Mac Geekery

(Deep Breath) I am a Mac Genius.

Well, I was a Mac Genius. Today is my last day. After six years at Apple, four as a Mac Genius, I turned in my badge today and entered the realm of the self employed. I joined Apple Retail in its infancy, when it was scarcely a year old. Many of my friends and co-workers took part in its top-secret gestation and birth. Typical for Apple, I had no idea what they were working on until the rest of the world found out. Before I knew it, I was in Cupertino myself, going through Apple’s famous yet scarcely understood Mac Genius training program. Looking back, the period of time between being hired as a Mac Genius and my first store’s grand opening (eight weeks) seems like an amazingly long training period. At the time, it felt like a crash course.

And all of that was several lifetimes ago. Recently, I began to realize that the Apple Store I had poured my heart and soul into is not the Apple Store of the future, and for good reason. When I joined Retail, it was an experiment and many industry analysts predicted that it would cause Apple to leave a smoking crater at 1 Infinite Loop that was the approximate size and shape of a Retail Division, with many citations of the unmitigated disaster that was Gateway. As the organization shifts from experiment to adolescence and, in many respects, adulthood, the roles and expectations of the Genius staff have migrated. The Genius I am is passing into the heritage of the Apple Store.

Why I Came To Apple Retail

In the days of antiquity, before the bubble burst, I left the relative safety of an in-house IT job at a major, national advertising agency (with clients – lots of them – that are household names) to join Apple Computer. The stock was still tanking, but with the recent advent of the iMac and a new CEO, the light was at the end of the tunnel. I had a couple of friends on the inside who were sounding more and more optimistic about the future each time we talked, a marked improvement over the years before. One friend, in particular, passed my résumé around and hooked me a position in AppleCare. I quickly made a name for myself at Apple and found myself on a commando team hand-chosen to re-capture the Education market from another major industry rival.

When Apple’s Retail initiative was formally announced in 2001, all eyes were on me, as everyone I knew inside and outside of Apple universally decided that I was perfect material for a Mac Genius. Managers, former managers, managers of managers, friends of managers, friends, managers of friends, family members, and so on, hounded me about my plans, and whether I would wind up a Mac Genius. Everyone and their dogs (and their dog’s manager, it seemed) was writing me recommendation letters for the purpose. There was only one problem. There were so few Apple Stores, and none were anywhere I would remotely consider living. I had only just moved to Austin from Dallas and wasn’t in a hurry to move back. Austin seemed like a logical choice for a future store, but rumors were that Austin was too heavily swayed towards cross-town rival Dell, and would never get a store. When the job descriptions posted for the Houston Galleria, I pounced.

Why I Left

Sadly, things change. People change, organizations change. I joined Retail during what I call “The Before Times.” No one knew if Apple Retail would ever make a profit. According to the top brass, no one cared. Retail was about showcasing the brand, not about making a profit. It didn’t matter if the customer bought from that Apple Store, from the AASP down the street, or from MacMall.

As the Apple Store has grown, so has the Genius Bar. We’ve added more service and support options, we’ve renovated the way we take appointments, we’ve streamlined the repair process over years of experience and, finally, we’ve answered monstrous increases in foot traffic by adding more staff. More staff means more complexity, and the need for more direct management. At about the same time, I started work on several other projects, ranging from a more active role in Mac Geekery to my data recovery business to yet others of which I dare not speak. Yet. There’s more to it than a convenient jumping of ship, but that’s another story for another day.

But You Left Out The Good Stuff!

Four years as a Mac Genius left quite an impression on me and I hope I managed to leave quite an impression in return. Only time will tell. For every day I worked the bar, there are tales of bizarre data loss, mass insanity among customers, systems errors at the worst possible time, and more. It also gave me insight into how Apple ticks.

Pure Genius is my new column on Mac Geekery. I’ll talk a little about my time as a Mac Genius, a little about what’s going on in the Mac community of late, and a little about my experiences starting my own company. If you have a specific question for me, or a topic you’d like to see covered, feel free to drop me a line using the Mac Geekery direct contact tool or via AIM.