(Credit:
Flickr user Kyle Simourd)
Bears have some awfully funny inclinations. Back in 2004 there were all those wackynews stories about the bear who'd downed three dozen cans of beer at a campground and proceeded to pass out.
But this one takes the cake: this summer, when Vermont hiker Kris Rowley was approached by a bear and it kept following her, it proved more interested in chowing down on her iPhone.
Rowley, who serves as Vermont's chief information security officer, tells CIO.com: "In a semi-panic, I threw the phone at the bear."
The bear proceeded to ignore Rowley and started clawing at the iPhone instead, CIO.com explains. Rowley used that as her chance to make a hasty exit. She returned two days later to get her iPhone back--bringing along a baseball bat for defense--and found it still there, but chewed and scratched up to the point where she couldn't use it anymore.
Unfortunately, the Genius Bar support team at her local Apple Store wouldn't take "a bear ate my iPhone" as a legitimate excuse to get a new one on the house: Rowley had to pay full price for a replacement.
Maybe that would've been different if she'd brought the bear along with her. Just a thought.
As someone who regularly councils consumers to avoid overpriced after-market repair services for computer hardware, I was intrigued by a report from Glassdoor.com (a Web site where employees anonymously dish about their employers) that compares the purported average salaries for Apple and Best Buy front-line tech-support personnel.
Both the Geek Squad and Genius Bar offer carry-in service for your hardware, although the Genius Bar is more focused on in-warranty service for your Mac stuff, while the Geek Squad sells a variety of upgrades, security, installation, and maintenance services.
The Glassdoor.com data is based on submissions from people who claim to be employed by the respective companies, so it's far from scientific. That being said, the reported average hourly salary for a Genius Bar tech was $18.30, while the reported average hourly salary for a Geek Squad Agent was $11.58.
Anecdotally, the Genius Bar seems to have a better reputation than the Geek Squad, which has been busted stealing data from customers' computers (hence the nickname "Peek Squad"), but I'm sure plenty of people have both good stories and horror stories about both.
Is the Genius Bar attracting better people with better pay? What experiences with one or both services have you had?
You would think the iPhone's touch screen--the hallmark of the whole dang thing--would last for more than five months. Well, think again.
After a particularly wet bike ride on Saturday here in the Bay Area, my iPhone got somewhat damp. (You know, the type of rain that soaks through a coat but doesn't ruin anything.) After the ride, I wanted to text people and noticed the top row of the text keyboard was not responding. I had to press, no squish, down to get a letter. And the cursor would flip out. And the screen looked bad when I did so, just like when you press down on an LCD screen too hard.
After a reset, power-cycle and testing out different touch-based functions (aren't they all?), I was convinced I needed to get help at the Apple store. I made an appointment online for the next day. (All the Saturday appointments were gone by the time I looked online.)
The next day, I found out I wasn't the only one who had a "dead zone" on their screen. The guy next to me at the Genius Bar had the same problem. After attempting a restore, the Apple clerk (who asked me to write that customer service was fast and efficient--it wasn't) brought out a white box (a coffin I thought?) with a new iPhone in it. The clerk said Apple would exchange my phone, and there'd be no charge. It was exactly as I had expected.
The clerk swapped my SIM card out, with a pin conveniently stored in his name tag, and I was on my way, after half an hour.
What surprised was was how all of my settings had been "restored"--ringtones, photos, SMS messages, IMAP settings. The iPhone was activated by AT&T in seconds, the transfer of all the junk on my iPhone took about 30 minutes. Not too bad.
The downsides: the process was a bit of a pain and the restore missed a few pictures I took. (I have to re-assign all the pictures to particular contacts again.) Also, it's a little distressing that such an integral feature failed after five months. The clerk who helped me did say that the technology was very new, and that, as an early adopter, I should have expected as such.
Hmmm.
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