Now that's iService

We have received an update on the status of Generalissimo Francisco Franco. You may recall that we last saw the General (aka Emp. Peng.'s old Apple laptop) having been sent back to Apple's service department for the third time to try to fix a problem. To be fair, they actually fixed the problem the first time, but they created a secondary problem, and fixing that created a tertiary problem. A week after we sent it in with the tertiary problem, we got a call from Stuart over at Apple's customer service. I still can't get over what he said: "The part we need for the repair is not shipping on a schedule we can anticipate at this time." Seriously, those were his exact words. Rather than wait for a part that may or may not ship in our lifetimes, Apple has decided it would be more expedient to just ship us an entirely new computer. So that dent in the casing that annoyed the guano out of Emp. Peng. will be taken care of.

As if the saga could get any more interesting, here is where it takes a turn for the "Day-yamn!" Apple no longer makes the Powerbook G4, so they are sending us "the closest thing we have." Take the specs of the computer we sent them, multiply by 3, and that is approximately the closest thing they could come up with without going under any of the specs of the original. On the scale of We Landed A Man On The Moon With The Computing Power In A Digital Watch, the old computer got us to Pluto and the replacement computer can warp us halfway to Alpha Centauri. What's more, the Pluto computer showed every moment of its 3 years of use, and we'll be getting a brand spanking new replacement that costs $1,100 more now than the old one cost before we put those years of hard use on it.

I'll really hand it to Apple customer service. They definitely know how to go above and beyond in making a problem right.