Someday, when I'm long gone, which of our many adventures together will my daughter look back on most fondly? Family vacations? Theatre excursions? Preschool art projects? Prom dress shopping?
Or, will it be our (seemingly endless) trips to The Apple Store?
Hmmm. I wonder.
Yesterday, I stopped work mid-afternoon, picked her up a couple of blocks from the high school, and drove her to the nearest major mall, about 30 minutes away.
In her defense, she offered to drive there by herself. My concern was that, technically if not technologically, her iPhone 6S is actually mine. As in, it's in my name, paid for by my credit card, as are her phone service and data plan. I worried that if something had to be repaired or replaced, she might not be authorized to make those decisions.
Here's what necessitated our latest pilgrimage to the temple Steve Jobs built:
• My daughter's iPhone won't hold a charge. The battery drains from 100% into the single digits in the course of a morning. Whether she's on it or not. And despite the fact that IT'S ONLY 4 MONTHS OLD!
• The aforementioned iPhone will only take a charge from one particular USB lightning cable — stubbornly NOT RESPONDING when plugged into her laptop or any of myriad other cords we've stashed throughout the house and in every car.
• That same iPhone, when it does deign to charge, GETS STUCK AT 77% regardless of how long it's plugged in.
Okay, I don't pretend (not even for a New York minute) that I'm an Apple Genius. But, with the data we've collected above (in capital letters and otherwise), it would seem to me not illogical, not at all unreasonable or outlandish, or even vaguely crazy to suggest that ... there's something perhaps, just a bit wrong with the battery.
My daughter's diagnosis is stated in LOUDER, more definitive and much more colorful language. For real.
Nevertheless, we did what we're supposed to do. Booked a Genius Bar appointment, dropped everything and drove to the Apple Store. We've had good luck there before. The friendly, knowledgeable, and invariably pierced and tattooed, staff takes good care of us. We've always left satisfied (sometimes poorer, but satisfied). Until yesterday.
Our so-called Genius was attentive and polite. But, he couldn't fix the problem. (OMG!) He did some diagnostics and showed us that the battery was healthy. This ruled out "a hardware problem" and suggested (you guessed it) "a software problem." The next step would be wiping the phone, setting it up again as a new phone, using it for a couple of days, and then restoring all of my daughters' data. The issue could be the software. It could be the restore. We would rule each one out.
To me, this sounded sensible. Inconvenient, but sensible.
To my daughter, it sounded like a FATE WORSE THAN DEATH. How did he expect her to live without her data for 48 hours? What if she could never restore? What if she lost her pictures? Did I know what a pain this all was? Don't I care? Don't they care? It's their problem; why can't they fix it? How dare they call themselves 'Geniuses?' On the way from the mall to the stable, my daughter subjected us to a series of neverending questions that would have made Socrates proud. For real.
Nevertheless, this evening, my daughter will download all her photos, then wipe her phone and set it up anew. With any luck, the issues will disappear and all will be well again. My daughter's faith has been shaken, but I still believe. (And, with college tuition looming, I can't even think about buying another phone right now. For real.)
One last thing.
If anyone at Apple can figure out how to keep these teenage technical issues from growing into crises of global proportions, I will happily call them Geniuses for life. For real.
If you've enjoyed this post, I invite you to order the book Lovin' the Alien here.
Before he was a movie star and an awards show host and a bestselling author, Steve Martin was a stand-up comic. I had his record albums (remember record albums?), and there was a particular schtick that was funny then ... and hilarious once I was a mom. It's from his 1978 "A Wild and Crazy Guy."
"I got a great dirty trick you can play on a three-year-old kid. See, kids learn how to talk from listening to their parents (evil laugh). This is a good one. So, what you do is you have a three-year-old kid and you want to play a dirty trick on him, whenever you're around him, talk wrong. So now it's like his first day at school and he raises his hand, 'May I mambo dogface in the banana patch?' Give that kid a special test."
A wise woman told me that "Having a child is the greatest act of faith you can commit." I agree with this. But, they're also our best ever art project. Talk about a blank canvas! Talk about creative opportunity!
Once, when my daughter was about two, we went down to New York to visit my family, and brought my younger brother back with us. So, basically, this thirtyish single man spent five hours in the backseat next to his toddler niece. After a while, he must have gotten bored so he started feeding her pieces of candy and then timing how long it took for the sugar to kick in enough so that she got hyper.
"Stop it!" I scolded from the front seat. "She is not a science experiment! Stop it! Stop it!"
Now, with that same daughter almost-seventeen, we're going through quite an interesting experiment again — one that may blow up in our faces.
Two days ago, my daughter's iPhone seized up. It froze. Not on any usable screen, mind you. It froze on the apple start up screen. Wouldn't synch, wouldn't restart, wouldn't shut down. Dead, dead, dead. Dead as a doornail, Mr. Dickens.
