Todd’s Personal Blog

I have to say that I really have to give it up for the folks at the Apple store on Michigan Ave. in Chicago, Illinois. To have this make sense I will have to explain the whole story, so here goes. One February, 2nd 2009 my father was admitted to Northwestern Memorial hospital because of various ailments, one of them being congestive heart failure. I flew from my home in Brooklyn NY to Chicago IL the very next day so I could be there for my father. When I arrived in Chicago I found that my father was completely sedated. I was listed as the contact person and as “Power of Attorney” over his medical decisions due to the fact that he was in a chemical induced coma because when he wasn’t on sedatives, he was on the verge of a heart attack.

Little did I know my iPhone did not seem to like being that far from home because from the moment I landed, my phone was acting up and not working at 100%. The phone just seemed glitchy at this point. I came to find that Call waiting was not working at all, even when I tried to reset that feature manually from the phone’s settings.  Since I was the person in charge of what was being done with my father at this point, I needed my phone to work and fast. I called my service provider; if you know the iPhone then you know who that is. My cell phone provider’s customer service department transferred me to 2 different people before finally giving me what they called a “Technical Person”. This guy said that he had done something on his end, now all I had to do was reset the phone by turning it off and then on again. Yeah, big surprise, that didn’t work at all. So I went to a branch store that my cell phone provider had in the area. Big surprise again, they said, “Oh, you should call the customer service line from your phone. Since you did that already you would need to bring the phone back Apple.” So I shrugged and took myself to the Apple store.

I walked into the Apple store on Michigan Ave, the “Magnificent Mile” as it is known, and the store seemed to fit the nickname of the street it was located on. I was greeted by a very friendly woman who directed me upstairs to the “Genius Bar”. I had delt with Apple in the past on minor computer problems so I was worried that I would have to make an appointment and wait a week to see someone. This was not the case. I spoke to again, a very polite woman, and after explaining my circumstances she ushered me to an Apple Genuis who was just finishing up with another customer. A very brief technical evaluation of my phone ensued and they surmised that the problem was not fixable by them, with that phone. So, after a 2 second pow-wow between the Genuis, the Genuis Bar Manager, and I can only assume a store manager, they came back to me and stated my options. Getting a new phone or trying to go back to my cell phone provider and seeing if they could work out the problem. I would temporarily be missing all of my applications and corresponding application saves or data contained therein. I weighed the option for a fraction of a second and said, “ok, new phone.” The Genius even backed up all of my pictures, contacts and safari bookmarks for me, then loaded them onto this new iPhone. I got the new phone and it worked perfectly, call waiting and all.

In conclusion I have to say that this whole experience, although very tough to deal with, was made easier by the smart and quick thinking of the employees at that Apple store. There was no corporate guidelines spued at me or talk of applecare protection or warranty. It is really quite nice to see that Apple employs people who are smart and empathetic to people in tough situations who are their customers. I have been and will definitely continue to be a very loyal Apple product consumer. They make amazing products that work flawlessly most of the time because they take the time to get it right the first time and not half ass it just to make a buck and release something so that it goes into that quarter’s sales figures. As far as my father is concerned, he is doing much better now and is out of the hospital after a month long stay… woo hooo for health insurance!

Again, thank you to all the employees at the Apple store on Michigan Ave who helped a customer between a rock and a hard place.

So for all of you kiddies out there who used to spend hours of your days sitting in front of the computer trying to build your idealistic city in the Sim City Legacy game series, now there is a ported version of the last Sim City offering, called Sim City and it’s on the iPhone. Atleast that seems to be the closest relation that I could make, perhaps this version for the iPhone would be better called a younger baby brother to SC4 for the desktop computer. I have to say, for not being able to use a mouse to play this game, the controls and movement in-game are very intuitive. For the most part the game acts similar to google maps on the iPhone with Zoom, pan, strafe, etc. Sometimes the sub-menus can get a little sluggish and annoying when loading things like choosing to biuld a water pump or water tower. The conclusion is that if you are looking for the same feeling and freaky fast paced game play that you might have had on the desktop while you played on fast forward for a few centuries, this simply is not that game anymore, but close. When moving applications or games from one platform to another, like when taking this game from the dektop setting where you have a full keyboard and mouse; to something that fits in your hand and has no mouse or separate keyboard, you kind of have to expect that the feeling will be very different. Imagine trying to use Photoshop with all of it’s tools and sub-tool sets on an iPhone, I think I’d rather see Jay-Z retire again and then say “Sorry I’m back again” and un-retire. I can say that the game is a nice throwback to the late nineties/early 2000’s version of SC4. Sim City on the iPhone is an engaging and fun game that I plan to use to keep myself occupied on the train from now on, instead of having to watch the person next to me eat their boogers. If you are looking to get this great little game for your iPhone, just go over to the Apple iTunes store either from your computer in iTunes or from your iPhone. FYI, if you plan on downloading this game straight to your phone you will need to use a Wi-Fi connection to do it because the game if over 10mb, I think it’s actually around 31mb. Althought the game is bulky as far as iPhone apps go, it is well worth it because you can see what all those megabytes are about when you see the graphics.