Mac Geekery

In the course of the day, virtually every customer I would encounter will ask me if anything new is coming out, what I think about the rumor recently posted on some blog, when Apple will finally make another PDA, or when Apple will fix a bug “everyone on the Discussion boards is having.” Such questions are a veritable minefield because, while wearing the the Genius shirt, we’re not supposed to speculate. It so happens that anything we say is speculation, as we don’t know anything. At all.

Apple is a markedly closed-lipped company, this everyone knows. Apple engages in what is called ‘spherical branding.’ The company presents a united front to the public, such that in most regards you have roughly the same experience regardless of which specific worker bee you happen to be speaking to. By presenting this united front, though, the public begins to treat Apple as something roughly Borg like, assuming that every worker bee knows about the product and support roadmaps. Reality is vastly different.

How I Found Out About New Products

Everyone asks about new products. When is the new PowerBook going to come out? Is Apple every going to release a PDA? When I answer that I don’t know, I’ve actually been called a liar. Bluntly. Sadly, it’s not even a rare occurrence. The truth is, no one in the store knows anything. Sometimes we have vague notions that something might be coming out, but the notions are, indeed, vague. Vague as in, “Something’s going to happen,” not as in “New PowerBooks, but I don’t know the specs.”

We find out about new products when you walk into the store and ask for them.

Hey, do you have the new MacBook Pros yet?

Arrrru? What the hell is a MacBook Pro?

This is not exaggeration, and is all too common. Apple not only shields its product roadmap from the public, but also from all public-facing employees. And nearly all non-facing employees. The litmus test is “Are you actively involved on the project or the project’s marketing and rollout?” If the answer is “No,” then you are generally left clueless.

Back in the day, we occasionally got just-in-time information about a rollout and real-time demo product delivery. This was done in a time-frame that allowed us to get notice of a new product, receive it, configure it for demo, and install it on the sales floor in time for the actual announcement. I never knew about a project more than an hour before its release. This project ended because Apple Store employees leak like sieves when they actually know something. Career-minded Store employees tend to be better at keeping their traps shut, but a significant portion of the workforce is made up by part-time and student labor who have no vested interest in a long career at Apple. Recognizing this, the stores no longer receive any notice – at all – of upcoming products.

New Product Burn

Everyone gets burned by a new product release at least once, and we’ve all read similar horror stories online. You may have even asked your Mac Specialist if anything new is upcoming and, usually, the answer was “I have no idea.” A few days later, the new gizmos are announced. You’ve just been punk’d. Reactions can be grouped into two categories; resignation and anger. Nine out of ten customers fall into the resignation category. Technology is a fast moving arena, they tell themselves. It doesn’t matter, they’d have come out with something new sooner or later anyway.

My Personal Burnination

I’ve been in this category. While working as a Genius in Apple’s very own retail stores, as a full-time, full-blooded, career-minded, well-connected, well-informed employee… I got burned. In mid-2003, Apple released the aluminum 15” PowerBook. As MacWorld San Francisco 2004 rolled around, the Aluminum PowerBooks were going to be a year old and, conventional wisdom said, they would probably be upgrading all three PowerBooks. And then, Apple didn’t. I convinced myself that if we didn’t rev the line at MacWorld, then it won’t be revved any time soon. Keep in mind, I had a corporate career at Apple before joining Apple Retail. Unlike the majority of Apple’s retail workers, I actually knew people “back home” at corporate.

The general consensus was unanimous. No one could fathom new PowerBooks anytime soon. So, I bought a shiny new 1.25GHz 15” PowerBook G4 on January 20, 2004. On January 31, Apple shipped new PowerBooks.

Everyone was wrong. Everyone I knew in Sales, everyone I knew in Support, every engineer, and every manager… was wrong.

Unlike consumer purchases, there is a No Returns policy on employee purchases. Screwed, screwed, screwed.

The Angrydome

A metric ass-load of people made the same mistake I made during that upgrade cycle. Apple was just starting to break out of the MacWorld-to-MacWorld upgrade cycle and the results were moderately painful. As a Genius (or, really, any member of any team within Apple), you get used to listening to gripes about New Product Burn. It’s part of the job. But from time to time comes a customer who just can’t handle it.

About a week into February, a gentleman came to our store with a PowerBook he’d bought in December, nearly two months before the introduction of the new models. Livid beyond all belief, he managed to explain his ire to me in fairly even tones before demanding I exchange his computer for the new model. This is a common request, of course, and we’re actually fairly reasonable in trying to work something out with the customer. However, the ground rules are as such:

• You must still be within the return period
• You must have purchased the computer from our store
• The Product must still be in resalable condition

The first rule is frequently bowed, flexed, bent, and broken. I think I’ve read something about the second rule in the II Corinthians, so I’m pretty sure it’s canon law. If not, it might as well be. The Apple Store does not, under any circumstances, accept returns of items purchased from other stores. If breaking rule two is sin, I shudder to think about breaking three. Doing such is not done, nor considered, nor entertained. This fellow did not meet a single point in the criteria, as his unit was purchased nearly two months before from another reseller and sported a fairly decent dent in the case.

I politely explained our return policy and pointed out that we’re flexible, but that he met not a single criteria for return, and as such there was nowhere we could consider bending. To do anything at all we would have to break the entire policy outright, and that wasn’t going to happen.

I thusly received one of the nastiest brow-beatings of my life. I got lectured about how Apple lied and mislead and, apparently, even strong armed him into buying a product that everyone knew was going to be superseded. He spun a tale about how he had come in and asked about upcoming products and had been told that no one was aware of anything. He accused us of lying to him repeatedly as he visited us and other resellers shopping for the right machine at the right price. Responding to nearly screaming customer, a manager walks up just as I print something and hand it to the customer.

Sir, we did not lie to you. We truly, honestly, don’t know these things. If you’d like some proof, here’s my receipt for the older model PowerBook I bought last week. Being an employee purchase, I cannot return mine, either.

silence

To which my manager added, “JC’s one of my best employees. If there were someone I would pull a string to help out, he’s it. But alas, we cannot. He’s stuck with it.”

silence

The guy actually didn’t say another word. He just sat there soaking in my receipt, trying to make sense of it. It was as though I’d destroyed his world view. He’d come in so certain that we’d known all along that he was having trouble comprehending that it was even possible, let alone likely, that we actually don’t know.

It’s in its last year of AppleCare, but I still use that PowerBook for just about everything. Every once in a while, I wish I’d waited just another week before buying it. But reality is just as I tell all of my customers.

Buy what you need, when you need it, at a price that’s reasonable. Your hardware is not magically obsoleted just by the existence of something better. For years to come, it will do the work you need.

And it has.