single with vodkagood girl gone bad

well, after 4 torturous days that felt like 14, i am back online. my stoooopid macbook arbitrarily had a hissy fit & decided that it no longer recognized safari which is the mac browser. that’s like your own white blood cells attacking the red ones. needless to say, i was beyond irate and even more so that i couldn’t get an appointment with the pompous nerds at the “genius bar” until today. hey mac, you just can’t go getting people all addicted to their technology and then take it away. even heroin addicts get methadone to ease withdrawal symptoms. it’s just plain reckless. i have never felt so helpless & disconnected from the world as i have in these ever-long 4 days.

of course, you know a nasty rant directed at steve jobs, was brewing deep in the bowels of my left hemisphere. i considered writing him a letter, but a friend of mine told me no one would give a shit & i realized that was probably true. my pal said, “blog it out, baby.” so i am. let’s begin. shall we?

first of all, i am the marketing wet dream demographic for apple: a loyal pc user who finally got sick of the constant crashing & burning of my pc, who was ready to switch over to the alternate mac lifestyle, and who could actually afford their damn overpriced mac. their trendy commercials with the cute guy & hipster music finally got to me. i was finally convinced that the superstylin’ mac was the answer to my technological prayers. so, one day i was so po’ed at the ETB (ex to be) & i decided that was it, i need my own laptop, i am going to go spend way too much money on a mac. i stormed out of the house and straight to the mall.

i walked into the apple store & angels sang. i had never seen anything like it. it’s clean minimalist design was like walking through the gates of heaven. beautiful displays of macs, mac books, a clever rainbow of ipods, & sparkling iphones with endless “apps.” it was gorgeous. a sing-song voice in my head purred, ” you belong here. ” a voice which i would later identify as satan’s, because that can only be who turned it all around for apple. and not only did the staff wear color coded t-shirts, but the service was magnanimous. so helpful. finally, computer geeks who treated me with respect and they didn’t even work on commission. the salesnerd actually could have cared less if i bought anything. and i bought their speil about how the mac was finally “friendly” to pc users & compatible with pc programs. “seamless integration.” so it seemed. if the extensive table area devoted to “mac school” didn’t tip me off to the world of trouble i was about to sign on for, then the gd “genius bar” should have. instead of thinking, “is it a problem that there is a need for a free service area devoted exclusively to helping you fix glitches?,” i thought, “how nice, a free service area devoted exclusively to helping you fix glitches” mistake number 1. but i was oblivious. i had fallen in love at first sight and there was no stopping me.

and people can’t buy these macs fast enough. they have absolutely mainstreamed. the store is crowded with masses of sheep no matter what time of day or night you go. if you say,”hey, i will come back later when its not busy. when is that?” the answer is “never.” even if you elect to wait, they will tell you there is no guarantee you will be served that day. on the weekend, there is a line out the door with an actual rope akin to those at disney rides during high season. it is the new dmv. and the suckiest part is, those f*n techno-nerds are immune to womanly charms. cleavage & batting eyelashes will get you no where with them. that is generally my go-to schtick with male service people. fans, my natural wit & charm only go so far on their own.

what follows is the horrifying aftermath of my formerly proud purchase. once home, i took my spanky brandy new mac notebook home & gingerly unpacked it. i inhaled its new computer smell & imagined how my life would immediately change & my laptop & i would live happily ever after. oh sure, i liked the styling of the sites & the fresh applications so much that i was willing to overlook that learning a whole new vernacular wasn’t as easy as promised. i imagined instead how i would edit photos, make home movies, build websites, become a graphic designer, & finally evolve into the self-sufficient techno-geek i secretly longed to be. like any new love, it started out dreamily, but then things between us quickly got rocky. after a month, there were issues & i was searching mac self-help sites for ways to fix glitches on my own. extensive, endless articles on numerous sites. i had no patience to read even 1 of these lengthy articles. forget reading all of those nerd threads & posts. this was clearly not a good sign. and i hardly had time to learn all the new mac apps, much less use them. one day my email & internet access became spotty and the next, the unthinkable happened: 2 days before my year long warranty expired, the hard drive crashed & burned & i lost everything. i called it the “great hard drive crash of ’08,” and although the dorks hidden in the secret mac store back room replaced it, when i asked about all the stuff that was lost, they asked if i had been backing up the hard drive. NO! that’s why i asked, asshole. turns out that unless i had an extra grand laying around for them to “send it out” & only attempt to retrieve my info, no dice. for 1000 smackers, i wasn’t even guaranteed any info could be retrieved. so, i decided to rebuild my itunes library (they are generous enough to resend all of your itune store purchases, but you are warned only this once), take new pix of my kids, & resolved to back up my hard drive forevermore (which i still haven’t done because, apparently, i still haven’t learned my lesson). even though i made the warranty period by 2 days (thank goodness for small things), the damage was done. i had fallen out of love and now i was stuck with an overpriced crappy piece of hardware. get this too – when i asked the dweeb why the hard drive would crash like that he said, “it could be from being moved around too much.” from being moved around too much. it’s a gd laptop. movement is in inherent in the design. otherwise it would be a tower & non-portable. OMG! i was fallng out of love quickly.

