I was at the Genius Bar in the South Shore Plaza Apple Store, in Braintree Ma, waiting to get a stuck latch on my MacBook Pro unstuck. And there was this Dell PC just sitting there, for quite a while, at least for the 1/2 hour I was in the store. There wasn’t anyone within range that appeared to be associated with it. Perhaps the owner was embarrassed and kept a comfortable non-discrete distance, fearing jeers or ridicule?

I felt sorry for the poor gray box, being treated like the black sheep of the family. Or, maybe it was a covert undercover spy pod, with a hidden camera and microphone. All I know is that it couldn’t have looked more out of place, among all those sleek aluminum MacBook Pros and T-shirt wearing geniuses. Speaking of T-shirts, the store employees had a much wider variety of colors and slogans that I hadn’t seen before.