Apple: different strokes for different folks

Sam Varghese
Tuesday, 09 August 2011 17:25

Opinion and Analysis

Does Apple, a quintessentially American company, follow one of the more insidious practices that has occurred on occasion in its country of origin and racially profile those who visit its stores?

That's a question I've been struggling with since last week when I went to my local store, in the suburb of Doncaster in Melbourne, to collect a MacBook that I had handed in a day earlier.

My experiences at the Apple Store have not exactly been salutary but this time, when I went in to obtain an estimate of the repair costs of the MacBook, I had no reason to complain - initially.

The MacBook in question is more than four years old and out of warranty. It keeps requiring re-installation of the operating system and finally the installation got so corrupt that it would not accept an install from the only DVD which came with it, an upgrade to Leopard.

The man who attended to me offered to reinstall the operating system from scratch without any charge even though the machine was out of warranty.

He also went so far as to say that if the hard drive did give any further trouble, then I could install a new drive myself to avoid paying the rather large amount that Apple charges and bring it in to get the operating system reinstalled.

This was on Monday, August 1.

The man also told me that if I was prepared to wait an hour, he would get the OS installed and give me the MacBook right away. Else, he said, he would inform me when it was ready and I could come back at my convenience.

The same afternoon, he called and told me that the job was finished and that I could pick up the MacBook. I replied that I would come in the following morning.