very simple

Well, it turns out that it may be my optical drive that is intermittently failing. Went to Tekserve this morning, and after 3 hours and another phone call to Apple, it’s getting fixed for free. So that’s something. My Apple Care actually expired on May 2. My problems started appearing on April 30. But since Apple spent three weeks giving me the runaround, Tekserve couldn’t agree to repair it for free until I got a special code from Apple that essentially said they would pay for the repair. Note that this was a different code than the case number I’ve been carrying around for three weeks. I spent so long on hold while at the store, that they set me up with my own phone and a chair.

I will say that the Tekserve guys were awesome (you may have seen the store featured in the episode of Sex and the City where Carrie’s laptop dies). It’s an old-school mac repair shop on 23rd street, and they know their stuff. It’s too bad that, even though they were the original apple specialists here in NYC, and are still the best repair shop around, Apple is obviously trying to put them out of business. When I originally went in to buy a bluetooth keyboard and mouse, they didn’t have them for months after release, even though they had placed multiple orders. A friend of mine had to cancel her order for a pink iPod mini last year, because she waited two months for the order to be filled.

And the latest news is that Apple is planning on opening another Apple Store in Manhattan, only two blocks away from Tekserve. It’s fairly obvious predatory behavior, but it makes me want to frequent Tekserve even more.

In the meantime, while my iMac is in the shop getting overhauled, I’ll be operating from my little powerbook. I just spent a few hours restoring all of my iMac settings to the PBook, including all of these wonderful blog files.

Tags: apple, technology