Genius Bar -- I like Apple!

Earlier this year, I bought an Apple iPod touch and am still amazed with what I can do with it. The five iPod touch applications Apple released in January made the toy more powerful. On Saturday, the home button stopped working. I would select the Safari icon and do some surfing and hit the home button expecting it to return to the home screen but nothing happened. It would stubbornly stay on the safari screen. The only way to return to the home screen was to turn it off and then on. I checked the discussion groups on the Apple site and didn’t find any hints as what to do. I had two choice drive to Montreal (2 hours) or head down to Toronto (5 hours). I signed up for a 3:00 pm appointment at the Genius bar on Monday in Laval, Quebec. The web interface for the Genius bar is fun to use. I headed to Montreal on Monday morning and took the subway north and tried to follow the directions on the Apple retail store web page but made an attempt to speak in broken French to the subway conductor who said to keep heading north. I jumped on the subway again and headed underneath the St. Lawrence River and took the subway/metro to the last stop on the line known as Montmorency. I was now in a different city with a different bus system and rules. There were a couple of buses that would take you to La Carrefour shopping center. I caught the first bus apparently destined for the mall and ended in north Laval miles from anywhere. After talking to the driver in broken French he suggested an express bus and I headed back to the bus hub. The second bus took me to the shopping center.

The Apple store was a hive of activity with a lot of people receiving 1-on-1 Apple training. I spoke to one of the “blue” shirts girls would confirmed that my appointment was still good. In the meantime, I explored the fun on display and imagined what it would be like to use a Macbook. It was sort of like being in a toy store for adult with all this neat gear. A little while later I met with the genius “black” shirt and we tried to do an iPod restore which didn’t work. The iPod was sicker than we thought. Apple replaced the iPod touch as it was still on warranty (Thanks Apple). It was a fun experience and my first visit to an Apple store and hopefully not my last as it was a fun place.