If the world ran like Apple Computers…

…everywhere would be chic, spotless, and maintenance free. Every man, woman, and child would be vegans and do Yoga and cars would run on solar power. And we would all be hopelessly caught in the doldrums of poor market share and even poorer conceived advertising campaigns. (Think iPod.)

However, we don’t live in the world of Macintosh, so we’re stuck with the humdrum life of going to work, getting paid, and coming home. That’s what makes my day. I walk in, flop on the couch, open the lid and I’m there. Internet, movies, email. Every delicious sin that man can think of right there. I can be a glutton, I can be a genious, I can be a saint. I can be anything, right there on my couch. Until something bad happens. Like happened this weekend.

Apple iBooks, certain of them at least, were/are plagued with a horrid little logic board problem. Now for the uninitiated, the logic board is a crucial piece of complex electronics that kind of tells the machine what to do and where to send what. If it goes bad, you’re fucked. And for a large number of people who purchased an iBook, that happened. When I first heard about it, I went online and checked the serial number range. (By the way, serial numbers are sequential for those who didn’t know. Quite handy information, really.) Lucky for me, my little iBook fell OUTSIDE of the range of the effective machines.

Except my logic board went out.

So I called support. They said “we’re sorry. it’s not the logic board.” And I said, “Oh but it is.” They said “but your iBook is outside the range of affected products.” I said, “But it’s affected nonetheless.” And now comes the interesting part: they want to bill me for “troubleshooting software”. $40. I was like “I don’t think so.” You see, I used to do their job. I used to sit in a cube, answer the phone, and tell people it wasn’t our problem. That’s right. I worked Tech Support. So the long and short of it is, my machine looked like it had the logic board issue, acted like it did, and so it did. (Nevermind the fact that I troubleshot it myself.)

Once I very politely informed the technician that I once did his job, he changed his tune and shipped me a box.

Amazing, really. Saturday he shipped the box. Monday at 4PM I received it, packed my iBook in it, and shipped it right back out. They received it Monday night. Tuesday they opened it. Wednesday (that’s today, by the way) they completed it, put it in a box and shipped it back to me. And I got it today at 10:00AM. Barely thirty-six hours later.

I doubt I would have been able to get faster service if I had DRIVEN it to the repair depot myself. (Go Airborne DHL.) But that’s the point.

Apple Inc. *knew* how crucial it was that I write this blog, and the five other things I’ve got a deadline on. They knew that my OCD dictates I check my email no less than once every four hours. They knew that I had to be able to read up on The West Wing, to write my short stories for the Lorian Hemingway Competition and to chat on iChat. So they fixed it and got it back to me.

And made me a happy customer for life.

So what if the world worked like this? Well, for one thing, restaurants would know what you want and have it ready when you walked through the door, “Here’s your steaming hot bowl of chili sir. And I hope you’re ready for desert because we’ll bring it out at JUST THE RIGHT MOMENT.” Or better: “I’m glad you dropped by sir. We took the liberty of ordering the car you’re going to want in your color last week and it’s here now. All you have to do is sign.” Or even better still. “I’m glad you chose me as your realtor. I took the liberty of custom building your dreamhome myself and the decorators are putting the final touches on it right now as we speak. I’m glad you’re wearing green. I told her green would be your favorite color.”

That’s the world I want to live in. The world where my food is hot, my house perfect, and everyone knows exactly what to do to make me happy. In the words of Juilet, “Aye me.”