My very first computer, purchased in the mid 1980s, was an Apple IIC, but then I switched to PCs and the gothic torments of Windows. The day before yesterday, I bought an Apple iBook, and in some respects it was far easier to set up than the Zeos, Gateway and Dell desktops and Compaq laptop (total lemon!) that have filled the years between Apples. However, I clearly have become Windows 'path dependent'? and it is taking a little while to figure out how to do things on an Apple. For example, I spent a good twenty minutes (actually it was an *awful* twenty minutes) downloading Mozilla Firefox and trying to change the privacy preferences, because I prefer to have a few illusory shreds of privacy. Without having 'Internet Options'? as an, um, option under 'Tools,'? I was at a loss as to how to access the box that would facilitate this, and all the Mozilla help function did was show me a picture of the box, so I would know what it looked like in the seemingly unlikely event I was ever to stumble across the actual operative function. I tried all sorts of increasingly silly and/or complicated ways to access it, and then finally I asked myself: Could the Mac manner of doing things possibly be stupider or more counter intuitive than the Windows way? Took a deep breath, assumed the unfamiliar posture of a rational actor, years of Windows have sorely depleted my stores of common sense, clicked the word Firefox in the tool bar and found what I needed under 'Preferences.'? Doh.

So far I m pleased with my Apple iBook s performance but the actual process of purchasing it was a bit annoying, hence the title of this entry. The smartest thing I did was to research my options thoroughly beforehand at the Apple store online. I m not including a link because then you ll think I blog on commission, plus they owe me $100 which you will note if you are bored enough to keep reading, has me seriously miffed. Among other things I learned online was that my faculty status entitled me to an 'educational'? discount on the laptop, which worked out to be about $50 and was not something I would have figured out at the store. Also Apple is running two promotions, one that will get you a free iPod mini if you buy a qualifying computer, the other providing $100 towards a printer if you buy it from them contemporaneously with a computer. I went for the printer, only to find out that hundred dollars is not taken off the purchase price, but rather comes in the wretched form of a rebate, more on that in a second.

The Apple store was crowded with customers and also people looking to check their e-mail for free. I know this because I did exactly that at an Apple Store in downtown Chicago last year. In my own defense the business center at the hotel where I was staying was closed on Sundays, which is what drove me to scam the free Internet time the first time, the follow-ups being sort of gratuitous and inexcusable. Why hadn t I brought my Compaq laptop along for the trip, you might wonder. Well, among other problems it doesn t respond well to travel, portability apparently not being an attribute of the Compaq laptop model I stupidly selected. Jostling tends to make it fail to recognize its own power source. It also gets temperamental about acknowledging its own Ethernet card (sometimes yes, sometimes no) so I bought an external Ethernet card as back-up. It s response to this was total melt down, requiring yet another reinstallation of Windows, requiring yet another call to Microsoft requesting codes that will enable me to reinstall software like Word and Powerpoint. Yes I have uploaded them more times than my license authorizes, thanks for asking, but always on the same loser Compaq laptop, which is surely evident from my data trail, leave it to Microsoft to make the process of keeping it alive and useful even more complicated and irritating than Windows alone manages. Anyway, all these people in the Apple store were checking their e-mail at the demonstration computers and one woman carelessly left her e-mail inbox open when she departed, which I briefly considered e-mailing her friends about using her own e-mail account.

I had a very nice Apple salesperson named Emily. I sought her out because I ve been patronized and insulted by too many men who think they have to dumb down technological information for me, and she was great, except for the part where she assured me that my printer came with a cable to connect to my iBook. It didn t, and buying the cheapest one I could find required a trip to an office supply store during the forehead puckering horrors of back to school shopping, plus $25 I could otherwise have put towards an ink cartridge. Two ink cartridges, one black and the other color, cost twice as much as the printer itself did, after rebate. Do they make that ink out of ground up caviar and diamonds? The printer can also scan and copy and it assures me with a greenish glow that it is 'Ready'? to mainline more pricey ink even as I type. Anyone know a way to refill the cartridges with freebie pens and mashed crayons? I ve got drawers of those. The ink cartridges, I m thinking, should be stored in a safe.

So back at the Apple store: Once I had my order finalized (iBook, printer, external hard drive for extra memory, and an extended warranty for which Apple can thank my Compaq laptop for convincing me is a wise investment) the wait to check out was so long Mother Theresa would have been cursing (as well as proselytizing and soliciting money for Calcutta House no doubt). This plus having to be present in a shopping mall generally was a severe downside of not buying everything online, but I did learn a lot from Emily plus she helped me shlepp everything to my car, after I turned down her kind offer to completely set up my laptop for me, because I wanted to learn as much as I could about the iBook from working through the process of configuring it myself, which turned out to be easy, plus the risk that Emily was a secret hardcore snuff porn aficionado. She seemed wholesome enough, but book, cover, right?

Now about that $100 printer rebate: It requires a form that I had to find online because the evil Apple Cash register person (not Emily) did not provide me with one even after I asked her to do so twice, her previous customer service position having been at the Department of Motor Vehicles. The rebate form demands a copy of the sales receipt, and the 'UPC codes'? cut from the heavy duty boxes that the iBook and printer came in. After I mail this stuff to somewhere in Indiana (cornfield? prison?) I have to wait eight weeks for the rebate check, which I will only receive if I followed the arcane, tiny-fonted directives correctly, and I mail everything in within 30 days of purchase. Note that I am only permitted four weeks to complete the forms but Apple allows themselves eight weeks to fill out the check, which they already know will be for $100 since they were the ones who devised the insidious rebate promotion. Here is what I want to know: Why couldn t Apple just have taken $100 off my purchase price? Why make me find and fill out a form that demands the model and serial numbers off the printer and computer UPC codes, and then make me include the box-cut UPC codes themselves? And why must I disengage them whole and intact from the boxes? I didn t have any scissors up to that job, so I had to resort to a knife that enjoyed cutting through cardboard so much it kept on going into my finger, yeeeouch. I hope that blood splatters don t disqualify the UPC codes. Apple knows full well I bought an iBook and qualifying printer at their store, for which they made dang sure they got their money on the spot, no forms, UPC codes or eight week delay for them. Apple management obviously assume that if they make it complicated enough to get the rebate, not everyone will apply for it, and for this Apple is rather rotten.

Cross posted at Sivacracy.net.