Oh boy.  What an experience my trip to the Apple Store was...  Apple is experiencing growing pains alright.  While I did walk out with what I wanted.  I had to go through some shit to achieve that.  This is not something I'm accustomed to when dealing with Apple.. well the apple that was anyway.  This new Apple sucks.  I hope they just release their OS for X86 so I can do-shit-myself.

For all of you that don't know already.. my left apple key broke.  No big really.. the keyboard is a little cheap.. but whatever.  I needed my left apple key, so I swapped my right one for it.  Pretty easy.. a jeweler's screw driver and a steak knife and it popped off quite easily.  Swapped it with my left then replaced the right with the broken one for cosmetic purposes.  As long as you dont press it it doesn't come off.  I made myself an appointment to see a "Genius" at the "Genius Bar" and trotted down to check it out.  That apple maintains complementary support like this w/o question is commendable.  The quality of the support leaves much to be desired though.  I presented my laptop, and easily removed my broken key and said "Can I have a new apple key?"  The guy looked at me with a pained look and said "hmm I think they have to replace the whole keyboard."  I said "hmm i don't want to send this back cos its been sent back twice" and then I informed them of how easily you could remove a key and replace it.  I said "I know you can because the left apple key used to be the right apple key."   He winced again and went in back.  At this point I contemplated heading to radio shack and buying a cheap set of jeweler's screw drivers and quickly hitting the conveniently located black macbook floor model and saving myself a warranty repair.  He came out and asserted that there was no way he could replace just the one key and said that it needed to be sent in for repair.  I told him that it'd been in repair for 30 of the last 90 days and that another 2+ week dispatch was unacceptable for a 10 cent piece of plastic.  Finally when I said "i don't believe you.  I KNOW you can replace the key because I replaced the key!", he went in back one more time and came back out in short order with the key replaced (from a DOA macbook in the back).  He kindly informed me that if I had any further keyboard problems that I would have to send it in for repair, he also told me not to tell anyone that I swapped the keys in the future as it would void my warranty.  Void my fucking warranty?  The warranty is the only fucking thing about this laptop that WORKS.  Anyway, having got what I wanted I fled the scene.  I thought about it for a while.  Why in the fuck would this void my warranty?  It's cosmetic and has nothing to do with the function of the system.  Further, there is NO WAY they could tell that I swapped the keys w/o my saying so.  I only even did it because my fucking laptop had been in repair for 4 weeks and I didn't want to have to send it back so quickly.

I said it before, I'll say it again.  Don't buy a Macbook.  In fact I'm almost about to tell you not to buy an Apple computer at all.  Especially with this excessive policy on cosmetic changes to the hardware.  I love MacOS.  I hate this laptop's quality.  I miss my iBook.  It didn't burn my lap, it had a decent battery life, it didn't have sharp edges on the keyboard.. sure it was 700Mhz.. but it checked my E-Mail and ran X11.  I also miss the Apple that was then.  The one with the 2 day turnaround, the knowledgable and polite phone support.  They seemed more used to dealing with smart people.  Now that the masses have an iPod they don't focus so much on the quality they had before.. because they have to scale to their new consumer electronics user base.

--_-