I don't want to be cliché, but I had to spend a half hour without my phone and it was a bit unsettling. I learned two things, and like most things I learn, both things just opened up more questions.

Apple Stores Are Awesome

I learned that Apple stores are wondrous places for customers, quite opposite to most of my experiences as a customer. I had your relatively typical Genius Bar experience, in that I got better service than I expected, and walked away happy.

The speaker on my iPhone 5 had stopped working just that morning, and I had a flight to catch at 1pm. There were no open Genius Bar appointments before my flight left. I went to the store anyway, and pleaded my case. They managed to fit me in and fix my problem with time to spare, all with a smile.

The more interesting questions are around why all customer experiences aren't similar. Marketing budgets are set around how much it costs to get a new customer, but this no-questions-asked service from Apple retains a customer at a fraction of that cost. Great service makes Apple's products stand out even farther than their build quality and design details. The customer experience turns regular people into evangelists to their friends and family. You can't buy that sort of marketing on TV — it comes one customer at a time, paid for with a good retail experience.

So if most businesses are also staring down the large cost of wooing a new customer, why aren't they spending their time carefully crafting the customer experience to keep customers and turn them into walking advertisements? I have guesses, but that's a much bigger topic for another time.

Am I Addicted To Computing?

The Apple Genius joked that I had to spend a half hour amusing myself while he replaced the speaker in my iPhone. This is a solid half hour, with literally nothing to do, and no technology whatsoever. He suggested an actual dead-tree newspaper at the coffee shop two doors down, if I were so inclined.

"Remember newspapers?"

"Kind of."

I did go to the coffee shop, but forewent the newspaper. As a big boy with a functioning brain, I should be capable of amusing myself for a half hour. After purchasing a coffee and finding a seat, it took roughly thirty seconds before reflexively reaching into the "iPhone pocket" twice. Not as strong as I had hoped, I snatched my coffee and walked through the mall, hoping that there were enough distracting ladies to keep me amused for … ugh. Twenty. Five. More. Minutes.

Canadians have had the iPhone since the 3G in July, 2008. People like me haven't spent a half-hour without a personal network-connected computer for 4 years and 3 months. That's long enough to build some habits.

It's generally not interesting to read articles about Internet addiction or information addiction. But what I do find interesting is what level of personal computing we should want in our lives. When you realize you're used to having information, communication, and entertainment readily at hand 24 hours a day, is the right reaction to be aghast and to cut down? Or is the right thing to welcome it and hope for smaller, wristwatch sized iPhones next year?

What's interesting is not the reliance on personal computing, but if a modern moral framework will evaluate it as a good thing or not. Was that helpful Apple Genius helping me to have a better life, or a peddler of dependence, giving me a hit for free? That's also a much bigger issue to leave for another day.

(Spoiler: I'll bet they're perfectly moral.)