I Hear The Craziest Things: Apple wants to help you help them…

I’m typing on my new iPad. Call me a happy girl ;0)

But you know me well enough now. You’re expecting that’s not the end of this Sunday story. How much fun would that be, right?

There we are at the Apple Genius Bar, while this great kid, Adam, is showing me the standard bells and whistles of my new toy–which will replace my laptop for most travel and work I do away from home from now on.

He’s confident and in his element, as a genius should be, thinking I’m cute for saying I’m a GA Tech grad and know computers (at least IBM hardware and operating systems). He’s digging that I’m an author and asking me about what I write while he puts my new toy through it’s paces.

But here’s the thing, I say, pulling out my laptop. I need to pull MS Word documents from this to the iPad for travel, work on them while I’m gone, then port them back.

His cheerful enthusiasm dims just a little, but he rallies with, Have you considered signing up for Mobile Me (a service that’s an additional monthly fee on top of all the rest) so you can sync everything on all your Apple devices wherever you are all over the wold.

Don’t you just love that genius bar of never-ending add-ons???

Yeah. No. I need a wireless keyboard, I repeat, and my MS word documents easily moving back and forth between being used on either my IBM or iPad, so the iPad is my new travel computer, or I’m going to have to return it.

At this point my genius gathers reinforcements. More fine young men join us–I, of course, find it annoying that there don’t seem to be any fine young women to troubleshoot my bizarre request… We boot up my laptop and sync in the iPad and get into the crunchier stuff of my now atypical set-up. I’ve become a genius lab exercise for everyone milling around the bar. Add peanuts and some pretzles and it will be a real party!

An iTunes system message asks me if I’d like to help Steve Jobs help me by giving Apple free rein to all my iPod information any time they want it, so they could learn more about how users are using their product (so they can design even niftier and expensive add-ons, I can only assume).

Um… No.I’m looking around for Tom Cruise and Cuba Gooding Jr. And, no, don’t ever ask me again, I say as my genius click’s that cancel button, too.

Adam appears for a moment as if he wants to change my mind, as I’m sure he’s been trained, too, but wisely ducks his head and gets back to figuring out my not-so-cute-and-graphical request to make my iPad a writing workhorse.

Fast forward half an hour of us using real documents of mine and (I kid you not, Googling to look up possible answers to problems my geniuses have never encountered),we’re joined by yet another confident young man who shows us the iTunes setting that’s been there all along (only you have to scroll down to the bottom of the synced apps screen to see shared documents…like it’s an afterthought that this might be needed more than stuff for more fun apps that, say, play music and books and videos and pictures).

Then he teaches all the other geniuses and me how to share the document back to my laptop or email or whatever from the app I’ve had to pay for and download to be able to create and modify documents on my the iPad. We’re all crowded around the bar at this point, gathering an even bigger crowd, high on this amazing solution.

Tadaaaaaa!

I’m so thrilled I wanna hug and kiss everyone. Adam ducks his head again. The solution appears to be slightly limited, but we’re on our way and everyone’s giddy, particularly my genius, because I have helped him help me, and others, and now he has another problem he can fix for Apple-deficient ladies like me. Happy to be of service training your staff, Mr. Jobs!

But the absolute most amazing part of the night???

Watching the geniuses trying to use the eraser mouse on my laptop and me (helpless on an Apple but a warrior with an IBM) having to “drive” and help them through it. And could these guys navigate for Microsoft files on an operating system that doesn’t have a pretty interface smoothing the way??? Forget about it.

I got to be the genius, too, for a few minutes.

VERY frustrating for them.

But I must say, it warmed my antiquated IBM heart ;0)

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6 Responses to “I Hear The Craziest Things: Apple wants to help you help them…”

  1. I am just insanely jealous. I want an iPad. Those of us who live near Wegmans should be just given an iPad. Where is my iPad?

  2. JOYE says:

    What an adorable pic of the kitty. Love it. And I also want my iPad now. Where is Santa when you need him.

  3. JackieW says:

    I am helping my 9 year old grandson save his money he gets from chores, birthdays, other holidays..for an iPad and he’s on his way of getting one long before I get mine..it is on my wish list however. I think they are a wonderful device.

  4. Mary Preston says:

    I wish I was more techno savvy. Sounds amazing!!

  5. Robyn says:

    I got an IPad2 in April for the purpose of writing my novel(s). I admit I did not read an instruction annual or seek out the geniuses because I was too excited to just get to writing.. The only way I figured to quasi share my Word docs is to email them back and forth between my desktop computer an IPad2….type on the IPad for a few hours then email them. Now I find I do most of my typing on the IPad and little on the desktop. The problem with IPad is the docs are not actually saved. This is why I am sure to send my work back ‘home’ for filing on the C-drive.

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