You have received good advice, I'd say. One of the really great innovations of the Apple Store concept is that Apple realized that being able to fix your gear when it's not working as you'd like -- and being able to learn more about how to use it efficiently -- are just as important as having a retail outlet where they can sell stuff. It's not about the sale, after all, but about the overall lifetime level of customer satisfaction, about creating fans rather than consumers. But that's a discussion for another blog entry, one more focused on business and marketing. :-)

To make a genius bar appointment there are a number of different solutions, including a very slick Apple Store [iTunes link] app for the iPhone that makes it a breeze. If you have an iPhone, that is!

Fortunately, you can use the Apple Web site too. To make your life easier, start here: Apple Store: Genius Bar. On that page, you'll see a quick way to pick your closest Apple Store. I'll demonstrate by making an appointment at the Twenty Ninth Street store in Boulder, Colorado, the closest to our offices:

Choose a state, and you can see all the Apple Stores located there:

There's our closest Apple Store: Twenty Ninth Street Mall. I select that and click on "Next". Now it's time to sort yourself into the correct bucket: Apple has geniuses who specialize in particular hardware...

I'm seeking an appointment for my MacBook Pro battery, so I'll click on "Mac" here. Now it offers up a warning which should be taken seriously: I have indeed had Apple wipe my hard drive as part of its maintenance program. Back up, back up, back up!

Of course, you should already have a reliable backup program, whether we're talking about an iPod or an iMac...

Now you can pick a time slot that'll work best for you. As you can see, my store isn't very busy this time of year - rather surprisingly - so there are a lot of options:

I want the first available appointment, so I'm going to click on "Morning" in the top left. It opens up with specific time windows:

I'll take that 10am slot, thanks. Clicking "Next" here then prompts for my name and contact information:

At this point, your appointment is set up and you're ready to roll:

Keep track of the time and try to show up 5-10 minutes early. In my experience, they keep pretty well to schedule so with a 10am appointment, I do expect to be done by 10.30 the latest, and possibly quite a bit faster than that.

One thing I recommend is to help their techs by clicking on "Add a comment to my reservation" and detailing what's going on and what help you seek. Here's what I entered:

This way they'll know that it's a MacBook Pro battery issue before I even walk in the door.

That's all there is to it. Hope that helps you out, and I hope you get your iPod problem resolved without any further ado.