What Happened to the Geniuses?

[This is a test. First time using WordPress. Trying to see if I like it and if this could be a better venue for my long-ignored Ramblings on A Rock In My Shoe.]

So yesterday I upgraded my Mac with the highly-hyped new operating system, Snow Leopard. Maybe I haven’t played around with it enough yet, but thus far I see no difference. However, I did lose two hours of my life last night from being on the phone with the Apple support team.

You see, as soon as the program finished installing itself (45 minutes) I no longer had sound. After trying a few things, I called Apple and then spent the next hour or so on the phone with Tyler. Tyler was very nice–as all the Apple support team are–and he had me doing all sorts of things to try and get my sound back. Nothing. He finally put me on hold for ten minutes while he called someone else.

Now Cameron took the wheel. Cam exuded the confidence of a seasoned airline pilot flying through a rough storm, calming this nervous passenger with his best Chuck Yeager voice. After a couple or quick checks, he asked me if I had external speakers attached. To make a long story short, he told me to unplug the speakers, turn off their power–then plug them back in and turn their power supply back on. That fixed the problem.

This episode reminded me too much of my first few days with this particular Mac when I bought it about four months ago. I spent a total of about six hours with several Apple support guys trying to get my Mac Mail program to work again. Nothing they had me try worked. I eventually decided to just give up on it. I opened a Gmail account and started using it instead.

Then about a week later I noticed something in my Mac Mail program that no one had mentioned to me. Under the Mailbox pull-down menu there was an option called “Rebuild.” As soon as I clicked “Rebuild” my program was fixed. I’ve been using it successfully ever since.

These two experiences have demonstrated to me what should be basic triage training for any computer support person. You need to start with the basics first–things like, “Are you connected correctly?” It doesn’t take a genius to figure that out. But Apple is famous for things like their in-store “Genius Bars” where you can go and supposedly get expert advice.

I’ll take a person with common sense over a genius anytime.