I was really look­ing for­ward to the release of Stephen Hackett’s Bar­tend­ing: Mem­oirs of an Apple Genius this month. When I saw it was released early, I couldn’t wait for the first reviews to come out. I pur­chased an ePub copy and imported it straight into iBooks after dinner.

Since Steve Jobs passed away last year, there’s been a lot of books put out about the man and his amaz­ing com­pany. But this one promised to be dif­fer­ent. Bar­tend­ing isn’t about closed-​door meet­ings and Jony Ive’s secret stu­dio. It’s a col­lec­tion of sto­ries from a for­mer Apple Store Genius, the man­ager of his par­tic­u­lar Genius Bar in fact. Any­one who’s worked a retail job, whether in the com­puter indus­try or not, can really appre­ci­ate the anec­dotes in this book. It’s a side of Apple most peo­ple never hear about.

Bar­tend­ing: Mem­oirs of an Apple Genius

Despite its unique premise, I was dis­ap­pointed by the fin­ished prod­uct. Com­ing in at just 46 pages, the book can be read in under an hour, and these mem­oirs are just anec­dotes, often just 2–3 pages long, about funny things that hap­pened on the job. The indi­vid­ual sto­ries are delight­ful, and give a real sense of the kinds of issues the pub­lic face of Apple’s sup­port depart­ment face every day, from col­lege stu­dents mis­tak­ing Mac­Books for uri­nals to Apple’s poorly-​designed G5 tow­ers. But the author could have included more sto­ries, or at least embell­ished the ones he included, to flesh out the book as well as the reader’s under­stand­ing of what really hap­pens in those clean & brightly-​lit stores full of smil­ing staff. It’s no won­der this book was released early — what kind of last-​minute edit­ing was needed to get this out the door?

Still, this self-​published work is only $8.99 and def­i­nitely gave me some good laughs tonight, so I still rec­om­mend pick­ing it up and enjoy­ing it for what it is. But it could be so much bet­ter, and I wish this book much suc­cess so Hack­ett is encour­aged to fol­low it up with the kind of book this sub­ject deservers, by expand­ing on his own mem­o­ries and let­ting other for­mer Geniuses con­tribute their own stories.

Bar­tend­ing is avail­able for the Kin­dle at Amazon.com.

It’s also avail­able as an ePub (read­able in iBooks) from the author.