sdw2001

That’s because Apple stores are a friggin free for all.  Employees and customers everywhere….doing everything at the same time.  There is no “Genius Bar” anymore.  You check in, then sit down like you’re waiting at the dentist.  Then, a random employee comes up, looks at your device, and whisks it away to the back to fix it. He or she comes back…usually with a fixed device, and you can’t imagine what they did back there.   Then the same person is taking returns, going to the back to retrieve your new device, and checking out people buying things like iPhone cases. It’s a mess and has been since it started.  I miss the actual check out and Genius Bar counter.  

It's an experiment to come back to work? There is absolutely no health reason to do it.  Covid is endemic and not the plague we were all told it was.  The interventions clearly did nothing to stop it, from social distancing to masks to stay-at-home orders.  The virus does what it does.  We have vaccines, therapeutics, and strains that are far less deadly than the original.  For 90% of all people, Covid is a cold.  It's 99% or more of working-age people.   The reasons people are pushing for remote work have nothing to do with Covid.  It's about social engineering and remaking our society.  It's about "fighting climate change" and some bizarre Star Trek-like fantasy where money doesn't exist.  

As long as he doesn’t yell at me about “following science“

All kinds of problems today. This afternoon I was unable to download an app. Internet hanging all over the place. Third-party apps encountering network errors. So it certainly wasn’t just Apple. I have it on good authority that it is in fact likely related to what’s happening in Europe.  I know someone who keeps a close eye on Internet traffic and whose job involves looking for anomalies in terms of cyber attacks.

I don't agree that it's "confounding" as a value proposition.  Consider: 

iPad:  $329 for 64GB, $479 for 256GB (no 128gb option).

iPad Air:  $599 for 64GB, $749 for 256GB.  M1, Touch ID power button, pro motion.  

iPad Pro 11 inch:  $799 for 128GB, $899 for 256GB.  Face ID.  


So I find the last part misleading.  The trade-off is not "$50 for Face ID, pro motion and 128GB of storage."  The trade off is $50 AND half the storage (128 vs. 256) for Face ID and pro motion.   

Then we have the points about the iPad Air being a "great computer," with the caveat that the keyboard and pencil make it better to just buy a MacBook Air instead.  Granted, the iPad Air with keyboard and pencil (256GB) is $1427.  That's $400 more than the base MBA. Of course, the MBA doesn't have a touch screen or a Pro Motion display.  It's also a....laptop.  You can make your iPad into a laptop, but do you really plan to use it as such? Or are you buying an iPad to be an iPad?  I have an Air (4th Gen) and a new MacBook Pro 14".  I use the MacBook for real work, especially that which involves a lot of typing.  The iPad is great for games, email, social media, basic photo editing, watching video and more.  Maybe I'm old school, but doing "real work" on an iPad has never been my thing.  Instead, by iPad and phone have replaced the "non work" things I did with my laptops for years.   

So it's not confounding to me, but that's just my take.