{"id":2604,"date":"2015-08-17T08:57:09","date_gmt":"2015-08-16T23:57:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/2015-08-17\/2604"},"modified":"2015-08-17T08:57:09","modified_gmt":"2015-08-16T23:57:09","slug":"delight-and-dismay-at-the-apple-store","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/2015-08-17\/2604","title":{"rendered":"Delight and Dismay at the Apple Store"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n

The other day I got to witness the most amazing experience of watching\na lady<\/span> in her 70s touch an iPad for the first\ntime, and right before my eyes the delight and sparkle on her face\ntransformed her into a young<\/span> girl again. It was\nmagical<\/i>.<\/p>\n\n

Yet this experience at an Apple Store in Ohio was marred by\nsome shockingly un-Apple bumps in the road.<\/p>\n\n

I'm in America visiting my folks, and took the opportunity of being here\nto help Ann, a family<\/span> friend in her 70s, buy her\nfirst computer. Until now her most technically-advanced electronics were\na flip<\/span>-phone and a\ntelevision,<\/span> but she was ready to take the plunge into email and\nFacebook. She was familiar<\/span> with the unrelenting\ngrief and despair Windows caused her husband, so she wanted something\ndifferent. We headed<\/span> to the Apple Store.<\/p>\n\n

It was packed<\/i>, which as an AAPL shareholder I always<\/span> like to see.<\/p>\n\n

We were soon attended to by staff, and I let<\/span>\nAnn interact with them, describing what she wanted a\ncomputer<\/span> for, and listening to their ideas and recommendations.<\/p>\n\n

First she was shown the lowest-end MacBook Air, a\ntiny<\/span> laptop. My mom has<\/span> one of these and\nearlier at lunch had shown it to Ann, and had raved all about it, so prior\nto arriving at the store, Ann and I<\/span> thought that\nshe'd probably buy a MacBook<\/span> Air. Under direction\nof the Apple sales staff, Ann used a<\/span> MacBook Air\nfor some basic web surfing and email, and seemed pleased. She took to<\/span> it easily.<\/p>\n\n

Then she was shown the same basic browsing and email on an iPad Air.\nOver the course of a few<\/span> minutes Ann's demeanor\nchanged from mild interest (she'd heard of these “<\/span>iPad”<\/span> things before)\nto pure, unfettered delight<\/i>.<\/p>\n\n

I've never seen anything like it, and I cannot<\/span>\nbegin to adequately describe the situation.<\/p>\n\n

Ann has a youth and vibrance that belies her age, with an easy laugh and\nsmile that I've seen many times, but nothing prepared me for the reaction\nwritten across her face... giddy, unadulterated, sparkling delight<\/i>.\nThere's no other word for it.<\/p>\n\n

As she exclaimed “<\/span>This is it, this is\nfor me!<\/i>”<\/span>, I told her<\/span> that the sparkle in\nher eyes made her look 30 years younger, but in reality the only time I've\never seen something even close is when a\nyoung<\/span> child gets the toy they've been wanting<\/a>. But this was<\/span> less materialistic, more pure. I imagined<\/span> a duck<\/span> living in\nthe desert for decades not knowing that water even existed, finally\nentering a lake<\/span> for the first time. I feel I<\/span>'m a better<\/span> person\njust for having witnessed it.<\/p>\n\n

In comparison, the exuberant “<\/span>amaaaazing<\/i>”<\/span>\nreaction<\/a> of my 23-month-old niece to her first iPad experience seems\npale (but if you've not heard the short audio on that post<\/a>, it'll\ncertainly bring a smile<\/span> to your heart).<\/p>\n\n

Anyway, Ann bought an iPad Air, a wireless<\/span> keyboard, and a case<\/span>\/cover, and Apple staff helped her set it up.\nBoth before and after the sale, staff spent considerable time with her,\nnever rushing, never pressuring, always patient. Ann\nfelt truly<\/span> the center of their attention, with their concern not for\nthe sale but for her happiness and satisfaction. It was\na<\/span> wonderful experience.<\/p>\n\n

That was the good. The rest of this long story is not always so good.<\/p>\n\n

\n\n

Setup of the iPad involved creating Ann's first email account, and\nthis is where I got<\/span> my first surprise of the day.<\/p>\n\n

I figured that they would create an iCloud account for her, but no, to\ncreate an Apple ID they needed an email account from outside the Apple\necosystem, so they created a GMail<\/span> account for\nher. This struck me as very odd, but hey, they're the experts.<\/p>\n\n

They then used her GMail address to create an Apple ID for her, and set\nup her iPad. They helped her install the Apple Store app, then used that to\nschedule a free<\/span> training class at the store next week.<\/p>\n\n

