Pretty Hate Machine

It'll be an Apple -- that's for sure.

Fourteen months into ownership of an 80Gb 'Classic', the pretty little white and silver music box has died.

It's an ex-iPod with a severely knackered hard drive. All it wants is to be 'restored', but it's circuits are fried and no-can-do.

Of course, this also means that the 12 month warrantee has ended now too. Doh!

The Apple Store on Regent Street has a great technical support facility where you can book online for personal time in-store with an expert fix-it dude. Steveo's bricks and mortar outlets brand this facility 'Genius Bar'. Personally, I think that's a tad ambitious and it would be better christened something more realistic like 'Waiting and Waiting and Waiting Bar'.

Online the experience is great. You book your 'window' just like Ocado -- today, 12:30. But in practice, like all things Apple, it's utter pants. With my name 8th in the queue and 50 minutes past my appointment, I gave up are returned to the office.

If the intention is to upsell loads of other non-essential peripherals to the terminally bored and pissed-off -- it failed.

Of course, I am now a bit adrift without my beloved iPod, so have re-booked for a new drive to be installed at 10:10 tomorrow (only a few minutes after opening) in the hope that there won't be a backlog of other, less deserving, customers ahead of me.

Of course, if the damn things weren't so buggy in the first place..

Grrr.