Thursday, September 17, 2015

Genius Bar?

Let's face it. We are PC people. All my go-to techies are PC people.

I do have an Apple iPhone and iPad that I love so I thought it wouldn't be too difficult if we got an Apple MacBook Air for our travels. I'd heard such great things about it from bloggers and friends. However, for PC people like myself who are not that technologically inclined, it's a steep learning curve. So much of how you do things on the MacBook is different from my PC desktop or laptop.

While we were in Pennsylvania, the MacBook screen suddenly went black! What the heck! That never happened with our other PC laptops. We looked online and discovered that it's been known to happen.

We tried several recommendations and the final one which is a PRAM reset worked.
  • Reboot a Mac and then immediately hold down the Command+Option+P+R keys
You will then hear the Mac reboot sound again, signifying that the Macs PRAM or NVRAM has been reset successfully.
You must hit the key combination before the grey screen appears otherwise it won’t work, you may need to try it once or twice until you get the timing right during restart, but once it works you can let the Mac system start as usual.
On the plane ride home we were able to watch three movies on the iPad and there was still power left, but the MacBook Air was out of battery power even though it's touted as having 12 hours.


We took the MacBook Air to Apple store's Genius Bar and it was checked by the technician. He said it was working fine and that movies take more power to watch on the MacBook Air than the iPad.

It was very obvious that we were neophytes at the OS operating system and they encouraged us to attend their workshops. We were very pleased that we could be trained on how to use our new Apple computer. This is something we don't get with our PCs. Then again, since I have my own customer support from my son-in-law and brother, I'm very grateful that I don't need to take a class for that.

23 comments:

  1. I am an Apple person. That's what we had at school. My husband is a PC but he has learned to use the iPad we recently purchased. He still fumbles if he has to use my MacBook Pro. My tech support is my son-in-law or daughter, both very tech savvy. Thankfully!

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  2. I think I will stick to my PC's. Right now I am having an amazing amount of trouble just getting to the ACS page with mine.

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  3. You must have missed my post about the Apple store when I went there to download the new operating system, Yosemite. I wrote about all the beginner's classes they have. BTW, I wouldn't own any other tech device than Apple. PC operating systems are insane.

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  4. I like my PC desk top computer and my laptop, too.
    David prefers his iPad.

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  5. you guys do well with technology I think!

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  6. I feel old, dumb and slow when I'm in the Apple store, but I do love my Mac.

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  7. Yeah, I'm android and PC, but I know someone who will be grateful to know this!




    ALOHA
    ComfortSpiral
    =^..^=

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  8. Way back, before the Apple Store was available, I had a problem with our Apple computer and took it to CompUSA to fix. Hundreds of dollars later (they changed the hard drive) and still the same problem, my Apple maniac brainiac son comes home from college and said the hard drive was fine, and we just needed to reinstall the 10 discs that came with the machine. Duh.

    Lesson learned - Apple brainiacs save me money and time. I love the Apple store and those geniuses behind the bar. They are patient even though they hear the same stories over and over and the fix is usually so easy. I find the Apple phone support has become less competent, but they are pleasant.

    I used to go in so often with questions and for lessons (I buy the one-to-one for $99 when I get a new computer), that as soon as I walk in, I would be greeted with "Hi Aunty!" All the young kids would be in the front playing with the display iPads and us older people would be in the middle with our tutors.

    It sounds like you had a lot of electronic gizmos with you on the plane and your trip. If you fly on Hawaiian Airlines, you can rent their gizmo and watch tons of movies/shows/games, etc. Flying 1st class, it is complimentary.

    How did your Apple earbuds work on the flight? I still have my big ear muff noise cancelling headsets and debating about upgrading to the small cute earbuds.

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    1. I used my Bose noise cancelling ear buds and they were absolutely AWESOME. The first time I turned on the noise cancelling switch, my eyebrows went right up to my hairline. Almost all the airplane roar disappeared and left me with my peaceful music. Sigh... It was wonderful. That noise cancelling technology is amazing. I can't fly without it now. The wonderful thing is that it's so small. I don't need the ear muff thing. Yae!!!

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    2. Awesomeness!!! Mahalo for the report!

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  9. Good for you for jumping in to the technology. I have a "Notebook", which failed me on vacation in Maine, as it went totally blank. When we got home I took it to the Geek Squad (Best Buy). The technician held down the "on" key and the "+" volume key, and there it was. Makes you feel totally inept!

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  10. They love you even you are a neophyte. They just want you as a long term customer. Sounds like the IMAC is a bigger pain that Ihave heard.

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  11. I like my PC desktop and my lap top. Tom has an android tablet, and we both have iPhones. Our two year contract is up on our phones and we could up grade, but we are comfortable with what we have for now. Learning new stuff is good, but can be stressful when you understand as little about how technology actually works as we do.

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  12. I'm so old school, partly becuz I don't want to learn new tech and when stuff is working fine I leave it alone. I carried the same cell phone for nearly 10 years and that old Motorola phone never, ever gave me one prob in it's entire time before I retired it. I had to change since it didn't have the qwerty pad and everyone at work would text a lot. I still miss that light weight and so many ounces phone that fit like a feather in a pocket. I have trac phone cuz I have a land line and I rarely use my phone to talk...mostly to take pictures if I don't carry my digital camera with me.

    I have a laptop and I love it. I also have a Kindle Fire but it's only becuz I wanted to hear audio books. I listen to books all the time now when I shop, when I walk my dogs, when I'm driving. I'm impatient so with the headphones on, I don't even notice the time nor distance. I see 'kids' with headphones but they're probably listening to music, me it's always books, books and books. Even the State Library has audio and e-books now. I just love it. I don't know how to even go online with the Kindle...but Amazon has a great support system too. Any simple, small question I just hope online and there I get my answers.

    I'll always be a Windows gal, that's what all the businesses I've worked at used so I am most familiar with. I even had to maintain my hotel's network since our IT dept. was short handed and we had to wait for help. Though one time I had to use the apple for one job and the learning was seamless. Wasn't better just different.

    It's not a PC vs. Mac thing to me, it's what one is most comfortable with.If you have old tech as long as it works for you that's all that matters. Technology is changing so much I listened to a PC show and they're saying that CDs and flash drives are going out all too soon. They advised everyone to put pictures and other things into the Cloud so that it may be accessible in the future....as it goes the way of video tapes. BB

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    1. I have so many things saved on DVDs and CDs. It's getting trickier and trickier to keep up with technology. I know the cloud is where it's going, but it scares me. I feel like I'd be giving up all my information into something that could be hacked into.

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  13. I'm used to both Windows and Linux

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  14. I have an ipad and I've never worked hard enough to get the hang of it. I'm going to have put more effort into it.

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  15. I know how to use my iPhone and my iPad. The MacBook Air is a whole different animal....

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  16. Well---Hub and I are both MAC (all the way) people. I used PC's at work years ago and until George and I were married. He introduced me to Mac's ---and I had a GREAT teacher. Yes--they are different ---but I wouldn't go back to PC's for all of the money in the world. We love our Macs --and all that they will do (which PC's don't).... We are also iPad, iPod, iPhone---and Macbook Air owners--which I use when we travel. We LOVE LOVE LOVE them all....

    Hugs,
    Betsy

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  17. thanks I learned something about my macair, i'm considering buying an iphone!

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  18. I have a MacAir so I will tuck that bit of information away should I ever need it. You seem to keep up with technology quite well.

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  19. Not sure I could afford a Mac system so it is good to know that I am probably in good shape with my PC.

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  20. I sure love my Macs. I've only ever had them!

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