another few months went by & i tried to make this doomed relationship work. i really did. and we got along the mac & i. my trust was being rebuilt. then one day i completely lost email access. after another trip back to the geniuses, i learned that after they get you hooked on your pretentious dot mac email address, and you officially change over from being a pc user to a mac user, they neglect to tell you that it cost 100 bux a year to “rent” that space on their server they so happily gave you when you bought the mac. my year had run out. ok, fine i shelled out their ransom because i didn’t feel like finding a new email home or having to update all of my contacts. oh, AND also, all of my saved emails that i needed for my divorce were being held hostage on their server until i paid them their blackmail money. ok, so another major let-down, but we got back on track yet again. what choice did i have?

once again, mac & i lived in harmony for the most part. oh there were issues, but nothing i couldn’t handle. then the gd dvd drive stopped reading discs. the drive would swallow the cd until i forced it out. of course, i had refrained earlier from paying for the $99 extended warranty after the great crash, because, well because, i like to gamble in the extended warranty/service plan arena, & mostly i am an idiot. i let it be & i decided i would deal with the dvd drive later knowing i would have no choice but to throw a lot of money at it at some point. then the face plate also cracked for no apparent reason and was immune to any kind of glue to repair it. what an all around piece of shit! i officially hated the mac now.

a few more months went by & then after i posted my blog on july 9th, the internet blacked out. everything else worked on the laptop except of course anything that required the use of the internet which, by the way, is EVERYTHING. there was nothing wrong with the wireless connection in my house. i am no schmuck – i had already checked that out thoroughly becasue that’s always the first question they ask you, “well, did you plug it in?” yes, bitch, i did.

so after i checked in for my appointment with the concierge today, whom, by the way is the hot chick nerd, which makes her the fucking snot-ass homecoming queen of the apple store, the trekkie fixed it today. he fixed it, not by fixing safari, but by installing a new browser. he still has no idea why safari stopped working. he only knew he had 137 people after me to process. furthermore, the cheapest option, his exact words, for replacing the “optical reader” (that’s nerd speak for dvd drive) would be $300.00 & involved “sending it out” for a week. know why? because i decided not to buy the 99 dollar warranty several months ago. i opted to hold off on that fabulous offer. aaaaauuuuggggggghhhhh. it seems the only answer to fixing the mac involves endlessly spending more money. everything is an add-on with these fuckers. apparently nothing is included with a 2000k laptop other than a fancy light up apple on the front. so now, i am stuck in a dead end relationship with this obnoxious piece of caca. it will be easier to get out of my marriage than to get a new laptop. i don’t have that kind of funding anymore.

there is a reason apple never dominated the pc market. its not the bill gates conspiracy theory apple likes to sell us. it’s because their products suck ass. even the first day i had my ipod it froze & i couldn’t use it for the 5 hour plane trip for which it was specifically purchased. the airport had an ipod kiosk & the dude’s answer was to let the battery run down & try again. oh really, einstein? stellar advice i never would have figured out on my own due to the fact that i couldn’t do anything other than exactly that BECAUSE IT WAS FROZEN. so not only was i up shit’s creek without my music paddle, but i was out 200.00 clams. yes, the damn ipod eventually worked but randomly freezes whenever it feels like it. like for example, when i want to use it. plus apple likes to come out with a new version of the overpriced gadget you just bought a week ago which is really irritating. oh they will let you upgrade, but you are now inconvenienced again. why not just tell people to buy it next week? jerks. and they just can’t get you hooked in enough. integrate everything. make it all wireless. let your mac talk to your pc. let your iphone talk to them & to your email. let your iphone own your soul so when it craps out you are a shell of a human who forgot that you actually used your own brain independently at one time.

sitting there today waiting for my laptop to be fixed, i watched an endless stream of people with laptops, giant towers, ipods, itouches, & iphones wait in line for a visit with the “geniuses.” it finally occurred to me way too late, if the apple products were so damn good, then in theory, the genius bar should be empty. if the stuff is so easy to use, why the need for “mac school?” it’s supposed to be a seamless transition for us pc users to mac use. all a colossal bunch of bullshit. other than the lack of worry about computer viruses, macs are no better than pcs. just a more flashy operating platform with snob appeal & a huge advertising budget. i am less pissed with mac for packaging a piece of shit as a gold bar, than i am with myself for the fact that i considered myself so savvy, but fell for their brilliant marketing campaign. kudos, mac! i could have gotten another sucky pc and paid half as much for the same amount of inconvenience. and to think i had also actually contemplated getting an iphone. no freakin’ way now, boys.

so, from the bottom of my heart, fuck you apple. you’re just plain rotten.