Best Buy’s $40 Mac “optimization” is worthless

John Brownlee ()

Best Buy’s $40 Mac “optimization” is worthlessIf you read this site every day, it’s hard to imagine that you could have suffered the sort of massive cranial trauma that would prompt you — swollen tongued, googly eyed and phonemically fixated on an open-ended “Duhhhh…” — to waltz into a Best Buy and buy your next Mac. The online Apple store is only a click away, with free shipping even!

But yeah, yeah. I know. Snap decisions and all. Just promise me one thing: if you do, for some reason, make the decision to pick up your next Mac from your local Best Buy, don’t let their Geek Squad sell you a $40 optimization. According to Slate.com’s The Big Money, that optimization is just as much a waste of money as you’d expect.

According to The Big Money:

As even a computer novice might expect, “Mac optimization” is useless. One supposed benefit is putting the user’s name on the computer, according to Best Buy representatives I spoke to. Presumably, anyone who is buying a computer knows how to type in his or her own name, or follow the prompts to do it. Another supposed benefit: checking the Mac’s network connection. This has no value because it is done in the store, while the buyer will use the Mac with a different network at home. Yet a third step involves loading the Geek Squad’s own proprietary software on the computer to scan drives—drives that have never been used and so don’t need to be scanned for trouble. An anti-virus program is also part of the mix, which is an insult to the virus resistance of Macs

Basically, Best Buy is scamming $40 out of first-time Mac buyer’s who don’t realize that their shiny new Macs aren’t prone to the same problems as their PCs… although it’s worth noting that Best Buy’s PC “optimization” service mostly entails deleting desktop icons and slowing computers down.

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About the author

John BrownleeJohn Brownlee is news editor here at Cult of Mac, and has also written about a lot of things for a lot of different places, including Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, Gizmodo, Kotaku, Lifehacker, AMC, Geek and the Consumerist. He lives in Cambridge with his charming inamorata and a tiny budgerigar punningly christened after Nabokov's most famous pervert. You can follow him here on Twitter.

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Posted in Hardware, News |

  • http://www.fort90.com/journal/ fort90

    Seriously? This do this for Macs too? Huh.

    $20 says the average Geek Squad douche doesn’t even know how to turn a Mac or even know their way around the Finder. Hardly a bold statement, I realize.

  • U

    I’ve worked more than a year @ bestbuy, selling only macs, and the ‘geek squad agents’ dont even know how to use macs, they dont need to to work there. But one thing they do have a special ‘mac optimizer software’, an icon that you click, shows up in the dock, and disapears. Pointless. Once i checked the data in the app, and the only thing in there are 2004 update files for ilife.. And hardware.. From 2004!! So dont ever ever get your shiny new babymac get unboxed by lousy geeks. Keep that sweet litte pleasure for you, at home. And avoid throwing money out the window.

  • http://necessarycool.com Jef

    Sounds Like Best Buy to me Lol

  • Jim

    It will be a cold day in Hell before anyone at Best Buy touches my Mac!!

  • Chris

    I’m really starting to dislike Best Buy. Maybe it was the $110 worth of cables that I returned after purchasing the same ones from monoprice.com for $12 including shipping. Or the untrained salespeople. Seems like their prices are very high now.

  • http://web.me.com/bender.077/Site/ Pascal

    I have to admit I did buy my Macbook Pro 13” from Best Buy a few months ago. But to my defence, they didn’t have a refurbished one at the Apple online store (that would have been my first choice), Best Buy had them $50 off and there’s a Best Buy 5 minutes from my work (beats waiting a few days for delivery).

    I didn’t go for any ”optimization services” though! Here in Canada, they actually charge $99 for transferring your files from your PC to your new Mac.

  • Aaron

    I work at Best Buy. I am one of their “Apple Experts”, whose salary is partially paid BY APPLE! The geek squad is not completely bad. At my store, the majority of agents use Macs and one or two them has certs in OS X, Mac Desktops, UNIX, and Networking.

