A Visit to the Apple Store

by Fritz Wagner

I went into the Apple Store last Friday. My PC harddrive had gone silent, although it was still new and the warranty was fresh.  My wife had a new Hewlet Packard laptop with Vista installed (and Windows 7 promised) but her frustration level continued to rise so she had stopped trying to take charge of it.  My son has been a Mac user for 25 years and insisted the time had come for me to try it.  So I drove to the posh* shopping center and walked into the store with no words in the windows, only white silouhettes of apples with a bite missing. 

Inside, the place was a zoo.  A deliberately spartan room filled with long counters topped with computers.  The large staff wore color coded T-shirts: orange for concierge (the department store floorwalkers of the pre World War II years?), baby blue for "specialists," and  navy blue for "geniuses" (a "genius" is a technician).  I went up to a baby blue specialist and asked her if she could help me. She said she couldn't because she was working the cash register. I asked if she could take my money. She said yes. Then I said I wanted such and such with a warranty and word processing program here is my credit card.  I was out of there in ten minutes.  I was very glad to be out of there in ten minutes!

No one in that room was under twenty or over thirty-one, or so it seemed.  There was an atmosphere of constant frantic activity.  I asked one of the "geniuses" a question. It was difficult but I needed an answer. Two geniuses later—one unshaven and one two hundred pounds overweight— I was told that the genius who could answer my question had just left for lunch.  I was also told the color-coded T-shirts were on the way out.

I spoke to a friend today and told him I had gotten a Mac. He said, "So, you've crossed to the dark side."  Yes, I admitted.  "Do me a favor?" he asked,. "Just don't talk about Macs when there are non-Mac people in the room."  I promised.  I called my son.  I told him Avast, my anti virus program, was not available for Mac. What was I to do?  He started chuckling. Apparently it wasn't needed.  What about my AdAware? Spybot? Not needed. What about Spyware Blaster and Malwarebytes? Not needed.  Now he is laughing.  What about my HiJackThis and AntiRootKit? Now my own son is roaring with laughter.

What is the point of this little story?  Those young people left a strong impression on me.  It was an impression of instrumental reason developed to a high degree and childlike credulity in non-technical matters that would seem to present an obstacle to the development of a mature personality.  Of course I am not a teacher and do not see what sort of moral and spiritual qualities characterize those young people who are emerging from our education system.  But it gave me pause. 

It also occurred to me that these young people probably voted for Barack Obama, perhaps not because they cared about how his ideas measured up when the issues were examined, but because, to quote black author Shelby Steele, they were racially motivated (redeeming their guilt for white advantages).  But more certainly I would say they are the children of a materialistic, self-absorbed generation, in addition to being untrained in history, literature, languages, philosophy and the like (We used to lump them together as "the liberal arts.").  But perhaps I am completely wrong.  It just looks rather bad from the outside where I watch.  Of course grace can and does touch and change people and it doesn't matter how deprived they might be in one way or another.

In any event the foregoing ties in with this week's Eric Voegelin quotation On the Pathos of Science and the Spiritual Eunuchs  —perhaps a bit of serendipity.   

*posh. P.O.S.H. stood for port out, starboard home. On the Pacific and Orient steamships sailing from Britain through the Mediterranean, the intense sun from the South was avoided if one booked a room away from the sun—at a premium, of course.