Monday, July 28, 2008

The Wisdom of Crowds on Apple Forums

At the outset, I would like to be honest that I love the Apple Store and the Geniuses that work there. Truly. I'd be interseted in marrying one. I get fantastic service every time I walk in the door, they're kind, understanding, and go out of their way to be helpful. Plus, they have t-shirts with funny sayings on them.

I took my Macbook into the store on 5th Avenue on Sunday because I couldn't get my iWeb-designed website to open on Internet Explorer. At the Genius Bar, I was told that's just the way it goes - Internet Explorer can't read iWeb properly; it's iWeb illiterate. I walked away feeling very frustrated and upset by all of this - I bought my Macbook expressly for the purpose of easily creating a website in iWeb and uploading it to my own URL. Now, it appeared my efforts were for naught.

My friend, Ken, a fellow Mac lover, suggested I try the on-line forums. I was hesitant. I mean, who knows more than one of Apple's Geniuses at one of their premiere stores? Well, it turns out that a lot of people are Geniuses in their own right, and they love posting advice and tips to those forums. One in particular had the exact same problem I was having and after much fiddling found an easy fix for it. My pictures had a reflection and shadow that I chose for stylistic purposes. Turns out that the code that creates those edits in iWeb makes Internet Explorer choke. I removed the reflection and shadow from each picture and now the pages load perfectly. My website was saved! All by the kindness of a stranger who posted to one of the forums.

Geniuses are everywhere...

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

So, are you going back to tell this to the Geniuses at the MAC Store? This might be something they would want to know.

Christa said...

Hi Dan,
I called the store and was on hold forever, and then I looked for an email address but to no avail! So, I am going to go back over there in person and see if I can get someone to listen to me. :)