I shipped my old MacBook Pro as a trade-in to Apple (actually, an Apple partner) on Day Thirty; they received it on Day Thirty-Six. I expected to hear from them within a few days, but nothing happened, so I got in touch with Apple who told me to hang on a few more days. Nothing happened, so I tried again on Day Fifty-One (Wednesday). The agent tried to figure out what was going on and finally said he’d have to escalate to the trade-in team.

The next evening (Day Fifty-Two), I got an email from the trade-in team telling me to call the actual processor, Phobio. So I did; the recording that answered asked me to press “1” if I was calling about a trade-in initiated during the purchase of a new machine – I pressed “1” and was immediately greeted by “Welcome to Apple Support”. I thought the problem might be that I was calling too late, so I decided to try this morning – same result. My Apple agent this time was even MORE helpful – she tried to call Phobio using some secret method, but, after 45 minutes listening to a dead line, she gave up and escalated me to the trade-in team, having annotated my record even more.

An hour later, I got THE EXACT SAME EMAIL from the trade-in team telling me to contact Phobio. I was not happy. I thought about writing an email to Tim Cook and seeing if that would work, but then I thought about going public and using Twitter. I wrote a polite tweet to @AppleSupport and @PhobioSupport and got a reply from Phobio a few minutes later, asking me to DM them my order number.

Minutes later, I got a DM telling me that they’d submitted the full estimated amount of the trade-in to be posted to my credit card within two weeks. We’ll see.

Today, I learned the difference between “Pin Video” and “Spotlight Video” on Zoom. I was giving a speech at my Toastmasters club and wanted to show slides to accompany it. No problem – I shared the PowerPoint window so everyone could see it. I also had to be sure I could see the timer so I’d know when I was getting near the end of my allotted time, so I found him, selected “Spotlight Video” and started talking.

7 minutes later, I was finished; I unshared the screen and deselected “Spotlight Video” so I could see the speakers during the rest of the meeting.

When it came time for my evaluation, I was shocked to hear that my slides never advanced (so my title slide was on screen the whole time) and that the timer was the center of attention for EVERYONE!

It turns out that “Spotlight Video” is an action that only the host or owner of a Zoom meeting can use – it forces that person’s video to be nearly-full-screen for EVERYONE. What I wanted was “Pin Video”, which any attendee can use to make someone nearly-full-screen on their own screen, without affecting anyone else.

The title of my speech? “From Party Lines to Zoom: A brief history of teleconferencing”. At least I didn’t bill it as a “how to do it” talk!