Posted by: Eugene Wei | January 06, 2004 at 03:49 AM

Hmmm, blogging is taking more horsepower nowadays..

Posted by: Nicholas Barnard | January 06, 2004 at 09:42 AM

I have to agree with the first two comments: at the very least Apple should have paid all your expenses. You were lucky to be living so close to a an Apple store. I almost switched to Apple last year, BTW. The machine was beautiful, the *nix interface even more gorgeous, the price was right for once. And then I was told by the salesperson that should any problem occur, the machine would have to be shipped off to the Netherlands. I live in Oslo, Norway (where there are PC repairshops all over the place) and the idea of sending the machine with which I earn a living abroad for a couple of weeks just didn't appeal to me.

Posted by: Eirik | January 09, 2004 at 01:49 AM

Re Eirik's comment: the 'shipping-unwell-Mac-abroad-to-repair-it'-scheme would at least be slightly feasible if it included a free exchange Mac for the duration (with your own hard disk contents on it, of course). Did the salesperson in any way inform you of such a deal?

(I have to say I was flabbergasted by the thought that Apple actually doesn't have any Mac repair facilities at all in Norway -- I mean, we do have _some_ advertising agency offices and newspapers and other media companies here, don't we?)

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thanks for the insight
see you at the pub ( some call it bar! )

B. J. Johns,
A Halifax Pub Enthusiast

Posted by: Halifax Pub | February 08, 2004 at 03:08 AM

I was impressed!

Posted by: nature-star | February 09, 2004 at 05:11 AM