The Apple Store at the Pier: Atlantic City

Sometime last week, my computer, and iMac G5 began to malfunction to the point that it wouldn't turn on. I had called the AppleCare tech support, and they talked me through the steps required to get things going again, including the resetting of parameter RAM(which can be done by holding down the Apple Key+Option+R+P), and the resetting of the PMU(power management unit, unplugging the computer for 10 seconds, and then replugging it while holding down the power button). The woman who I spoke with was very polite, and kept me entertained and relaxed with a little bit of common chit chat, during the quiet waiting between startups and loadings.

After running the Disk Utility which can be found on the Mac OSX disk, by booting from the CD-ROM(holding down C during startup), they referred me to the Apple Store, which would be able to recover any files on my harddrive that I might need. Unfortunately, before I could get that far, I had impatiently gone through an erase and restore. After reloading OSX, it would work for a couple of minutes, and inevitably crash.

After procrastinating for a couple of days, I finally made an appointment with the Apple Store at the Pier in Atlantic City. Unfortunately for my friend and I, we parked at the other end of Caesars and had to walk through the lobby and gaming floor, struggling to keep the box elevated, by each grabbing the handle with one hand.
Finally we had arrived at the Pier shops, which consist of everything from Coach to Gucci, to a Brookstone, an upscale food court, and of course, our destination, The Apple Store.

I arrived at the Genius Bar a little before the time of my appointment, and I saw my name on the queue screen. The tech representative known as a "Genius" was helping another man with an issue on his laptop and told me he would be right with me. After a couple of minutes of aimlessly picking computers to play with, he told me he was ready, and I explained my problem.

Within only a couple of minutes they had determined that the hard drive was corrupted, and needed to replace. At first they told me that I would have to check it in to pick it up at another time because they didn't have the hard drive I needed, but then, they realized that it was the same hard drive for the 20 inch iMac, so they told me to come back in an hour, so they could replace the harddrive and reboot the OSX software.

During this time, my friend and I wandered around the mall, checking out all of the stores, and all of the beautiful things we couldn't afford. Also, we witnessed one of the most entertaining fountain displays, that takes place at the end of the Pier every hour. Eventually, we got tired of walking so we went to the Brookstone and utilized their very comfortable massaging merchandise, which we figured wouldn't be a problem because there was a woman who had been passed out in one of the massage chairs for at least a half an hour.

After our hour was up, we returned, signed some papers, and lugged the computer all the way to the car, and returned home. As soon as I get in, I plugged in my computer, and it was up and running, just very empty, so now it's up to me to fill up all of the empty space, all over again.

Needless to say, the service and support was excellent and free of charge, with the exception of the initial AppleCare enrollment, but everything is still working fine. Apple really takes care of its customers, and I'm glad to be one of them.