He should have used the Apple Store app on his iPhone to make an appointment.
The Samurai should have used
his iPhone to make a Genius Bar appointment.
Someone could get pretty frustrated calling their local Apple store. I recently had to call the one here in Phoenix, and here's what happened:
After listening to a recording that gives the store hours, you are told to select which Apple product you are interested in. (Desktop computers are number four on the list.) Pressing zero at any time does nothing. You have to select one of the product options. After you do, the system plays a commercial that goes on about the features of that product. After that, you are able to talk to a live human, which in my case was at a call center in Florida.
The logic behind some of Apple's decisions can be puzzling. I haven't seen a desktop computer in the window of the local Apple store in years. Instead, for the past several months, the window display consists of a row of colored plastic rectangles, which some passersby will recognize as iPhone cases.