No use crying over Coke spilt on a MacBook Air

My MacBook Air was displaying problems with a dodgy trackpad, which sometimes – for no obvious reason – would just generate random clicks.

It didn’t seem to matter whether the “touch to click” option was turned off in the settings. I could be scrolling around a web page and suddenly, boom, I’d clicked through to another website because of a phantom click. This was happening often enough to be annoying, so I booked an appointment at the Apple Store’s “Genius Bar” in Cambridge so somebody could take a look at it. After all, it was only six months old and still under warranty.

Name another vendor that would replace a laptop with a brand-new model within an hour, with all applications and data seamlessly transferred from the old machine to the new one?

The appointment had been made for mid-afternoon on a Sunday. My partner and I turned up with the MacBook Air at the appointed time and talked through the problem with an Apple employee. “No problem,” he said, “we’ll fit a new trackpad for you, which should clear up the problem. Come back in 30 minutes.”

After a large coffee, we returned to be told that the new trackpad had been fitted, but that there were still some problems with the motherboard and keyboard – it looked like maybe some fizzy drink had been spilled on the keyboard and trackpad at some point?

I answered quite honestly that I wasn’t aware of any such event, but I wasn’t the sole user of the laptop. “No problem,” he said, “have you got time for us to transfer all the SSD contents to another machine?” Time for another large, frothy coffee. Upon return, we were presented with a brand-new MacBook Air and a repair receipt detailing the work, with an invoice total of zero pounds.

Now answer this for me, if you please. Name another vendor that would replace a laptop with a brand-new model within an hour, with all applications and data seamlessly transferred from the old machine to the new one? Where it was possible that the damage was user-inflicted? And to offer this level of support on a Sunday afternoon?

And before you assume I was waving a press card to receive special treatment, this appointment was made in the name of my partner, who has never bought anything from that particular Apple Store in the past. It isn’t hard to see why people flock to these shops for a standard of care and attention that, while a little stiflingly religious at times, can’t be faulted for real-world performance.