How not to demo the new MacBook Pro

 

Apple Stores do a fine job demoing Macs, and iPhones/iTouches. The salespeople know their stuff, and never do the hard sell routine on the prospect. Besides, we all know that Macs almost sell themselves.

I stopped into the Tucson La Encantada store to give the new MacBook Pro the once or twice-over. As my MacBook Pro is only eight months old, I’m not a serious customer for a new one, but I was intrigued to see how much faster the new dual graphics card version performed.

The store was packed at 4:00 PM on a Saturday afternoon, and I waited a few minutes for one of the three new demo MacBook Pros to become available, and then moved in. The Energy Saver preference pane showed the graphics to be set to Better Battery Life. I clicked the Better Performance button, and was told that a logout was required. Due extensive reporting of this idiosyncrasy on various Mac web sites, I wasn’t taken by surprise.

The demo MBP logged out, but to my surprise, it then rebooted.

When it had finished the reboot, I checked the Energy Saver preference pane again, and found it still on Better Battery Life. Frustrated, I repeated changing the setting to Better Performance, logging out, and then watching a complete reboot. Each time, the MBP came back up with Better Battery Life set for the graphics card

I checked each of the two other floor MBPs. They all performed identically.

I lassoed a salesperson. Even with the Admin password, she was unable to get the change to Better Performance to stick. Looking somewhat abashed, she checked with the Genius on duty. She came back to report that the store demo new Macs are set to log out and reboot to a specific configuration that cannot be changed.

I opined that the MBPs should be set to Better Performance, as Apple would no doubt want to show off the new MacBook Pro’s fast graphics performance. She agreed, but said she was way too far down the employee food chain to do anything other than mention it to her manager.

Steve and Phil, are you listening? You need to tell all the Apple Store managers to get the new MacBook Pros to run with both graphics cards enabled. Otherwise, you’re not showing what the new MacBook Pro can do.

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