She was heading to the stable when she informed me of the device's untimely demise. She was somewhat irritated, of course, but simultaneously supernaturally calm. She plugged it into the old car's cigarette lighter (remember cigarette lighters?) and hoped for the best. She arrived a half an hour later and the phone was still ... dead.
What does a concerned parent do in the face of a Macintosh product crisis? Make an appointment at the Genius Bar, of course. Strangely enough, there were no time slots available for three days. This would corroborate my daughter's theory that this was actually the start of a global iPhone armageddon. Nevertheless, I grabbed the first available appointment (and backed up my own iPhone, just in case).
So, here's where the experiment comes in ...
Can my daughter survive — can life itself exist — without texting, browsing through pictures, Facebook-ing, Instagram-ing, Vine-ing or playing solitaire?
What reaction will we get at the Apple Store? Will they give her a new phone? (Unlikely.) Will I buy her a new phone? (Very unlikely.) Will she have to subsist with a disposable flip phone until our AT&T contract is up so we can get a new smart phone at a discount? (Strong possibility.)
As many experiments do, this one has already yielded some surprises. For once, I am somehow not to blame. Whoa! Maybe my daughter is growing up. Maybe she realizes that there are some things out of even my control.
Or maybe she's just glad I didn't teach her to talk wrong.
If you enjoyed this post, I invite you to order a copy of my new book Lovin' the Alien at www.lovinthealien.com.
Correct me if I'm wrong. Isn't technology supposed to make our life better? Faster, easier, more convenient. In my recent experience, this is not the case.
So not the case.
I'm no stranger to the digital world. I run a virtual ad agency. My husband is a high tech product marketing consultant. Most significantly ... we have a teenage daughter.
Between DSL, WiFi and Fios, we have taken our poor little antique house and rewired it within an inch of its life. Suffice it to say that the founding families of our colonial town didn't anticipate our need to get into walls and under floorboards.
Back to my earlier — apparently incorrect — assumption. I thought technology was supposed to enhance our lives. Not drive us crazy.
The past week was particularly hectic and stressful at out house because we were about to leave for a family vacation. You know the truth about vacations, don't you? You work twice as hard the week before and twice as hard the week after in exchange for a week off. Some quick math and you'll see that you're actually netting an extra week's worth of work. Hmmmm.
The first thing to go? Our WiFi. The east coast has been through some severe weather recently, so we figured service was down. But, nooooooooo, according to our good friends at Verizon, the issue was not theirs. It was ours. Our router was toast; they would send us a new one. No problem. It would take 3-5 business days to arrive. Problem.
I was anticipating a slippery drive (or a long walk) through blizzard conditions to the nearest Starbucks, when my handy husband pulled off one of his minor miracles. A touch test confirmed that the router was overheating. So, he pulled out and positioned a small but powerful fan. The WiFi still wasn't working, but we could connect our PCs via Ethernet (don't bother to look it up; just take my word for it) and ... ta da ... Internet access was restored. For a few hours, anyway, until the router overheated again. We gave it a rest, restarted and were in business again. Rinse and repeat.
Just when we thought it was safe to go back into cyberspace, it was our daughter's turn. Where to start? Her iPhone was bugging (texts wouldn't text, photos crashed, the vibrate mode had a mind of its own). Any Mac user knows that the answer is to sync. But, noooooooooo. She couldn't sync because her MacBook startup disc was full. We deleted some (a lot!) of files. Then, she was told that she couldn't sync because her iPhone was full. She couldn't delete anything from her iPhone without syncing. She couldn't sync without deleting. Which came first, the chicken or the egg? Total. System. Meltdown.
Total. Teenage. Meltdown.
I thought I had saved the day (yeah, right) when I discovered a rogue ghost iPhoto library on the admin drive of her laptop. A couple of years ago, her system was wiped clean by a lovely young "Genius" at the Apple Store. At the time, a new iPhoto library was established. Turns out, the original library was still on there. All 38,254 images.
Thirty-eight thousand, two hundred fifty-four.
Startup disc full? Well, duh!
They say that the solution begins when you recognize you have a problem. Houston, we had a problem. But, not one that we could solve. The iPhoto library was locked. We could delete and delete and delete and delete until our fingers bled (not really, but doesn't it sound dramatic?). As soon as we restarted iPhoto ... hello again, there they were.
Our only option? The Apple Store. Stat.
