Little Feet

So, most every portable computer I’ve ever used (all Macs) has had a problem about its little rubbery feet. They come off. No, I take it back, my old Graphite iBook didn’t have the problem, but you know what I mean.

On the older models, the feet were stuck onto the surface with some kind of adhesive that always failed, leaving a nasty sticky spot on the bottom of the computer. On white iBooks and metal PowerBooks, the feet snap into little expensive-looking metal sockets, and this is a better design but still not good enough. The feet still pop out if, for example, they are dragged across a surface that offers a lot of friction. And if it happens often enough they either get lost or break.

It happened to me with my trusty iBook. First I tried various lame experiments about gluing the broken foot back into the socket. No luck. I didn’t want to use superglue or epoxy or anything that drastic because there’s a screw craftily hidden inside the socket, that might have to be unscrewed for repairs. And all the rubbery, removable glues I tried just wouldn’t stick at all.

So I went looking for a replacement. I tried the local low-level Mac repair place, and the guy there said they were out of them but he would order them and it would take 24 hours. Ha ha ha! I went in 48 hours later and found another guy who said only high-level Authorized Repair Stations could get the feet.

Next I went a-googling, and found out that Apple sells the feet in 3-packs, but only to resellers. And the resellers will sell you a 3-pack for $19.95. About this point, smoke began to come out of my ears. After adding tax and shipping, I figured I’d be spending close to ten bucks for the foot I needed, and another twenty for the two I didn’t need.

At that point I did what anyone else in my position in this day and age would do: I went to a web discussion board to bitch and moan. How inelegant and non-classy and dumb of Apple, I fumed. Why not sell 10-packs to retailers for ten bucks, and then the retailers could sell one foot for five bucks, or whatever, and make everyone happy? Man, I could run Apple SO much better than Apple does.

A bunch of people told me to go buy stick-on rubber feet at a hardware store. What?!?!? Stick big clumsy ugly generic feet on my sleek and lovely iBook? Never!

One guy said I should make a video of me going around town putting up signs denouncing Apple for mistreating its customers. /8^D

But then another guy said “When I had the same problem, I went to the Apple Retail Store and the Genius gave me a new foot and a bottle of water.”

Well duh.

I marched on down to the Store, hung out at the Genius Bar for a while watching a new space-bar being installed, then told the Genius my problem. By the time I finished my sentence he was opening a drawer and fishing out a shiny new iBook foot, which he handed over with a smile. Hey, if anyone from Apple Retailing is reading this, that was Eric at the Palo Alto store.

Those stores do a lot more than just ring up sales at the cash register. A while back my wife had some technical problem that I couldn’t help with, and I told her to go down to the Store and ask the Genius. She was too lazy: she just called up the store and asked whoever answered the phone about her problem. And got a cheerful and correct answer. Just think about that in the context of all the miserable tech-support experiences we read about and experience all the time.

Sorry for rambling on about it, but this was a really refreshing experience for me and I just wanted to give the Apple Store credit for completely reversing my attitude about those little rubbery feet.