Dad goes to the Apple store for the first time

Mom’s iPod battery stopped charging the other week.  Being the stay at home dad and keeper of Baby Mojo I offered for us to go by the Apple store to get a new battery.

A bit of background information:  Daddy Mojo doesn’t have an mp3 player.  I’ve got hundreds of cds and have burned some of them on the computer, but haven’t fully leapt over digitally yet.  Call me a relic or fan of album cover art, but all the new music I purchase is still on disc.  Somewhere Captain Planet is shaming me into making the leap fully to digital music.

When we arrived at the shopping mall with the Apple store the pedestrian traffic was light, a couple teens and families walking around.  Until I turned the corner and actually saw the Apple store and it was a hive of activity.  It was like a wide end of a funnel, people flowing into the store and a slow trickle of customers leaving.  There were about 40 people in the store at 2:00 on a Tuesday.

My first impression was that their customer service was amazing.  I knew nothing, but nobody at the store made snide remarks or taunted me with technological terms.  I was greeted at the door, asked how they can help me and within five minutes I was chatting with somebody who knew exactly how to help me.  Unfortunately as most of you know, the battery for an iPod can’t be replaced….so we ended up buying a new one.

Flash forward six days and I get a phone call from Kevin Metzger at TheDADvocate.   He says my day is about to get a whole lot better because I just won a new iPad.  It was for a survey that I had completed and my name was plucked randomly from all of the entrants.  Actually it wasn’t even plucked, the person who was plucked didn’t fill out their name and information, and mine was just above theirs, so they just went up one. 

Cool, an iPad.   I didn’t even have a laptop, so to go directly to an iPad was more than a technology neophyte like me deserved.    When Baby Mojo and I were in the store we played with the iPad, specifically a program that taught ABC’s phonetically.  The letters were cute animal shapes and Baby Mojo just loved it, laughing, pointing and wanting to touch this fabulously expensive machine that we now have in our living room.

It is amazing.  It’s like Minority Report, minus Tom Cruise and the bald girl.  Touch, move, download, play.  We’ve got the facebook, Fox News, NPR, Marvel Comic , Tweetdeck, Japanese and French language app downloaded and good to go.  I now get what people would talk about when they’d throw the term ‘app’ around. 

Big thanks to Kevin at The DADvocate.  He’s a rock star dad who really has a fabulous story with his family.  Do you have a second, and are a dad, to pop on over and complete his questionnaire?   It’ll only take five minutes and will help him build a more complete picture of what dads like, do and enjoy.

We also loaded some of the ABC phonic apps, but I can’t pry the iPad away from Mommy Mojo ….