The Genius Bar: Steve Jobs Huckster

I've always had difficulty understanding why so many computer nerds admire Steve Jobs.  He had some technical knowledge, of course, but he was not a computer genius by any stretch. I disliked him for his arrogance and his plagarism, and particularly took a dislike to him when he jumped the line to get a liver transplant, using, of course, his wads of money.  He gave little, if anything, to charity until he was diagnosed with pancretic cancer and then only to pancreatic foundations.  He was a selfish man with a huge ego who stole much of Apple's technology from the real computer geniuses, including the developer of the Unix operating system who died the same week as Jobs, with a small mention in the New York Times.  Granted, Jobs was a brilliant huckster, but then I've always been negative about Madison Avenue hucksters, most of whom do more harm than good.  I'm writing this because I had to bring my MacBook into Apple this week--again spilled liquid (ugh!) and as anyone with an Apple knows, spills and Apples, at least the Jobs kind, don't mix.

What rankles is the term Genius Bar, no doubt one of Jobs' hype ideas before he died.  How many of the technicians who work at Apple have developed huge egos as a result when they are, in fact, simply hardware technicians, and not always good ones. The genius to whom I was assigned lacked even the requisites of a good technician.  My Mag DC-in port has been acting up for quite a while and it finally died after the spill.  I salvaged the remainder of the computer by getting most of the liquid out, turning it upside down, removing the back and hard drive (couldn't get the battery out as it needs a special tool--Apple designs these things so you have to take it into their shop and pay mega bucks to replace a simple battery).  I wiped the boards down with alcohol then packed the whole thing in a bag of arborio rice (collects excess moisture) and tried it 24 hours later.  Yeah, it worked fine but I let the battery lose a good bit of power before trying the power adapter, which had finally, and mercifully I hope, died.

Back to my genius.  He said Apple won't fix a machine that has had liquid damage, I would have to take it somewhere else.  When I asked if I could change the  port myself, he said it was soldered to the mother board (which it is not).  I've ordered the part and keeping my fingers crossed that I can fix it.  Otherwise, I'm reclaiming my old IBM Thinkpad with windows XP.  Ordered some more RAM to jazz it up as it's very slow.  Never again will an Apple darkened my door!

Back to Jobs--I resent his and Apple's offenses against the English language (see Orwell's "Politics and the English Language").  Can't we please reserve the term "genius" for the Albert Einstein's of the world--and me, of course, if I actually fix the damned thing!

I salvaged most of the Arborio rice as I'm planning to make an apple risotto.