Some bad apples

Apple makes innovative, stylish, expensive products that are often obsolete before their time.

Take for example, the 17-inch Apple Studio Display. It’s beautifully designed, only two years old and it won’t work with the new Mac Mini. It also won’t work with an older Power Mac G4 tower.

The Studio Display uses an ADC connection which Apple no longer supports. All of their new displays use standard DVI connectors.

For $129 (CDN) you can purchase a Apple DVI to ADC Display Adapter. This is the cost of using Apple’s sexy hardware.

Do you think any of the Apple dealers in downtown Toronto have these display adapters in stock? Of course not. They take two weeks to order in. I called the Apple Store at Yorkdale Mall and they have “lots of them”.

2.5 million people live in Toronto. If you include the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) the the population is 5 million. Apple has two stores in Toronto and neither one of them is downtown.

I drove up to the Apple Store at Yorkdale Mall and thought I would get my iPod repaired while I was there. The screen is cracked and needs to be replaced. I waited 25 minutest to talk to an ‘Apple Genius’ (salesperson).

This kid, I mean, Apple Genius tells me that the cracked screen can’t be repaired. I laughed and told him that you can buy replacement screens online for $120. Of course it can be repaired.

His response was that it would be really expensive to fix. Huh? It’s a 40 GB iPod. It was $400 new! Why would it cost $400 to fix if I went through Apple? I told him that his answer wasn’t acceptable. His genius solution was to buy a new iPod.

What a moron. Yeah, me for waiting 25 minutes and the sales guy for being so incredibly helpful. I felt like I had been transported to Future Shop.

Posted in Apple at 6:18 PM