Technology, Paperweights and Permanency

I’m sure you all remember me trudging into class with my pretty pink Macbook Pro. As a PC user, I had put a lot of time and thought into whether or not to buy a Mac or another PC. I opted for a Mac despite the PC users in my life insisting that I would regret it. Man, were they right. With my purchase date less than two months ago, I have grown extremely attached to my Mac. All of my research, my writing, even my calendar is on it. So of course, it breaks. And being that it was only a month old, I hadn’t backed anything up yet (I know! I know! First rule of being a diligent student). To make matters worse, the Apple store employee I spoke to insists that there is no way to take the documents off of the computer without paying for some mysterious component and a new screen that will run me $750 to fix. This is when I began to wonder why I paid for Apple care when the company can deny manufacturer’s error and insist I damaged my computer. Return policy? Out of the question. So here I am with a $2,000 paperweight and a pile of missed homework that is completed, just out of reach. Isn’t that every student’s nightmare? This made me think of brand loyalty and the iTunes ‘borrowing’ policy. Maybe switching to Mac was a bad idea. After all, PC’s aren’t quite as monopolized as Apple products. Bad customer service is just something that Apple customers have to deal with because there’s not much competition for fixing or refurbishing Apple products as there is for PC’s. Or, perhaps I just had a bad experience and Apple isn’t such a bad company. However, with digital products becoming more common, it’s amazing to think of how big of an effect a broken computer can have on daily life now.