Brought my 2019 Macbook Pro to our local Apple store today to see if I could trade it in and buy a new shiny laptop. They offered me about 15% of what I’d paid, but couldn’t or wouldn’t allow me to keep it until my new computer arrived. Why? Policy.

If I kept my old computer in the meantime, Apple wouldn’t or couldn’t guarantee that I would receive the amount I was quoted today. Worse yet, they couldn’t or wouldn’t provide me with a reasonable delivery date, which meant I could be without a laptop for several weeks.

I’ve been a customer of Apple for a quarter century. At times our relationship has been contentious and as I grow older, I see beyond the smoke and mirrors and the company’s legendary distortion field. Nowadays, I even hesitate to visit an Apple Store. The experience is just too superficial and though beautifully camouflaged, it’s all about sales, sales, and more sales. None of the sales folks I’ve spoken to in recent years know much about real-world creativity and can’t provide anything but well-rehearsed clichés from the company’s sales manual.

Back in the day, when Apple computers were more or less reserved for creative types, there was an unspoken alliance, and most of us who used their machines followed the company’s progress carefully and prayed that Apple would survive. If for no other reason, than so that we wouldn’t be forced to use an erratically behaving mouse connected to a dreadfully dreary PC running the clunky Windows operating system. If I had to take a guess, I’d say our company has spent at least SEK600-700k on Apple stuff over the years.

Yeah, I’m clearly still pissed off about my effing option key conundrum. I even told today’s rep about how Apple wants to charge me SEK9000 to repair said key (one of the keyboard’s 78 keys!). He just smiled without openly admitting the absurdity of such a ridiculous fee. The environmental implications of having to replace the entire keyboard, the aluminum keyboard plate, and the battery because of a single, plastic key is certainly solid evidence that Apple is just as cynical about the environment as every other corporation. The company’s PR is just much better at being ostentatiously disingenuous.

Or maybe I’m wrong. Maybe the option key isn’t made out of simple plastic after all. Perhaps it’s actually made from an amalgamation of unicorn tears and gold. That might explain things…