Kicking my heels around Glasgow city centre on Tuesday afternoon, I decided to pop into the Apple store on Buchanan Street on impulse.

As I have mentioned before, I have been interested in buying a Mac at some point in the future, probably when my current laptop dies.

I love my iPod and iTunes, and I have (mostly) found friends’ Macs that I’ve played with to be sleek, intuitive and reliable.

However, I wanted to explore things a little bit more, and so went in to ask a few questions. And boy, was I glad I did. Talk about customer service.

This was a million miles away from what I’ve experienced in electronics shops in the past – where staff assistants are either pushy, aggressive and focused on selling… or alternatively monosyllabic, ignorant and unhelpful.

But in the Apple store I spent a total of an hour with two members of staff, finding out exactly what I wanted, and helping get answers to the main issues I have with “defecting” to the Apple side.

The assistants did not once question or resent my explanation that I was purely enquiring and was probably at least a couple of years off ever making a purchase. They answered all my questions clearly, patiently and comprehensively. They showed me around a Mac and let me just play with it at my own pace.

Importantly, they talked about Macs not in the general sense of how wonderful they might be, but matched the conversation precisely to my needs – the applications I currently use, what I do in terms of web publishing and photographs, and how Macs might help me do this. In essence the conversation was about me rather than the product.

Customer service is something I really feel passionately about, and am delighted to have experienced a good example of it.

I am now more or less entirely convinced that I’ll be buying a Mac if and when this laptop gives up.

Perhaps even sooner.