Pleased as punch and floating on air, we went to her house to show her\nhusband, and we sat for some basic lessons. I\nshowed<\/span> Ann how to surf the web, make bookmarks, do email and create\ncontacts, Facetime video conference, use the camera, check the calendar,\ntalk to Siri, etc. She took to<\/span> it very\neasily.<\/p>\n\n

But we ran into some problems that I didn't<\/span> know how to solve.<\/p>\n\n

Disappointment #1 for the day was that the iPad Air Smart Case didn't\nseem to fit her iPad Air very well, and the hole for the camera didn't line\nup properly. When deciding on what model of iPad to buy, Apple staff had\nexplained the differences between the “<\/span>iPad Air”<\/span><\/span> and\nthe “<\/span>iPad Air 2”<\/span><\/span> included subtle physical differences like\nthe location of the camera, so it seemed to me that Ann must have been sold\nthe wrong case. Yet the labeling<\/span> on the box for\nthe case (“<\/span>iPad Air Smart\nCase<\/span>”<\/span>) clearly matched the labeling on\nthe box for the iPad (“<\/span>iPad Air<\/span>”<\/span>) —\nneither referenced the “<\/span>Air 2”<\/span> we'd seen on packaging for the newer models\n— so I was<\/span> confused.<\/p>\n\n

Disappointment #2 for the day was in my call to Apple Care to ask about\nthe issue. The lady who<\/span> answered my call seemed\nutterly uninterested in life, doing her job on autopilot just to get to the\nend of the shift. I've had more enthusiastic calls with the DMV.<\/p>\n\n

So we went back to the Apple Store and showed the clearly-misaligned\ncamera hole along with the clearly-matching packaging. I figured<\/span> we be told\n“<\/span>yikes, sorry about that, here's the proper case<\/i>”<\/span>, but instead we\ngot an inexplicable “<\/span>Yeah,\nsorry, it's hard to explain”<\/span>.<\/p>\n\n

The guy tried to explain something that he clearly didn't understand\nwell himself, causing me to finally interrupt him and say “<\/span>look, she just wants a\ncase<\/span> that fits her iPad. She doesn't care what it's called... can\nyou show her something that actually fits what she just bought?<\/i>”<\/span>.<\/p>\n\n

Again the response was unexpected. I thought<\/span>\nhe'd say “<\/span>Sure, just a\nmoment<\/span><\/i>”<\/span>, but instead we got a\n“<\/span>I don't<\/span> know,\nbut we can go take a look.<\/span><\/i>”<\/span>. Wow, this was not the Apple Experience I was<\/span> expecting. How hard can it be?<\/b><\/p>\n\n

It was a fiasco. They had a huge wall of cases, with half clearly marked\n“<\/span>iPad Air 2<\/i>”<\/span><\/span> and the other half clearly marked “<\/span>iPad Air<\/i>”<\/span><\/span>. You'd think that it couldn't be simpler,\nbut in reality all the cases were for the iPad Air\n2<\/span><\/b>, including those marked “<\/span>iPad Air<\/i>”<\/span><\/span>. Why were they<\/span>\nexplicitly labeled differently when they were explicitly for the same\ndevice, and explicitly incompatible with the device for which it was\nlabeled??? It was beyond<\/span> surreal.<\/p>\n\n

The guy explained that if you looked on the back of the “<\/span>iPad Air<\/i>”<\/span><\/span> package, the little sticker with the\nbarcode included microscopic text that said “<\/span>(second generation)”<\/span>, meaning it was for the iPad\nAir 2<\/span>. The logical<\/span> person inside of me\nwanted to explode at the stupidity of it... not only of the misleading\nlabeling, but mostly at the unmitigated stupidity of how the Apple Store\nhandled the display and sales. The guy who<\/span> sold\nAnn the iPad Air explicitly mentioned the differences between the models\nand explicitly told her that the iPad Air 2<\/span> cases\nwouldn't fit her purchase, yet somehow didn't realize that the “<\/span>iPad Air<\/span>”<\/span> cases wouldn't either. This was his job<\/i>.\nHow could<\/span> Apple Staff not know this? The Air 2<\/span> has been on sale for almost a year<\/i>...\nwere we the first to discover this crazy labeling. Beyond surreal.<\/p>\n\n

In marveling at the absurdity of the situation, I\nhappened<\/span> to noticed that one of the “<\/span>iPad Air”<\/span><\/span>\ncases did not<\/i> have the “<\/span>second\ngeneration”<\/span> microtext on the back. Oh, we're\ntold, this one does<\/i> fit Ann's purchase. Apple Staff hadn't realized\nthey had these mixed in there. Of perhaps<\/span> the 70\n“<\/span>iPad Air”<\/span><\/span> cases on display, I\nnoticed<\/span> three that would fit Ann's “<\/span>iPad Air”<\/span><\/span>.\nShe didn't like the color, but it was that or nothing, so she exchanged the\ncase. The guy offered<\/span> to order her the color of her choice and swap it out when\nit arrived, but by this time we just wanted to move on.<\/p>\n\n

