The ongoing saga where I have to replace my aging laptop… Chapter 3 – My brush with hipsters

So…I almost drank the Apple Koolaid, and bought one of the new top end iMacs…with the Radeon 4850. But lo, I was saved from going to the smug side. (Or in Apple Terminology: iSmug.)

I called the apple store that is “local” for a given value of local, and asked if they had it in stock. The girl said yes. I even made her verify that it was in stock, because it’s a special order system. She put me on hold, then came back and said “yes”. So I drove an hour and a half in rush hour traffic to get to the store, had to park almost a half a mile away…in random rain sprinkles….had to go into one of the malls (NorthPark) populated by the plastic people that make me twitchy, finally got to the store, and they said “Oh, yeah…that’s a special order…you’ll have to order that from apple.com.” Then the little tween trendoid with more hair gel than sense suggested that perhaps I hadn’t talked to anyone at the store, because “nobody *here* could make that mistake”, implying ergo, that *I* was the one who made the mistake.

WTF?! Oh lord, was I pissed. Too pissed to deal rationally with anyone in Hipster Station. Genius bar my happy ass. So…I drove home…in rush hour traffic, and the rain, and with school zones every 30 damn yards…which made me even more cranky. And I called the store, and worked my way up the management chain to a “regional director”.

Who offered the following solution: They would order the 4850 card, take apart one of the macs in stock, put it in, and give me a 10% discount…but it would take 2 weeks, and my computer would show as refurbished, and therefor not eligible for warranty. I said “So…do you see how that’s not really a solution?” She said that she’d be happy to give me a discount on one of the older iMacs and I said “Again…not really a solution, is it?” I felt like I was in the Dead Parrot sketch.

So, for making me drive 3 hours in the rain, in rush hour, on a Friday, in Dallas, to go to the Hipster Station in the heart of Trophy Wife Central for no reason, Apple is now on The List. Oh yes. That List. Nobody wants on The List. Mind you, they’re not as high on The List as Dell…but they are on The List none the less.

Yea and verily have they made me a cranky Deva.