iLife, iLove

I am a Mac person and have been since 1987 when my husband bought me a Mac II as a wedding present. Since then, I have had several generations of Macintosh computers and laptops, although I haven't gotten an iPhone, just don't need one, and now own my first Nano iPod.

My Macbook died just before I had to leave on a week-long business trip, OK, I panicked, and arrived at the mall with my comatose machine and a problem: I needed contact with my office email while I was gone, and understood they didn't have enough time to fix the ailing beauty, just eighteen months old.

The mall is a Simon Mall, upscale, with Macy's, Bloomingdale's, Saks Fifth Avenue, and Lord & Taylor as the anchor shops, along with that maze of stores that appear in every Simon Mall across the country: Coach, Bebe, all of the Gaps, Banana Republics, Abercrombie, etc.

The mall was empty except for one store: The Apple Shop. I had to make an appointment to purchase a new computer, that's how crowded. And lucky for me, I happened to have gotten there on the release date of the new MacBook Pro, the upscaled Macbook with the seven hour battery and the amazing screen, which allowed me to save a lot of money if I had wanted to buy a MacBook Pro although I ended up spending more money than I would have if I had just bought another now-obsolete Macbook.

Genuis Bar, those are the men and women, who answer all of our dumb questions. They are the best, funniest, smartest, quirky customer service people in industry.

So it doesn't surprise me to learn that despite everything, Apple profits continue to rise. What about Steve Jobs?