Have I mentioned that we were having a white-out? Have I mentioned we were getting ready for a vacation? Regardless, there was simply no way my daughter could leave town without access to her electronica. OMG. WTF. So, the martyr mother swung into action. I spent the bulk of my Saturday backing up all of my daughter's files onto my system and onto a set of CDs for safekeeping. I made two back-to-back appointments at the nearest Apple "Genius Bar." (A word to the would-be wise: they will only address one device per appointment.) I picked my daughter up at the stable and we drove through a veritable winter wonderland to the mall several towns away. As usual, the "Geniuses" saved us. We had to delete photos (Genius Two somehow unlocked iPhoto), then (under the supervision of Genius One), we had to do a manual backup, then reload all the iPhone software.
I was wary about doing all this at home (where, no offense to my family, "Geniuses" are few and far between), so we grabbed some counter space and went through it all onsite at the Apple Store. Guess how long it takes to reload iPhone software? 65 minutes.
But, it worked. Phew.
When we finally left the mall, the blizzard was upon us in earnest. It was a white-knuckled, rather squirrelly drive home. The ABS kicked in not once but five times. The icy snow under my wheels seemed to chant a mantra to my daughter "You owe me, you owe me, you owe me."
Thank you, Apple Store. We left for our vacation on time and with all our technology intact. (Hopefully, the new router will be waiting and WiFi will be restored when we get home.) My daughter is happy. There's only one thing ...
My startup disc is full.
If you enjoyed this post, I invite you to order a copy of my new book Lovin' the Alien at www.lovinthealien.com.
Liberté, égalité, technologé. My daughter is now the smug owner of a shiny new iPhone 5. But, the road to her new mobile device was not smooth. "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times." And — at times — I wondered whether she had one mother or two. Apparently, I am a veritable Dr. Jekyll and Mama Hyde.
But, I'm getting ahead of myself (and alluding to too many classic novels).
A few months ago, my daughter started having issues with her iPhone 3G. First the home button started sticking. Then, the touchscreen stopped responding. She could still use the phone if she called herself from another number to unlock it. (Yeah, that was convenient ... not!) Finally, there was the calamitous incident at the stable involving slippery fingers and a bucket of water. Bottom line, even her awkward work-arounds stopped working.
She needed a new phone. Stat.
We did what any modern family would do in such dire circumstances. We made an appointment at the Apple Store Genius Bar. As we expected, the phone was toast. However, after more than two years with it, she qualified for an upgrade. She could fix the phone for $100, get a new 3G for $100 or upgrade to a 4S for $199. My mother, who was visiting, offered to purchase the better phone for my daughter's birthday. So, it seemed as if everything would be fine. N'est-ce pas?
Mais non! You see, rumor had it that Apple was getting ready to announce the release of the iPhone 5. So, I offered my daughter a difficult decision. She could get the 4S now or the 5 in about six weeks. She made a surprisingly mature choice: she would wait.
And this is where my split personality comes in:
Good Mom: On the fateful day decreed by the house that Jobs built, I got up at 5:00 am to pre-order her phone.
Bad Mom: Apparently 20 million people stayed up until 12:00 am the night before to pre-order theirs. The iPhone 5 was — gasp! — sold out! We would have to wait two whole weeks. Mon dieu!
Good Mom: I tracked the package from ZhengZhou, China to Chek Lap Kok, Hong Kong, to Anchorage, Alaska, to Louisville, Kentucky, to Chelmsford, Manchester, Lynnfield and ...
Bad Mom: I went to yoga and, of course, the UPS guy showed up while I was out. Of course.
Good Mom: I went online to UPS.com and live chatted with some faceless person, begging for a solution that wouldn't mean waiting another day. They said I could pick it up at the UPS center several towns away at 9 pm.
Bad Mom: I thought, "No way." (Actually, I'm not only a bad mom; I'm a profane one. My word-for-word thought was, shall we say, a little more colorful.)
Good Mom: I pushed back. "Isn't the driver still in town? Can't he make another delivery? Can I meet him somewhere? Anywhere?" Success!
Bad Mom: My daughter raced home after school. "Is my phone here???" "No."
Good Mom: "BUT, we're meeting the UPS guy at 4:30 and you'll have it then!"
Bad Mom: Despite my daughter's incomparable iPhone IQ, she couldn't get the new phone to work. (How this is my fault is beyond me, but ...)
Good Mom: I went online and live chatted with AT&T.
Bad Mom: After about 30 minutes of diagnostics, it appeared that the phone was damaged in transit. (Again, and this is my fault how?)
Good Mom: It was 6:30, homework was done, my client calls had ended. "Get your shoes," I told my daughter, "We're going to the Apple Store."
"Really?" Really.
Our experience was, as always, very positive. A wonderful genius named Max took care of us. When he determined that the Nano Sim card was damaged (yes, I actually know what that means now), he walked with us down to another part of the mall and the AT&T store. After a brief wait, the card was replaced and — VOILA! — my daughter was with phone once more.
