The most experienced Apple® Factory Authorized Service Center in the Midwest
 Omicron has provided technical solutions since 1974 and has been a Factory-Authorized Service Provider for Apple since the Apple II+ days.* Omicron has consistently been rated, in customer satisfaction surveys, as the "best". There is no appointment necessary for walk-in repairs during our business hours.
Omicron services all Apple computers, old and new, in and out of warranty, but not iPods, iPads or iPhones at this time. There is no cost to you for any Apple warranty (including extended AppleCare warranty) repair. We do not sell Apple products. We also repair Windows-based computers and sell custom-built systems for businesses – both desktop and rack mount - such as CAD systems, graphic design, networking and CNC applications.
Omicron office hours are from 8:30 am to 11:00 am Monday thru Friday, other times by appointment. On-site service is available by appointment for evenings and weekends. To make an appointment you can call during business hours or email, click here. We are located at 11240 East 9 Mile Road (south side), between Hoover and Van Dyke. For a map, click here.
Our phone number is (586) 757-8192. To contact us for urgent matters any time our office is closed or during holidays, please call 586-806-9640 and leave a message or send us an email. Do NOT use this number during our regular office hours-- it is a message-only phone number. We are closed for Labor Day, the entire Thanksgiving extended weekend, the last two weeks of December, Memorial Day, and the week of July 4th.
How it all Began with Apple and Omicron*
 Omicron's original business model was based on custom electronic design and manufacturing when we began back in 1974 out of a house in Warren. As part of this business we made custom electronic testing systems. It occurred to us we could create very sophisticated testing systems using off–the-shelf Apple II computers coupled with special hardware interfaces of our own design and custom software written in Basic. Our test systems were successful and much less expensive than systems that were based on completely proprietary hardware. Omicron became an Apple VAR (Value Added Reseller) and sold systems like this to monitor gas lines for Consumers Gas Company, for automotive suppliers of crankshafts in Mexico and for automatic gas damper test stands. During this time Omicron became an Apple Authorized Service Provider.
Early Apple computers owed their success to the fact they were "open architecture" which meant that other companies could make cards and devices that plugged into it. This was before the IBM PC in the late '70s, another open architecture design. Then came something that was a game changer for computers: spreadsheet software called VisiCalc. It was this software that started putting the Apple //e computers into offices everywhere instead of just hobbyists' homes. Later, the IBM compatibles followed suit with Lotus 1,2,3, but it was VisiCalc that inspired it.
After the Apple //e came the Apple /// which had even more of the advanced features we see in modern computers such as an operating system (called "SOS") that could have external devices recognized through software drivers that could be added to any bootable software. Now hard drives and networking became much easier to implement and more common. Omicron started running its business on a network of Apple /// computers using multi-user Great Plains Accounting software. During this time Omicron changed its business model to exclusively computer sales and service and began selling AutoCAD. Omicron was one of the very first Autodesk resellers back in 1984.
After the Apple /// computer came the very expensive ($10,000) Lisa that retained the open architecture with plug-in cards using the next generation of Motorola microprocessors and introduced a brand new operating system. The Lisa was not very successful in the marketplace because of its cost, but it was the very first Macintosh with its revolutionary operating system.
After the Lisa came the original small-footprint Macintosh with the small high-resolution black-and-white monitors. One of the last in this series was the SE-30 based on the 68030 microprocessor which supported an external color monitor, but still in the small footprint enclosure. This model became the favorite for anyone in the typesetting business because of the combination of PageMaker software, processor speed, and availability of large page-sized monitors from companies like Radius.
It was somewhere around this time that one of the founders, Steve Jobs, left the company as the CEO and was replaced by a new executive from Pepsi, Mr. Sculley. Computers designed during this time (the Power PC & Performa series) became more like their competitors (the IBM compatibles) and certainly were bland and lacking distinction compared to what we had seen before. Even as Apple was growing in size, over a billion dollars in sales, it was rapidly losing overall market share in the computer industry.
Then Mr. Jobs came back. One of the first new designs we saw upon his return was the very distinctive iMac model with a variety of bright colors and translucent cases, something new in the computer industry. That was just the beginning of a host of new computers and innovative designs that pushed the envelope of how a computer could be packaged, coupled with an operating system that was rarely bothered by common computer viruses. In fact, in all the years Omicron has been servicing computers we have not seen a single case of an Apple computer that has been successfully attacked by a virus (it is possible, but truly rare).
Not long ago Apple made a difficult transition from using Motorola microprocessors to ones made by Intel. The transition was largely dictated by the sophisticated Intel power management systems that were needed for longer battery life in portable computers, a very large and rapidly growing segment of Apple. Despite sharing the same microprocessors as other computers, the operating system from Apple remains virtually immune to viruses targeting Windows-based computers. Today Omicron no longer is a reseller for any Apple-brand products, but we still are a Factory Authorized Service Provider.
*This article represents the opinions of Michael Tattan and does not represent Apple, Inc. in any capacity.
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