Apple replaced my iPad under warranty - this is so kewl

My iPad was acting up, claiming I didn't have a SIM card.

I took it into the Apple store and they reseated the SIM and said to bring it back if it did it again. It crapped out later in the week so last night I took it back.

The store was a freaking zoo full of customers. There were easily 150 people in the store. I spent about 10 seconds wandering around looking lost and one of the people in blue nabbed me, had me explain my problem. She punched my name and email address into the iPad she was carrying around and my name showed up on a big display at the end of the store. She said someone would be with me in 15 minutes - the display said I was 7th in line for iPad service. She had me sit at one of the big tables and get my iPad out and got me on an iMac to play with (I browsed DU on their free WiFi instead).

10 minutes later my cell phone got a message (remember, they said it was going to be 15)(I never did read it but it was from Apple) a tech greeted me by name (wait a minute, how the hell did he know who I was or where I was sitting? The original person was nowheres in sight) and had me explain the problem. He went in the back, got his own iPad and SIM card and swapped SIMs. My SIM worked in his iPad and his SIM didn't work in mine. He said, "OK, I'll go get you a new iPad". He was back two minutes later, unwrapping a brand new one. He put my SIM card in it, powered it up, make sure it worked, confirmed that I had backed up on iTunes so I didn't lose any data, had me sign a waiver, then while I watched blew away the data on my old iPad. I was in and out in half an hour. It would have taken less but I had to stand in line to buy a cable.

I was absolutely shocked. I have never had a customer experience anything like this. I'm used to stores taking it for a month and returning it more broken than it started.

I took the iPad home, hooked it up to my PC, fired up iTunes and watched while it re-synced everything. The only thing I lost was my desktop settings because I'd misconfigured iTunes to only refresh new apps. When I reconfigured it up upload everything, they loaded in a different order than I had them laid out.

My next computer is going to be an Apple.

Some say they cost more. Some say the lifetime cost of ownership is lower.

They simply have a very different way of peddling computers. That "attentive" service is built into the selling price of their products.

Sparkly bought a one year subscription of "One to One" service. It cost $100. For that she gets one hour per week of in store one to one tutorials on any Apple product. They assign Apple-certified "experts" on whatever topic you choose to discuss. That's the biggest bargain of the year, if you ask me. She's learned all her pro apps, including Logic Studio (a pro music production, scoring, recording, etc., app) and Final Cut (a pro video app).

We've also used them for more mundane stuff, like switching our old iPods for hand-me-down from one user to another.

Apple products have occasionally failed for us
(all computers, etc. do), but Apple has always
"made it right".

Tesha