Somewhat.
Last Wednesday evening Ben's MacBook Pro started acting up again. The machine already had the entire top case replaced two months ago because of keyboard issues and here we were again. This time the keyboard had suddenly become completely unresponsive. We attached an external one and were able to do the normal troubleshooting (resetting the SMC and PRAM), but the problem remained. After a totally useless 30 minute call to Apple Care, Ben made an appointment to take it in again to the Genius Bar for repair and unhappily resolved himself to being without his machine until the first of next week. He was able to successfully clone his drive, so restoring his applications and data wouldn't be as much of a clusterfuck as it was the last time we had to do this.
As I've written before, going to an Apple Store used to be fun for me, but lately it's become an unpleasant chore because of a certain—attitude—that the employees are starting to throw. So when we arrived at the Scottsdale Quarter store (where Ben bought the laptop and where it was last repaired) I expected the usual unfriendly customer service we've consistently gotten from Apple of late.
But that didn't happen. I was pleasantly surprised. Everyone from the concierge to the Genius himself was how I remember Apple used to be.
After listening to Ben explain that this was his only computer and it was the second time we'd been in for the same problem (and that I too was on my second MBP because of keyboard issues), we fully expected the guy to simply say, "I'm so sorry to hear that! We'll send it off for another bottom case replacement and you'll have it back in 3-4 days."
But he didn't.
"Hold on a sec…" he said, and disappeared to the back.
Several minutes passed, and he reappeared with a shiny new white box in hand.
"I spoke to my manager, and we're just going to give you a new one, if that's okay," he said. "We'd like to send your old one Engineering. They're actively tracking these keyboard issues."
I don't know if it was because it was a slow night or if he was genuinely interested in this problem (he struck me as not only an Apple employee but also a fan), but we then proceeded to have a long discussion about these keyboards and Apple's general design philosophy. It was very refreshing to speak to an Apple employee who actually knew their shit and seemed generally interested in their customers.
After we got back home, Ben booted to the cloned drive and restored everything to the new machine in 30 minutes. Back in business!
(As an aside, if you're a Mac User and you're not using Carbon Copy Cloner for your backups—you do backup, right?—you should be. It's proven to be much more reliable—and user-friendly—than Apple's Time Machine ever was.)
This doesn't mean won't bitch about Apple in the future if it's warranted, but this trip to the Genius Bar was definitely a much-needed breath of fresh air.