genius

After nearly three years of loyal service, my old ipod died. As I have no radio, tv, or CD player in my house, and yet am unable to survive without music, I went to the mac store and got a new one (my third in 6 years). But it had some issues when I first loaded my library onto it, so I went back to the shop to ask about it. They immediately ushered me up to the mac genius bar. Although I switched to mac sometime years ago, this was my first visit to the genius bar, as I had never actually had a problem before. It is basically a bar setting filled with computer geeks who have been certified “geniuses” by mac. They certainly conformed to my stereotypes of computer wizards- all were male, none was white, and by the accents I heard, none was born in England. One of the geniuses sat down with me, went through my computer, sorted out my ipod issue (in about 30 seconds), fixed another minor cosmetic issue I didn’t realise I had, then offered to replace my keyboard with a newer one, as the Cyrillic stickers I had stuck on mine were peeling, answered several other queries I had but were not related to the ipod, gave me his card in case I had any further questions, and wished me a pleasant evening. His information was clear and precise, and the whole thing took less than 10 minutes. Oh, and it was all free. Genius indeed.