Not that bar - the one at the back of an Apple Store.
I have an older iPhone and a MacBook Pro. Not saying how old, but they are both powered by a steam engine. Other than I am wearing out the keyboard on the Mac, it still does everything I need. I wanted to find out about repairing the keyboard... and looking at the newest MacBooks. No question that the iPhone was due to be updated.
I thought we might be able to go to the nearest Apple Store in San Antonio (another reason for this trip) and have one of the genii (genuises?) give me a quick opinion on the feasibility of a repair. Nope. We got our name in on the "walk in appointment" list, with a 2-hour wait. Oh well, it gave us time to thoroughly check out the MacBooks, MacBook Pros, and MacBook Airs. The newest, bestest is a little faster than my current model, but with really pretty keyboards. And price tags. Of course, the newest, bestest doesn't have the ports I currently use (like USB2, and my favorite slot on the computer: the SD card reader, for downloading photos). Apple is good about going with the newest, fastest way to hook into their computers, at the rejection of the current technology. Of course, you can buy adapters that allow you to connect your old peripherals to the new computer... or just by new peripherals that will be bestest and fastest with a new computer.
Or, for about 1/4 the cost of a new computer, put a new keyboard in the geriatric model. I decided to think about it... a repair would take 4 to 5 days in the store, or have to be sent out; I don't have that kind of time. Two hours of waiting for a 10 minute diagnosis.
On to the phone...
My good ol' iPhone has been getting a bit wonky with the battery. Not bad for a phone that is now 5 generations old. I liked the size of my 5s - all the newer iPhones are bigger... and much bigger. I asked about an iPhone SE (same size factor as my 5s): "Well, that is the oldest technology we still support."
Damn whippersnappers!
I have a cell phone plan that Verizon would like to see go away: real unlimited data. I have been a data customer since before 3G; grandfathered in. At this point, more like great-great-grandfathered in. I buy my phones outright. The Apple sales guy (not to be confused with a genius) was a bit surprised - apparently most folks go with the pay-$39-per-month plan and get a new iPhone every two years. Verizon has a similar plan, but you get to move to a different data plan.
I decided on an iPhone 8. Glass front and back (doesn't matter much to me), faster processor (nice), better camera (I use actual cameras most of the time), wireless charging (nice feature), and no headphone jack (they did away with those with the iPhone 7 ). I like a headphone jack, but this allows the phone to be more "water resistant." Not to be confused with water-proof.
The sales guy switched the sim card from my old phone to this new one, so no activation fee. Loading all my info/settings/photos/etc from the cloud took a while, but sure beat entering all those settings again. "Oh, how about syncing up to my Apple Watch?"
"You have an Apple Watch? Cool!" That took longer than moving all my info from one phone to the other. And I didn't discover until we had left the store that it wasn't working properly with the watch. Nothing that another hour or so of fussing with it couldn't fix. Yes, I really like the Apple Watch; and, yes, it is functional and handy.
And now, it is functional and handy once again, with a new phone.
So, that pretty much took the whole day.
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