Appointment with Apple

Even in the middle of The Boulevard, Baton Rouge’s pristine new outdoor shopping center at the Mall of Louisiana, the silver exterior of the Apple Store looks like an alien spacecraft landed and squashed about a sixth of a city block into an indiscernible pancake. But the interior, spacious and airy with its light wood grain tabletops and plenty of sunlight, is much less intimidating. The customer-friendly feel began even before my visit to the first Apple Store to open in the state. It started when I stumbled across a service Apple calls “Personal Shopping.”

Designed to alleviate the stress and frustration of computer stores, Personal Shopping allows customers to make a reservation online for a one-on-one with an Apple associate for a 30-minute block of time. I chose 10:30 a.m. to 11 a.m. on a recent Tuesday morning.

I counted nine employees buzzing around the store, and even that early more than a dozen shoppers were there, looking at iPods and strolling to U2’s “The Sweetest Thing.”

“It’s the hottest store in town,” the clerk at the Clarks next door said. Two workers wore bright blue shirts, and I recognized them from the Web site as Apple concierges. I wasn’t in the store 30 seconds before a plucky concierge asked me if I needed assistance. I told her I had an appointment, and she introduced me to Brian, who was patient, attentive and showed me the bells and whistles on the MacBook Air, a skinny laptop weighing fewer than three pounds.

It wasn’t by design, but my next question tested the limits of this whole Personal Shopping apparatus Apple has going. I had been unable to import video with my external hard drive set as the scratch disk into Final Cut Pro, Apple’s professional-quality video editing software. Final Cut was telling me there were time code breaks in the video that weren’t actually there. Consequently, I was using up all the memory on my MacBook Pro’s hard drive to store footage. Brian thought about it for a second then admitted that I needed a genius.

Apple provides those, too. Mac users can make appointments online with a Mac Genius, so-called know-it-alls who help solve technical problems with any Apple product. My name wasn’t listed among the next 10 customers flashing across the flat screen leader board, but Jason at the Genius Bar offered to squeeze me in as soon as he could. With a few minutes to wait, I walked past the “Just for Kids” area, a low table with four computers and black squishy beanbags for children, and perused the latest iPod speaker systems.

My first disappointment of the day came when genius Jason didn’t know the answer to my problem, but he quickly referred me to another associate who specializes in a suite of Apple’s creative software, including Final Cut. This guy was in the middle of a one-on-one tutorial, but he turned around, processed my questions and offered two solid fixes for me to try at home. “If that doesn’t work, bring it in and we’ll take a look,” he said.

Even though I was bounced around to three different specialists, I got a strong feeling that someone at the Apple Store could actually help me face-to-face, if not on this trip, then on the next when I had more information. A Mac Genius dialing (800) APL-CARE from the store would have been a waste of time, not to mention depressing. My only advice is to prepare well for the appointment. The more a customer knows about their hardware and software and the more specific the questions asked, the more they can help you.

The first time I read about Personal Shopping my head filled with visions of Hollywood A-listers closing down American Apparel to buy T-shirts in peace. It seemed like a luxury. But having been a personal shopper now, and considering the amount of money and information we have invested in these technologies, a little undivided attention from the mother company doesn’t seem so absurd. It seems more like a necessity, like the way it should be. apple.com/retail/malloflouisiana