"The Apple Store"

Written from my age and my perspective.

But what isn’t?

Visiting The Apple Store is like visiting a future without me in it.

Call visiting The Apple Store a “Sneak Preview” of dead.

My prediction is, in the future without me in it, The Apple Store will eventually be all stores.

Boxily large.

Mile-high ceilings.

Glisteningly white.

Remember that Albert Brooks movie about the afterlife?  It looks like that.  Only with merchandise.

The Apple Store technicians are a veritable algorithm of genders, colors and physical capabilities.  They feel like an updated version of an “I’d-like-the-buy-the-world-a-Coke” commercial.

I am not a hundred percent sure The Apple Store technicians are actual people.  They have the appearance of actual people.  Which may because they are actual people.  Or because Apple simulated androids that look like actual people.

I would not put it past them.  They are constantly making new stuff.

There is something too “intentional” about these Apple Store people. 

Or should I say “people.”

I mean, you go outside, and it’s different, the “distribution” more familiarly random.  You go back in – it’s “The Perfect World.”

With watch-phones.

Despite my visceral discomfort, there are times I must reluctantly enter The Apple Store.  The most recent occasion was yesterday.  I am still detoxing from the experience.

Here’s what happened.

At some point, accompanying my desktop computer, I bought a “Magic Mouse”, which is a wireless “mouse” with no batteries.  You charge it up when it’s “low.”

My computer screen messaged, “It’s low.”

So I charged it up.

But instead of “Powering up”, my “Magic Mouse” stopped working.

My “low mouse” was now a dead mouse.

I knew exactly what came next.

A unwelcome trip to The Apple Store.

The entering door to The Apple Store is extremely heavy, a coded warning that, like that door, everything inside is not amenable to my natural proclivities. 

It’s like,

“This store is for other people.  But if you want to come in, fine.”

I drag the heavy door open, and tentatively venture inside.

Explaining why I am there, the Apple Store technician who greets me passes me off to a second Apple Store technician who arranges for a third Apple Store technician to assist me.  In less than five minutes, I have met three Apple Store technicians.  None of whom entirely feels real.

Diagnostic testing proves that my “Magic Mouse” is indeed “functionally inoperative.”  (Which in other words means broken.)

I will skip a few details, like the one where I respond that I believe the “Magic Mouse” was purchased a year or two ago and that, no, I did not bring in the receipt – “People actually save those?” I heard myself foolishly inquire.

An archive “Search” reveals that my “Magic Mouse” was purchased thirteen months ago, a month past the elapse-date of my year-long “Magic Mouse” warranty.  But, I am informed, it would be replaced for free anyway.

I am understandably elated about this.  Although my playful temperament requires me to say,

“It’s a good thing Steve Jobs is dead.  I am not sure he would approve.”

The next thing I detect is an Apple technician “simulated wince”, indicating programmed discomfort with cheap shots at “Our Revered Lord and Master.”  I fear a retaliatory response, a Strangelovian arm reaching out and squeezing the life out of my body.   

Somehow, fortunately, I am spared.  Although I do have to go back to pick up my new “Magic Mouse.” (Which is out of stock because, being thirteen months old, it is now three generations behind.)  They may punish me then.   

My over-reaction to The Apple Store goes beyond everyone there knows things and I don’t know anything.  Though that is admittedly enough.  There is, however, also this.

I walk into The Apple Store and I can swear I hear the whispering word,

“Disposable.”

I am pretty sure they are not talking about the products.