The Easy Way to Make a Genius Appointment

I had some trouble with my MacBook Pro that required an appointment with someone from the Genius Bar at the Apple Store.  The  "geniuses", as they are called, at the Genius Bar, are Apple's in-store technical support specialists.  They provide tech support for everything from Macs to iPhones to iPads to iPods. To get a chance to show them your problem and hopefully get it fixed, you do the following:

1. Make a Genius Bar appointment online.
2. Go to the store at the appointed time.
3. Check in with an Apple employee.
4. Wait for them to call your name.

It actually works pretty well and you get personal service. If you have an iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch, you can make step #1 and step #3 even easier.

The Apple Store app not only allows you to buy Apple products and find Apple stores but allows you to make Genius Bar appointments.  It even allows you to quickly reschedule them, which I had to do at one point. You simply go to the Stores section of the app, pick a store, and click Genius Bar to make an appointment.

With regard to check-in, if you have the app open when you walk up to the store, it will ask you if you want to check in as you approach the store. (It uses the GPS to determine that you are near the floor.) If you check in via the app you can go straight to the back and have a seat or look around the store until they call your name.

Hopefully you won't have to use this feature, but if you do, the Apple Store app makes it easy.