    One thing is clear though…..

    If you want to pay us $40 to essential turn on the computer, type your name, and save you the welcome screen………………stick to windows, dumbass!

  • chris

    i bought a macbook pro recently from best buy to replace my powerbook g4. the sales clerk there was extremely well versed on macs, much more than i expected him to be, and he didn’t once bring up “optimizing” my mac for $40 in fact we both agreed the beauty of buying a mac is that your buying a well thought out and carefully crafted computer that didn’t require the same services as the windows ones did. maybe your best buy sucks but mine was a better experience than the closest apple store :)

  • Charli

    okay I had to do it. i’ll go to hell but I couldn’t help myself.

    my local Best Buy are Mac Morons. seriously. I can make up details that they will confirm without hesitation cause they haven’t got a clue. After hearing about this $40 thing I had to go have some fun with them.

    so I went in and was shopping for a Mac. I let the guy do this thing with the Protection Plan and yeah he tried the Optimization thing on me. So I played dumb and asked what that was. So he tells me how they will set up my computer for me so it will be ready to go when I take it home, make sure all the software is up to date. I ask him about the stuff on my old computer and he shows me the very affordable rates for data transfer, as well as the rates to install any additional software.

    I nodded and such at all the right moments. And then I smiled and told him that it all sounded great. However I could go over to the Apple store and they would set up my computer, install any additionally purchased software, run the software updates AND transfer all the information off my old computer for only $100. Plus give me a year of online and in store training. Then I added if they were willing to match that I was ready to buy.

    The best part was this woman was checking out a computer nearby and heard me and actually asked me if I knew where the nearest Apple store was.

    yeah, it was evil but I couldn’t help myself. I’ve heard “well actually I normally work in car stereos I’m just covering while the other guy is on lunch” too many times. Oh and in case anyone is wondering the ZQ3 rating on an Imac is a 10 (I have no idea what the kid thought I was talking about but he’s sure it’s a 10 and not an 8)

  • Jim

    @ Charli

    LOVE IT!!

  • kn85

    all I can say is duh…

    I work at best buy and would never even consider trying to sell a mac optimization haha

  • Rodrigo

    For Gods’s sake! It’s a Mac, not a chunky PC!!!

  • Leo

    I am an “apple expert” at a best buy, I have seen what the geeks do and it’s not just that, but apparently most people don’t knownwhat they are talking about, and they just go off of that, they never actually ask what It does. I wouldn’t sell it if I didn’t believe in it, we are non-commission, so we don’t get paid more for anything we sell. I am a mac user as well and I have been to the apple stores and their sales people, sad to say pushed me
    off to different people because they didn’t know how to help. Email me back and I’ll tell you which apple stores because their are multiple ones haha. This are real experiences, so I’m not saying anything to bad mouth either

    Best Buy!

  • Me

    Virus prone haha very nice…market share is the only reason why you don’t see viruss’ if you disagree your naive

  • Alexis

    @me….

    well since I am so naive…the fact is there are virus’ occasionally made for macs…but they can’t do anything if you are not stupid enough to tell them to do their thing…that’s the beauty of the UNIX platform…if you want to do it you must say it’s ok

    things don’t automatically run like they do on a PC…no spyware/malware etc

    so grow up…just cuz ur PC was built on the wrong platform isn’t our faults

    and as far as the geek squad is concerned…I am the Apple Expert at my location…and my geek squad team is always eager to learn and ask me questions about macs so they can do more for their customers…fact of the matter is…getting Black Tie Protection from Best Buy is LIGHT YEARS better than spending the same amount of money for Apple Care because it covers ACCIDENTS…you drop it or spill a drink on it we will fix it and if we can’t fix it we will give you a new one…just the facts

    as far as optimization…we have the service but we don’t really offer it because our team knows it’s useless…now if you are a total douche and can’t figure things out we will help you…but we all know how intuitive the mac is