And, the beauty of all of this was that she APPRECIATED me. She THANKED me. She SMILED at me. She even asked Siri "Who is the best mother in the world?"
Siri, in her typical humorless fashion, responded, "Would you like me to search the web for 'Who is the best mother in the world?'" Uh ... never mind.
We had a quick, late dinner at a Mexican place and called it a night.
So, you would think that yours truly, after my epic niceness, would still be in favor? Alas, mes amis, non.
Bad Mom: After allowing my daughter virtually unlimited time on her new phone, I finally insisted that she shower, read a little and go to bed. The drama was over. And what a roller coaster it had been. "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair."
She would rise to another melodramatic day of school, equipped — at last — with her revolutionary new phone. Vive la 5!
Despite rumors to the contrary, I am only human. I can only handle so much drama at a time.
So when my daughter's laptop started warning her that the "start-up disk was full," I crossed my fingers and hoped for the best. All I asked was that I could wait three weeks before dealing with it. Just three weeks.
You see, the next three weeks are going to be a very rocky ride.
First, we have to get through the last ten days of eighth grade, which include a walking tour of our historic town, a semi-formal dinner/dance/harbor cruise, a graduation ceremony and a field day. Then, I have promised to chauffeur and chaperone a visit to a local amusement park with three besties. This on the day before we fly off on our weeklong trip to London and Paris for a friend's bat mitzvah. (What was I thinking?) We then have two whole days free (during which, yours truly will try to get three weeks of work done) before our family sailing trip in Maine. We're sort of using up all our summer vacation plans right at the start of the season. But, that's just the way it worked out.
So, the reader can probably understand my hesitation to schedule a trip to the Apple Store. It was just three weeks, right? Surely, the computer could hang on another three weeks.
No way, Jose.
On Saturday night, the computer decided that we had ignored one too many warnings. It wouldn't turn on.
Horror!!!!!!!!
How can any about-to-graduate-from-middle-schooler possibly survive without her Facebook? Without her Tumblr? Without her YouTube?
Of more concern to me, of course, were the half-finished papers and projects for English, Social Studies and Science. Plus, I was worried that the computer (a 2007 Mac PowerBook that had been my work machine before I upgraded in 2010) might actually be d-e-a-d. Five years is really, really, really old for a Mac. I jumped online and scheduled an appointment at the Apple Store Genius Bar for the following afternoon.
When we got to the mall, it was surprisingly quiet. The weather was glorious, so I'm guessing that any would-be shoppers had bagged in favor of gardening or the beach. We parked, grabbed a quick lunch at the food court, and were about five minutes early for our appointment.
"What seems to be the trouble?" asked our specialist, a young woman with cropped hair, funky jewelry and an air of otherworldly smartness — dare I say, "genius?"
I explained the situation and pulled out my daughter's laptop. Our specialist made a funny sound that I thought meant, "OMG! What a frrrkin' antique! You've gotta be kidding!"
"What?" I said, ready to make a joke about the age of the system if necessary.
"What?" she said back.
It turns out, she had only been clearing her throat. My daughter looked at me with that pained expression I know so well. We were only thirty seconds into our appointment and I had already humiliated her.
The specialist did some diagnostic voo doo and there was my daughter's desktop back again. She asked us to delete as much data as we could. With her guidance, we realized that every photo my daughter had ever taken was sitting on the system twice: in iPhoto and in the Nikon software that had come with her camera. Bingo! We freed up a gig or so and thought we were home free.
Alas, no.
With all the additional capacity, the system still wouldn't start up. The specialist tried a few more things and offered us two solutions. We could purchase a new hard drive for about $200, but she didn't recommend that because of the advanced age and warranty-less state of the system. Or, she could wipe the entire system clean. I looked at my daughter with alarm. She just shrugged.
"Go ahead," she said.
"Waitaminute!" I practically shrieked. "She's going to delete everything you have on there!"
"That's okay," my daughter shrugged again.
"Your pictures?"
"The best are on Facebook. And, most of them are backed up on your system anyway."
"Your videos?"
"On YouTube."
"Your music?"
"In iTunes."
"Your schoolwork?"
"I emailed everything to you to print already. And, I have my rough drafts."
It was official then. She was fine with starting over.
I thought about a few years ago when I had a terrible accident; an iced coffee with skim milk and Sweet'N Low fell over on my desk and drained itself into my keyboard. I lost everything, everything, everything and I was completely, utterly, inconsolably devastated.
The truth is, I'm still mired in the analog world. I may have thousands of digital documents, but I think of them as "things." I can print them or move them, store them, upload and download them. But, for me they are still part and parcel of the real world. I back-up through an online service, but I also burn discs. I take my laptop with me, but I also bring along paper files.
My daughter, on the other hand, is a pureblood digital baby. She is completely content to live with her data — and her head — in the clouds.