(The only plausible explanation for the labeling that I can<\/span> come up with is that when Apple started selling\ncases for the new iPad Air 2<\/span>, they still had\na huge<\/span> stockpile of packaging for the original\nmodel that they didn't want to waste, so they shoved the new cases into the\nold packaging and slapped the microtext sticker on the back. When that ran\nout, new packaging included the proper “<\/span>iPAd Air 2<\/span>”<\/span> on the front,\nand this mix of labels we saw at the store reflected the mix of old and new\nstock. On the other<\/span> hand, I\nhave not<\/span> been able to come up with a\nplausible<\/span> explanation for how the Apple Store handles this mix as\nthey do, utter than pure apathy and incompetence.)<\/p>\n\n

Overall, what a disappointing, un-Apple-like experience. Things were about to get worse.<\/p>\n\n

I had two questions about the email app, both leading down holes I never<\/span>\nwould have imagined.<\/p>\n\n

The first seemed pretty simple: why is there no “<\/span>trash”<\/span> icon when\nviewing an email message? How do you<\/span> delete a message<\/span>? The identical<\/span> app on\nmy iPhone has a trash<\/span> icon that's obvious and intuitive, but on Ann's iPad\nthe same spot instead has what looks like a filing<\/span>-cabinet icon whose\npurpose didn't seem apparent, and upon testing we couldn't figure out what\nit actually did.<\/p>\n\n

The guy spent a considerable time in the labyrinth of iPad settings and couldn't\nfigure it out, so we put that on the back burner and moved on.<\/p>\n\n

My second question was about push notifications for new messages. It\ndidn't surprise me that push notifications wouldn't work when connected\nonly via Wifi, so I just<\/span> asked to confirm this.\nBut no, I was told<\/span> that they should work. Ann\nwasn't getting notifications when I sent<\/span> test\nemails, so the guy dives again into the labyrinth of settings for what\nseemed an eternity, only to end up suggesting to switch from GMail to\niCloud for her email.<\/p>\n\n

Just a few hours prior we'd been told that a\nnon<\/span>-iCloud account was required, but now we were being told to\nswitch to iCloud. I didn't<\/span> want Ann to have to\njuggle two email addresses, but no worries, Apple Staff told us, we'll\nswitch your Apple ID registration to your iCloud address so that you can\ncompletely abandon the GMail address. Geez, okay, why didn't we do this\nfrom the start, but okay, let's do it.<\/p>\n\n

So he create the new account and we explained everything to Ann, who for\nthe first time in the long day was starting to show signs of being\noverwhelmed. Once things were finally set up, test emails from me showed up\non her iPad with immediate notifications as we wanted, so it was worth it.\nThen he went to switch her Apple ID registration over to her iCloud address\nso that she could completely abandon the GMail address they'd made for her\nearlier, and he hit a snag.<\/span>.. it wouldn't let him\nswitch.<\/p>\n\n

Clearly this staff member was outside his area of expertise, but instead\nof asking one of his more-experienced colleagues, he starts Googling for\na solution.<\/span> This did not inspire confidence, and\nI “<\/span>strongly encouraged”<\/span> him to ask someone for help. He did, and the end\nresult was that we backpedaled on the whole iCloud thing, reverted back to\nGMail, and simply gave up on push notifications. By this\npoint<\/span> the store was closing and we just wanted to get out of\nthere.<\/p>\n\n

But somewhere along the way he had figured out how to get the trash icon\nfor Ann, so at least we had that going for us.<\/p>\n\n

Overall Ann was thrilled with her first foray into high tech, but wow,\nthe experiences at the Apple Store sure put a\ndamper<\/span> on things. As a tech<\/span> geek I was<\/span> mortified, and as an APPL\nshareholder I worry<\/span> how this bodes for Apple's future.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The other day I got to witness the most amazing experience of watching a lady in her 70s touch an iPad for the first time, and right before my eyes the delight and sparkle on her face transformed her into a young girl again. It was magical.<\/p>

Yet this experience at an Apple Store in Ohio was marred by some shockingly un-Apple bumps in the road.<\/p>

I'm in America visiting my folks, and took the opportunity of being here to help Ann, a family friend in her 70s, buy her first computer. Until now her most technically-advanced electronics were a [...]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2604"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2604"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2604\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2604"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2604"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2604"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}