Apple of my eye

Welcome to Part 4 of my continuing series of Senior Influencer posts. 

The goal is to accumulate enough of these posts and start a new blog exclusively committed to influencing, consumer guidance and the reception of many free goodies from sellers of services and products who want some digital ink.

First some disclaimers. 

In the interest of full disclosure, it should be noted that my oldest daughter works on advertising for Apple at Media Arts Lab, a division/subset/sister company (I don't really understand corporate hierarchies and their seemingly purposeful complicated structuring) of TBWA Chiat/Day. Which is another division/subset/sister company of Omnicom. Which, if you listen to Red Hats or fervent antisemites is all controlled by George Soros. Or the Rothschilds. Or a combined cabal of global elitists.

They love that word cabal.

More disclosure, I too worked at TBWA Chiat/Day, though I in no way assisted getting my daughter a position there. It was my hope she'd become a doctor. Or a physician's assistant. Or even a nurse. I think we can all agree changing diapers on a hospital patient seems to be a little more dignified than working in advertising these days.

One final disclosure. Years ago, I also worked at BBDO (also Omnicom, see above for further confusion) and wrote copy for Apple Computers. It's a dark memory I have just now cleansed from my system.

Now to the recent adventure. 

Lately, I had not been able to log onto my old MacBook Air. Seems the browsers no longer support the technology that went into my 2011 classic laptop. So I decided to part with some of my "Stay Out of a Dirty Nursing Home" money and purchase a new Macbook Air. 

Not wanting to venture from my warm comfortable abode into the frigid wintry (61 degrees) weather of late, I made the purchase online.

Day 2: The new machine arrives. I set up the Migration Assistant and begin transferring all the data and crappy scripts from my old Mac to the shiny new 2023 model with the vaunted M2 chip. Migration gets to 98% and then conks out. 

Three phone calls and two hours later, it's decided that I need to return the bum Mac. I tell the last rep I'd like to take it to my local UPS store. She sends me a pre-printed shipping label. I bring the box to UPS, where the sales counter guy shows me it's a FEDEX label. Grrrrrr. 

Day 3: I spend the next day on the phone again with Apple wondering when the new, and operable, laptop will arrive. They don't know. So one clever rep suggest I go online and purchase a new one, while he issues the order for a refund on the other. More confusion. Though as we have previously determined I am not the brightest bulb and easily confused.

Day 4: The new laptop arrives. It's sleek. And new, and pleasant to the touch. The migration of my still-crappy scripts, fat photos and times gone by, easily slides through the ether from my old laptop to my new M2-equipped one. Except for MicroSoft Word, which as you might imagine for someone who rearranges 26 letters for a living, is quite vital. 

I know MicroSoft is on a subscription basis so I purchase the new version via GoSoftware. Little did I know it's twice the price of what I would have paid via MicroSoft. It too makes it to 98% loaded and fails. Thinking there's a bug, I tried to use Malwarebytes. It too did not load.

This is followed by another three hours with reps (from Apple and Microsoft) trying to figure out what the f*ck is going on.

I have now reached DefCon 5.

Day 5: I hope you're still with me. I know how hearing nightmare stories about the DMV, or canceled flights, or tedious tech troubles can be...well, tedious. 

I am put on hold and handed off to a senior advisor. He takes command of my Mac via the interwebs. He spends 90 minutes troubleshooting the machine and can't figure out if it's the flick flacks or the hydroponic confibulators. All to no avail.

I, being pleasantly tech naive (see above), suggest starting over and erasing everything from the migration and returning the Mac to its default settings. This takes an inordinate amount of time. Believe or not I omitted some of the less titillating details.

And then, BAM!!!

Ironic, that after all that, I was the one to have solved the issue. With some assistance from Shannon (on St. Patty's Day, no less.) And here's where the story takes a pleasant turn.

Because I literally shaved a few days off my winding-down life, Shannon offered to send me a new pair of AirPod Pros, retail value $249. Which, considering the time and money (2 downloads of MS Office) I spent puts me at the break even point. 

More importantly however, it demonstrates how a little humanity can go a long way to instill or in this case re-install, a little brand loyalty.

I am firmly back in the Apple orchard.