Apple to the Great White North

Image representing Apple as depicted in CrunchBase — Image via CrunchBase

So folks, its official! At 10 am on Saturday the Apple Store is opening at the 5th Avenue Mall in Anchorage.

This is great news for us up here in the Last Frontier. We have not had a place to go for official support for our iPads, MacBooks, iPods and iPhones.

If we wanted service on these products we would have to send off our beloved gadgets to the Lower 48 or take a road trip to Seattle to visit a Genius Bar.

I know first hand about this. Last September I purchased a brand new iPhone 4 from the AT&T store in Wasilla and not 24 hours after I bought it something weird was happening on the screen. It was sort of like a blur in the left hand bottom corner.

The next day I took it back to the AT&T store and they said that could not do anything about it and told me to either; 1. visit the MacHaus or 2. Conatct Apple.

I headed over to the MacHaus. MacHaus is (or was) Alaska’s version of the Apple Store. It was a third party Apple retailer, sort of like those cell phone kiosks you see in the mall. The guy said he couldn’t help me and in fact said that they don’t do any warranty work on Apple products at all.

So I called 1-800-MY-APPLE and the customer service agent was happy to help me IF I just put my new iPhone in a box and send it to them.

No way! I couldn’t be without my iPhone.

Luckily I found out that the problem with my screen was happening to a lot of other iPhones and it was some sort of production glitch in the new verison. The forums said it would go away with use and sure enough it did after just a week or so.

With that being said, as of Saturday, us folks that are drunk on Apple juice have no fear, Steve and the boys will have no problems getting even more of our paychecks.

I just wonder if the grand opening is in concert with the release of the new iPhone 5 and the sending out of our PFD checks in a month or so?

I think it just might be time to take another sip of the juice, don’t you?