Public Access TV Producer: Don't Believe Everything the Salesman Tells You

Poor product knowledge at the Apple Store on Greenwich Avenue has left me hotter than fish grease, which must be extremely hot if you want your fish crispy on the outside and juicy and tender on the inside. Up until a couple of years ago the anger I’m feeling now would have had me making signs and marching in front of the establishment or governing agency that lit the embers in me that are now raging hot. But I’m older and I write a blog so I’ll put it out there.

About a year ago we realized that we needed a Mac Book of sorts to help with the duplication of DVDs. So far Matthew has been doing all of that, while I handle getting the talents, locations, sponsors and public access channels, but I’m not too busy to take over the task of duplicating the episodes to promote Chess and help our young people.  As it is we have sponsors in Port Chester and Yonkers
waiting for DVD of NEIGHBORS to give to their public access channels.

Matthew does the show's editing on a large desktop Mac with tons of memory, which footage of NEIGHBORS more than half way fills. (Sometimes at our editing meeting Matthew and I talk about making a documentary with all the unseen footage of NEIGHBORS.) So back in September I stopped into the Greenwich Avenue store. I told the sales person that I needed a laptop to burn DVDs. I was told that the Mac Pro has everything and it’s just what I need for editing and burning DVDs. Since I was just asking not buy, I wrote down the laptop name and left the store.

The Saints smiled down upon us and in November Matthew, my daughter and I went to the Apple Store on Greenwich Avenue to buy the Mac Pro. I was proud when I asked the sales person in front of Matthew and Leslie, “This Mac Pro has everything we need to burn DVDs, right? – and we won’t need to buy a program or app or anything” He said it was and we don’t need anything else. I asked again just to be sure, “Do we need to get anything else to burn the DVDs?” – he said nothing else. My daughter and I were happy but Matthew not so much, he is a computer genius.

We brought the Mac Pro with the Imovie program, the program that allegedly  burns DVDs and an Apple card so I can take one-to-one classes for a year . I was so happy that we now had a way to burn DVDs, that I could have shouted, danced and done cartwheels. What I really felt good about was being able to take some of the video production weight off of Matthew. So Matthew takes the Mac Pro home to download an episode that I could put together and burn, but first he tried to burn the episode and couldn't do it. He said the Mac needs a program to burn DVDs that cost about one hundred dollars. I was hoodwinked by the Apple Store, but I had to make sure.

At my second class (the first class the tutor spent the time trying to burn the DVD) at the Apple Store on Greenwich Avenue the tutor told me that the sales person was misinformed when he told me that Mac Pro had a program that could burn DVDs, and as a matter of fact Apple hasn’t included a DVD burning program for a few years. I was deflated. How could the sales person not have known that? Don’t staff take product education classes and stuff. The tutor found a program on the web and told me that I could purchase the Toast program for about one hundred dollars, but all I was hearing in my head was, “You people lied to me. You cheats” over and over again. Maybe I shouldn't have told the sales person that we were a volunteer group that produces a show on public access to teach the basics of Chess.

To make a long story short, (Don’t you just hate when people say that at the end of the long story) A friend put an IDVD program that was a couple of years old on the laptop. At my fourth Apple tutorial class I burned a DVD with the tutor and the only part of the show that was on the DVD was the show’s opening and it was grainy. So, I asked for a refund for the Apple card to put the money to a DVD burning program for the Mac Book. No editing classes  for me until after we film in
February 2013. When we film all money goes into accomplishing that task. I’m
hoping that after Ch 88, 79,23,24, PhillyCAM and our new local sponsors read this blog they’ll understand that NEIGHBORS is still trying to get the DVD’s burned and out to them, no thanks for the Greenwich Avenue Apple Store.

                                                    ###