iSuck - Why Floogin doesn't buy apple crap

I am one of those loyalist type people. I find a product I like, I buy more from that company. I own several pairs of shoes by one designer, sweaters in multiple colors, shirts from the same company, computers are all dell etc. Canon digital cameras are all I know from (except the new panasonic I bought for the wife) and I will continue purchasing sex from women because, to date, women have always provided me with a product I enjoy. Hell, I have owned palm pilots and treos for as long as they've been making them and only finally switched to a blackberry when palm was so outdated that it was becoming embarrassing to carry a treo. Sadly, they are about to unleash a new phone that I would have loved (fortunately, I am loyal to verizon wireless and palm isn't making it available to verizon just yet).

Anyway, when it comes to my music, I am a zen user. I wrote about this a long time ago on my old blog. I listened to sony walkmen for years and then moved into the discman era with aplomb. As soon as the digital world took over I picked my favorite product and have been upgrading within the company ever since. The company is creative. They make some of the best digital media players around. So good that a certain fruit named company wound up paying a huge settlement after stealing infringing on some intellectual property a year or two back. They've been at it for much longer than the icrap and it shows. They make products that last. The only reason I have upgraded any of my systems was to get more space or smaller players. I've dropped them, dented the casing, got them wet and still, they keep on playing.
Plus, many different companies allow you to put music on these players and I am not stuck using a service like itunes where you can't listen to music without paying for it. Hell, I pay $15 a month now and I can put as much music as I can cram into my zen. sure, if the company goes out of business I might be fucked but I probably downloaded enough music in the past to make it a fair trade.


So, with that in mind, I bought my daughter a zen stone for couple of dollars and loaded it with all her music. She loved it. It was small and easy to use and she really dug it. Then she got it in her head that she needed an ipod because, well, they market their crap better than anyone. So, on her birthday this past December, she got an ipod nano. She loved it. It's taller and thinner than the stone but the stone holds more music (I think). She doesn't care about that and she doesn't have a big enough collection of songs to fill either so she's fine with the nano. About a week into owning it, the bottom of the nano fell off. Little plastic piece that is actually stuck in place with, what seems to be, the same "glue" that is on a post-it. Fortunately, she had the plastic piece and we popped it back in place. A day or two later she noticed it was gone and showed me the nano. It makes hooking it up to the mac or the piece of shit docking station that won't charge the nano a total bitch. So, my wife takes the nano to the apple store. She waits and waits and waits and they finally see her and tell her to go to some apple doctor or something. she goes there and they tell her the piece is not covered under warranty and she needs to buy a new ipod nano. Seriously, this is like losing the cap to a soda. this piece is nothing more than a small plastic plug of sorts, to protect the insides of the ipod from the outside. It should be screwed in place but it isn't. It's glued in place using pretend glue.

So, she brings it home and tells me this. I tell her that is total bullshit. We carry the stupid little nano around with us for a week or two until we are near the apple store again and I head in to get the piece. I walk up to some 9 year old in an orange shirt who has her nose pierced and she clearly thinks she is superior to me (and anyone else around me) because she has an iphone and a mac and they allow her to be one step closer to j-bs and I explain the problem to her and she says, in a voice dripping with contempt "you need to go to the genius bar and explain the problem to someone in an orange shirt."

I say "but you're wearing an orange shirt. do you have a function here besides standing around looking trendy?"

She pointed me towards the genius bar so, there I went.

Now, I am no genius but I am fairly sure I can hold my own with the pre-pubescent nerdfest that is the genius bar.

I walk over to a tweener in an orange shirt and a white hat right off the head of the gay guy from the high school musical series. I say "excuse me, the girl in the orange shirt told me to speak to a guy in an orange shirt and since I am color blind and can only see grown-up colors, can you help me?"

He says he can and I explain the problem. He then says to me "well, we need to show the ipod nano to one of our" and here, his face lit up and I think he stood a bit taller "geniuses, so they can determine the problem."

I said "are the geniuses the kids with peach fuzz behind the bar?"

he's fucking beaming now, like we're talking about the wizard of oz or, for this crowd, perhaps, a guy who's not only seen a real woman's breast but has touched it and it wasn't an accident and it wasn't a relative. "yes, they can tell us what needs to be done."

I start to walk over to the bar and he says "oh, you need an appointment to speak to the geniuses."

Now I'm starting to get pissed off. I pull out the nano and I hold it up and I say "look, my daughter got this piece of shit nano for her birthday and the bottom, which is apparently fixed in place using chewing gum, fell off so all I need is a new piece. can you ask one of the children if they have pieces in their lego sets so I can put it back in place and be on my merry way?"

Now he's a little upset. "Sir, we're very busy and people have appointments."

I explain that the store is set up to accomodate people buying and people fixing apple products and I find it very odd that the busies section is the fixing section and I find it odd that they built the store with this much space dedicated to fixing their products unless they knew, going in, that they were making high tech gadgets with low tech parts.

He tells me they are always this busy and I cut him off, telling him he shouldn't be promoting the fact that they make garbage products.

From the look on his face, I just told him I fucked his mom. In the ass.

He tells me he will go in the back and ask if they can fix this and if they have the part they will get it for me.

While I'm waiting I listen to the cacaphony around me, Everyone is pissed off. One woman is screaming at her son, no, wait, that's another orange shirt snot nosed kid. It seems she brought her daughter's laptop in to be fixed immediately after the girl got it and they told her to come back for her appointment yesterday. Well, yesterday was beyond the warranty expiration for that problem and, now, "you will have to pay to have it fixed, parts included."

oh man, she's pissed but who wouldn't be?

The fetus in a hat comes back and tells me they cannot squeeze me in and he tells me I can set up an appointment for tomorrow (today). And what is this appointment for? To exchange the nano for a new one. Seriously. This pimple tells me I need to come back to exchange the nano for a new one. I ask why we can't save us all the aggrivation and just get my daughter her replacement now.

"Only geeeeniusus can do that!"

Now I'm fucking mystified. A genius is needed to tell me that my product is under warranty and then hand me a new one. If they're geniuses, I'm einsteins smarter fucking brother.

So, anyway, I'm out of patience and it is clear that I am not going to leave the store with the replacement so I make the appointment for 2:20 Monday (today). My wife will deal from here on in. I'm officially bowing out.

I prepped her about the issue last night. I told her that they will replace the nano as the little boy told me the nano was covered by the warranty and we will be getting a replacement. I told her she will have to follow the yellow brick road to meet the wizard, known as the g3nius, and he's l33t and she should lol when he makes jokes and she should be all omfg when he helps her because he's a genius and they are to be held high and honored and we should be in awe of them. My wife, officially, thinks I'm nuts.

Until 3 pm today.

My wife calls me to tell me they still haven't taken her yet. I asked what the point of the appointment was and she said "I don't know but when I asked this little asshole 'why the fuck I made an appointment'" he said "ma'am, I would appreciate it if you didn't use those words"

She told him to fuck off.

I have no clue as to the outcome but I think this will be the last apple product bought in my home for a long, long time.

Oh, and for the record, last night my daughter was lying on my bed, watching tv, while I was digging through a drawer, looking for something and she saw her old Zen Stone and she said "Daddy, there's my stone, I thought I lost it. Can I use that instead of the ipod, it sounds better and it doesn't break all the time."



yes, darling, you can.