Hold the phone, Sparky-- don't go pushing your plastic at the Apple Store just yet. We're sorry if our discussion of Apple's new AppleCare Technician Training got you all juiced to rush out and join the ranks of the elite Apple-certified technicians, but several faithful viewers have since thrown a smidge of cold water on our enthusiasm. See, our understanding was that you buy the training kit for $299, use it to get yourself some o' that thar fancy book-learnin', shell out some more cash ($150, we're now told), pass an exam at a Sylvan Prometric testing center, and voilà-- you get your merit badge in Mac repair, granting you all the rights and privileges of the lofty station of Apple-certified technician, including the ability to muck about with the innards of other people's Macs without voiding their warranties. Sadly, we were far too optimistic.

See, according to The Mac Show's Shawn King, while you're officially an Apple-certified technician after passing the exam, you still can't don't get the magic anti-warranty-voiding aura until you get a job at an Apple Authorized Dealer. That's apparently the difference between "certified" and "authorized." So file away those dreams of becoming a freelance-yet-official Mac repair dude, roaming the back roads of this grand country, fixing people's ailing Macs in exchange for effusive gratitude and thick rolls of cash-- the AppleCare Technician Training program doesn't really give you that option. In fact, Dan Deering opines that your $299 gets you little more than "Mac Test Pro CDs which get outdated in about two months, and a single volume of the Service Source CDs." And, of course, the right to take the certification exam.

So if you can't set up shop as an authorized Mac repair dude in your own home, what's the point of spending $450 on Apple certification? One word: résumé. The idea, apparently, is that plenty of Mac-savvy and technically-inclined individuals will be willing to blow that kind of cash in order to make themselves eminently hirable at existing Authorized Service Providers. Since certified candidates don't have to waste any time with that darn exam after being hired, they can therefore don the magic anti-warranty-voiding aura immediately and get right to work, repairing Macs with impunity. (There's also the possibility that a few souls out there consider $299 a small price to pay to learn lots more about how Macs work.) Bummer... here we were hoping we could get certified and then do our own warranty repairs without having to ship stuff out, but sadly, it was not to be. So the next question is, how does one get one's house sanctified as an Authorized Service Provider?