DEAR APPLE COMPUTER, INC.

Dear Apple Computer, Inc.,

I'm sure you'll never make it out to my little corner of the blogosphere but in case you do take the wrong exit and find yourself here at the cyber cul de sac known as SHLOG I thought I'd drop you a line. None of my e-mails or posts on your board receive replies so why not?

I'm writing first of all because I'm a fan of yours. I was fortunate enough to attend college advanced enough to outfit their library with a slew of your machines, my first guides to the internet, my constant companions through research papers and my greatest allies in the studio. Since those days you and your toys have helped me make Christian music magic three times, recording my every note, facilitating the bringing down of soft-rock power from on high again and again. Your never-beige boxes of transistors and circuitry aid me still in my article writing, graphic design, photo organizing, music purchasing and blogging. You and your creations have been my friends.

But all friendships have their ups and downs and today we're as low as we've ever been together. Three years ago, another epoc in computer time, I saved up and bought an iBook. It was the best pal you'd ever given me. So small, white and different I thought. But only a year together tragedy struck my friend and I. His screen went black. He no longer stared back at me with soft glow and familiar desktop pattern. I felt as if my best friend was dying. I rushed to the phone and called a computer doctor at your support center who hurried a box to me that day. I carefully lowered my injured little buddy into the cushioned square and shed a tear as I closed the lid, wished him safe travels and shipped him back to his Maker.

Thankfully he returned only two days later as good as new after receiving a logic board transplant. The procedure is commonplace as it turns out. According to you, he and many of his friends made around the same time left the conveyor belts a little less than perfect with known defects in their logic boards you knew you'd one day have to heal. I didn't mind. My pal was back under my fingertips and purring like the day we first met. That's all that mattered...the first time it happened.

Little did I know then he'd make four more visits to your repair desk in the next two years. Every time he fell silent I panicked. "Is this the big one?" I'd wonder, and call you, wait for a box, place him lovingly inside and wait for his eventual return. Every ninety days, as predictable as Steve Jobs plucking a black shirt from his closet, my little buddy gets sick now, his screen freezes, glitches or fades to nothing.

Your response is always the same: kind sympathetic support by phone conveying condolences and taking down my information. You apologize and say you can't replace my computer or promise he'll be in remission for good when you send him back to me. You have wonderful bedside manners. But didn't they can't sooth every wound.

I so believed in your product once, in you, that I recommended to my human friend Brian that he invest in a little iLifePartner of his own. He in fact bought an iBook like mine just weeks after I. And he too has it repaired every 90 days or so. And then there's Don, my label's president, forced to buy a more expensive model to overcome his Mac's constant bouts with logic board disorders. And there's Scott and...well, you get the picture.

I know what you'll say. I've heard it before in that pleasant telephone tone of yours, "We're only having this issue with a certain lot of serial numbers. Our other computers don't have these logic board issues. Your computer is pretty old now in computer time; have you considered purchasing a new Apple?"

Well, yes I have. I've also considered a Dell. I've considered pen and paper. I've considered therapy and strong medication. I've considered writing a letter to the Better Business Bureau or Consumer Affairs as well. But yes, I've considered buying a new Apple. Like a battered woman still holding the hand that holds her down I've walked by the new 17 inch friends at CompUSA and lusted after the new Mini on your website. Your technoporn tempts me every time I open my browser, "Come look at what could be yours. No more little brown boxes on the doorstep. No more sharing your problems with a stranger and pleading for his help." Oh, I've considered it..daily.

But I'm mad at you, I can't be with you right now and maybe not ever. My friend died in my lap today. His little face blinking up at me as if falling in and out of consciousness, hanging on to life, hanging on to me, to us. And then. Slowly. Darkness.

You did this to him.

He's been sitting lifeless, his body unfolded, lid raised like an open casket all day. I'm broken. And I'm torn. I know he's gone for good this time. I won't be calling for a brown box and praying for a miracle from your magic workshop. It's over. But what next?

I think you owe me. I think you owe me for the more than three months out of the last three years I've been without computing abilities. You owe me for the shame and jabs endured when my PC allegiant friends mocked me, the Mac Mormon, for buying a computer that has broken so often and completely. You owe me for the money spent on a product that didn't work as frequently as a cheaper one with a lesser logo would have. You owe me a working computer of equal or greater computing power and memory in exchange for three years with a lemon.

Unti I hear from you I won't be buying another friend from your factory. Sure I'll miss your sleek design and shining Apple, formerly a beacon of quality, power and service, but this relationship isn't good for me anymore. I think it's time for a break. And time for you to make computers that don't.

Your number one fan, former friend, complaining customer,
Shaun Groves
POBox 680055
Franklin, TN. 37068
shaungrovesfanmail@charter.net

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