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On Monday I went to the Apple store in Market Mall and was amazed how busy it was at 12:30pm.  No wonder Apple is making record profits!  I went because I bought a bluetooth hands free ear piece from Apple, and something happened to my cable.  My Mac no longer recognizes my iPhone when connected using that cable, and it no longer charges my ear piece.  I asked about getting a replacement cable, and was told I would have to speak to a Genius.  They were so busy, I couldn’t get an appointment the same day.

Now while Apple may win awards for customer service, I don’t think it should have taken a genius to know that I don’t want to drive for 40 minutes back to the store some other time to get an answer to my dilemma.  Can I buy another cable from Apple and if so, how much?

If I had walked into a IBM PC clone retail store, they wouldn’t have said “make an appointment” to get the answer, and I would have found out what my options were right away, or they would have said “we will have to research it and get back to you.  What’s your phone number?”.  Apple didn’t even offer.

Prior to buying an iPhone I used a Palm Tungsten T3.  IMHO, this was the best model Palm ever produced, even if it lacks Wifi.  The lack of good Wifi support even with an SD Wifi B card, was one of the primary reasons I bought an iPhone.  I didn’t actually plan to buy an iPhone, but when I was attending WWDC 2008 I was frustrated that I couldn’t use my Palm for sending email or browsing the web because I kept getting Fatal Exceptions.  It worked fine at home, although it wasn’t the quickest web browsing experience, and sometimes web pages just didn’t look all that great. 

In contrast the web browsing experince on the iPhone is amazing.  I used my buddy’s iPhone at the conference to pickup my mail and was amazed at how close web pages are rendered to the desktop.  It was the consolidation of a cell phone, which I only occasionally use and could not justify, and as Jobs put it “a break through Internet device”,  that prompted me to fork over the money for an iPhone without a contract.  I opted not to get a data plan for the phone, because I couldn’t justify the cost since as a Canadian I would be paying some of the highest cell phone rates in the world.  The only thing I miss about not having data is being able to use the GPS with google maps while travelling.  Instead I have to use a map program that downloads all the map data for a pre-selected area.  I also miss not having data a little while at work, since they don’t provide or allow Wifi on the network.

The iPhone hasn’t completely replaced my Palm yet, because I don’t want to license and use Outlook at home, and Apple doesn’t supply ToDo list management to the same extent it’s available on my Palm.  Eventually I’m sure the iPhone will become my only PDA, even though Apple doesn’t market or support the iPod Touch or iPhone as such, especially if you’re using a PC.