One of the hazards of using a nice laptop is that it’s subject to wear and tear. My IBM ThinkPad was never quite the same since I burned the back of the screen with a candle last Christmas. I bought a new (second hand) LED screen on eBay, but had to dismantle the machine to fit it, and it suffered more collateral damage in the process. Well at least my ThinkPad was an old one.

Now I’m using an Apple MacBook Pro, courtesy of Exbiblio. Misha, who is my 9 month old baby son, is fascinated by it, as he is by telephones, remote controls, and all gadgets. He wanted to bang the keyboard, and I thought what’s the harm? But of course he has little fingers that go caught under the keys and managed to dislodge “D” and the “Apple” key.

I knew there must be a trick to putting the keys back, but after hours of trying, I realised that I didn’t know what it was. So last week I found myself in the “Genius Bar” of the Apple store on Regent Street. It’s very nice of Apple to offer free advice and minor repairs, and as you can imagine it’s a popular service with long queues. (You can book on the day online)

As usual in modern life, you hand in your first name and wait for it to be called out. The Genius Bar is a row of young geeks in red t-shirts. I don’t know if I was imagining it, but these guys certainly seemed to have a policy of calling out all the girls names first. I don’t blame them, for it seemed to me that your average Mac user is a pretty young web designer aged about 22 years old. The geeks certainly seemed to be very engrossed in their technical problems, and spent a long time leaning forward on one elbow while examining their laptops.

Eventually my name was called out by a young female Geek wearing a string of pearls over her t-shirt. She popped my keys back into place in about 2 minutes, and I was on my way. I know now, in theory at least, how to put the keys back. The trick is to pull springy little white frame off the back of the key without breaking it. Then you put this into place on the keyboard, first hooking the bottom under the little metal lip, then squeezing the tiny top two side pegs into the holes left and right. Once the springy frame is on the keyboard, it’s easy to snap the key onto it. If you do break the springy frame, don’t panic, I’m told the Apple store always has some in stock.

Don’t get me wrong, I was grateful to Apple for the free service. I don’t think any other maker of computers provides anything like it. I starting to see why people find Apple so special.