How important is Friday's iPhone 3G launch to Apple?  Important enough
to put a freeze on all in-store repairs of the company's line of Mac
computers, apparently.

My MacBook recently broke (again - four breaks
on the original I bought and now one break on the replacement Apple
gave me four or five months back), and I took it to the Apple Store in
Emeryville, CA this Monday to see about getting it fixed.  The good
news is that Apple's repairing part of the damage under warranty.  The
bad news is that it ain't gonna happen this week.

The "Apple
Genius" who assessed my machine and filed the paperwork told me that
there's a hold on in-store repairs until after the launch due to
resources being re-assigned to prepare for and deal with the potential
flood of sales and activations for the new $199 iPhone 3G.  While the
actual repair "should only talke about 30 minutes or so," they're just
not able to do it until the launch is over.  And by over, he meant
until things have returned to normal, which could be by closing time
Friday, by next Monday, or at some later date.  His best guess was mid-
to late next week.

The Genius offered me the choice of waiting
for a post-launch call from the store, at which time I could bring the
machine back and have it fixed while I waited or having them send my
MacBook to the Apple repair depot, which would take about 10 days from
drop-off to pick-up.  Seeing as mine is a "cosmetic repair" - the
chronic front edge of the keyboard crack that plagues MacBook owners
worldwide - I opted to keep my machine with me and wait for a call.