Apple Store Visit

I just got back from the Apple Store at South Coast Plaza in Costa Mesa. I ordered an iPhone 11 for my mom, and since the earliest delivery date was Tuesday, I decided to go and pick it up. I haven’t been to a shopping mall since before the heart surgery so I had no idea what to expect.

What a clusterfark! First, the good thing was that everyone was wearing a mask. The mall also had dots on the floor showing people where to stand in line. However, there are still stupid people, even with masks. There was a woman in front of me talking to one of the people guarding the door to the Apple Store. Her mask was all blinged out with tons of glass gems. When she talked, she kept pulling the mask away from her face. Ugh, the mask is to protect other people; you’re supposed to keep it against your face, especially when you talk or exhale. Likewise, the six foot dots seem like a good idea but only if there are three people in line. There was a huge group of people in front of the Apple Store trying to get in, and more of us just want to pick stuff up. It was very confusing since different people sent me to different lines. There was almost no way to keep six foot separation between everyone. I understand the need for precaution and safety protocols but it does seem like theater at times. Hey, we’re not sure how effective these guidelines are, but we’re doing something. Reminds me of TSA’s security theater at airports: lots of hassle and we’re not really any safer than before. Each store had their own procedures and a line to get in. I think, at least for now, window shopping is dead.

The phone is nice. My mom got the Product Red color and I’m backing up her old iPhone 6S+ to her computer so I can restore it on to the new phone. I hope the transfer process goes smoothly; she has a thousand games on her iPhone. We only got the 64 GB version so it was $700 before tax.

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It took several hours but I managed to copy over everything on to the new phone. The problem was that the new phone wanted me to install iOS 14 while it was still copying data over from the old phone. Then it got stuck twice on the system upgrade so I had to restart the entire process.