Someday, Apple will rule the world!

SUBTITLE: Apple ProCare is the nuts!

So, my “D” key stopped working on my laptop this morning. This had potential disaster written all over it. I drove to the Apple store near my house, and used my ProCare card to get on the standby list for the Genius Bar. I know the manager, Joe, from previous experience. He looked at me from across a sea of people, and said, “It’s gonna be a while. We’re a bit crowded.” That’s an understatement.

I swam upstream to the Genius Bar and set down my laptop. Literally, within 3 minutes, Lauren came to help me. She confirmed my “D” key was still not working, did some diagnostics, then set up an on-the-spot repair for my laptop.

A quick aside. I told her I liked a lot of the features of the new MacBook Pro, but I was unhappy about two things. First, they had switched to the “chiclet” keyboard, of MacBook fame, which I really don’t like. They also don’t have a solid-state drive option for the MBP, even though they have it for the Air.

But, wait! Lauren to the rescue again. She points out that the new MBP can be configured with a solid-state drive. Could it be? Might I have to suffer through a chiclet keyboard to get a solid-state drive? For those that don’t know, a standard hard drive is a bunch of disks that spin. These emit a bunch of heat in the MBP, and are prone to failure. A solid-state drive is like the pocket flash drive most people own nowadays. No moving parts, no heat.

Back to the repair. I got a call 90 minutes later, and headed back over to the Apple store. If it was possible for there to be more people in the store than earlier, there were. But a quick concierge stop later, and a runner brought me my machine. Joe jumped in to ring up a separate purchase I had, and I was on my way back to the real world with a fully functional machine.

Here’s hoping Windows users figure out there is no reliable support like Apple support, and switch over from the dark side!