For some reason, the absence of light of any color coming from my laptop’s battery charger catches my eye near the end of my workday. I jiggle it. Nothing. I look at my battery indicator. 12% and draining. I jiggle the charger in the wall socket. Nothing. My brain pops memories of the thing starting to come apart, moving my worry meter closer to the red zone and firing a few “I warned you” messages. I unplug the thing from the wall and plug a lamp in to make sure there’s juice. Yep. I plug the charger back in. Nothing. My number one work tool, my link to the internet, will soon be dead for lack of electrons.
My new Apple Monkey Knuckle
In less than an hour, I’m standing at the Genius Bar of the closest Apple Store, at Southcenter Mall. I’m assigned to Lauren, a tall young woman with light freckles and a radically angled hair style who greets me with a confident smile. She grabs a spare charger and we fire up my machine to diagnose my system. Yep, the charger is dead. And oh by the way, your original battery has lost some of its holding capacity, you might want to consider a new one.
And what’s going on with the corner of that typing surface? She points at the spot where my right wrist usually rests and sure enough there’s a chip and a crack. That’s a defective part, we can replace it. No charge. Seriously? Yes, let me check my tech schedule. There, we can have that housing kit installed in half an hour. Will that work? And just so you know, the kit includes the top case, the keyboard, and the bezel around the display.
Half an hour later, I walk out of there with my four-year-old MacBook looking brand new, with a new battery and new charger. I also have a new word. If you have a MacBook, there’s a part that slides in and out of the charger, that has the actual plug prongs on it. It’s called a monkey knuckle. All for $145.
Well I’ll be a monkey’s knuckle.
Thank you, Lauren, thank you, Apple. I bought my first Macintosh in 1984, have owned and used Macs ever since with deviations into DOS land only when required by an employer, and will likely have a Mac around well into the future.
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