Just got my Macbook Pro back from the Ginza Apple store. There was an intermittent screen flicker, so I took it in. A month before the warranty runs out, so it’s covered–they replaced the entire logic board and the monitor. And they did it in half the time they told me it would take. (Dropped it off Thursday night, it was ready for pickup by noon Saturday.) Cool.

Along with the iMac being repaired last month, my computers are now fully serviced–both just shortly before the warrantees run out. Hopefully that’ll last them for the next few years until each is ready to be replaced.

My only gripe about the general process: Apple has been a bit too successful in helping people with Genius Bar service–so much so that they’re completely booked for 3 days in advance. Still, you can get the service–just not on the same day you decide to use it. It used to be faster, but Apple’s getting more popular now, and there’s just the two Apple Stores in all of Tokyo.

Of course, give me that over anyone else’s tech/customer support any day. I know, I’ve dealt with others, such as Toshiba’s–it’s hell on Earth. Interminable phone calls, indecipherable menus, obfuscatory politeness acting as a smokescreen against actual service, getting transferred and handed off to different departments any number of times, shipping the machine out for a few weeks, the whole nine yards–a 3-day wait to drop off the computer at the Genius bar so it’ll take 2 days for them to replace the innards, that’s far better than anything else out there I’ve heard of.