Sunday, October 27, 2013

Cyber HELL

I know the particular hell I have been going through for the last couple of weeks is a hell that is probably unique to the first world, but I live in the first world and these problems that I will now describe have been excruciatingly exasperating and real to me.
I wonder how much of my entire life span is spent trying to solve technological problems. A substantial portion, I am afraid.
My most recent round of unproductive time began when I downloaded Apple's latest operating system - 7.0.2 or whatever it is. I tried to make an appointment on my iPhone's calendar and it didn't work as it had worked on the previous version. I scribbled my appointment on a piece of paper, stuffed it into my purse,  and continued on my way to work out at the local YMCA. The receptionist and I commiserated about our technological ineptitudes, then she asked to look at my phone to see whether she could figure it out. The two of us stood gazing blankly at the little screen waiting for something miraculous to occur when we pressed buttons - some miracle like an appointment appearing on the appropriate day at the appropriate time. It didn't happen, and we both shrugged despondently. At that moment a young personal trainer appeared - she said that she too, was not familiar with the new system, but could she take a look at my phone - she looked at the screen with an unfurrowed brow, touched something and there it was - perfect. She showed me what she did and all seemed fine. Until I returned home - both my iPad and my iPhone's batteries were completely depleted. Dark blank screens. This had never before happened, and never in the space of two hours. I charged both my devices. When I removed the charger, I could visibly see the battery being depleted as I stared at the screen - 100% and going down, very fast, even though I had not even used the damned devices.
I turned of bluetooth, face time, I disabled location services - I basically turned off everything there was to turn off, and still, the batteries went down down down in an alarmingly short time.
I called apl-care and a young man (I presume he was a young man) explained how to get rid of open apps, by sliding them upward on the screen (different than before.) He assured me this would help - it did not. Basically I could use both devices while they were being charged, which made no practical sense. I do not walk around with electric chargers on my being.
I called apl-care again. This time a young woman informed me that they had many people reporting problems with this new system, luckily for me the new upgrade 7.0.3, had just come out and it addressed all these problems. I should download the brand new upgrade, and wait for 24 hours to see if things were better. If not, I should call back again, and she gave me a case number.
Maybe it it pointless, but I will add at this juncture, that these phone calls take a long time. Nothing is shorter than an hour.
I waited 24 hours, down went the batteries, maybe even faster than before - I called and after trouble shooting, turning off apps, adding apps, enabling and disabling everything that could be enabled and disabled, the young man gave me another case number but this time said I should take my devices into the Apple store.
I made an appointment at the genius bar, and the young pleasant genius did everything I had done many times, by now. He then performed a diagnostics tests and looked at the results on his device, and informed me I had a software problem, not hardware. They would have to totally clean out my devices and then restore them as new. So, he did this with my iPad - again, this appointment took a couple of hours. He told me to take my iPad back home and manually restore everything, and I did this. Again, this does not happen in an instant, and I had dinner to prepare. He also told me to perform the same cleaning out procedure  on my phone but first I was to upload photos that were just on my phone to my laptop, and then clean out the phone. Well, the next day when I connected the phone to iTunes it did not recognize my phone at all. On to my landline again, I called apl-care and the man who answered told me it was really lucky I had got him on the phone because he can help me solve this problem. Again, painstakingly, we went through every single procedure I had done before. We then checked my USB ports (I knew they were fine) and my cable, and as far as I know, everything single application and everything I had ever stored on my computer for the past 20 years. He was devastated - nothing was wrong with the phone except for this battery problem and still iTunes was not recognizing my device. He then put me through to his supervisor (I sat through several Beatles' songs). She - a she, and I went through all these procedures yet again. She then made another appointment for me at the Apple store. She apologized profusely and thanked me for my patience and understanding, and gave me a case number and a direct line to call her should I need.
Two days later I went back to the Apple store and a very pleasant blue-haired young lady and myself went through everything again, including the diagnostics test. Apparently some people had incipient software problems that came to light with this new operating system. Whatever, my phone was again cleaned out and restored - photos are back on, apps are running, and for the last two hours the phone has held its charge.
I am just NOT going to hook it up to my laptop to see whether iTunes recognizes it or not.
I am now trying to catch up with the rest of my life that was put on hold -
In other words, I hope I am emerging from my cyber hell somewhat intact and retaining at least some shreds of sanity so that I can continue functioning in the first world.

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