Tag Archives: genius

Battery backup…

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A couple of months ago I finally had to break down and face that my iPhone 5 was falling down on the job. Try as I might, I couldn’t get the blasted thing to hold a charge for any longer than about six hours under what I would consider not particularly heavy use. A trip to the Apple Store, a battery swap out, and all was right with the world. Or at least it was for about a month.

Apple_LogoI’ve been trying to avoid admitting it to myself, but when I looked at my phone at 9:45 this morning and saw it holding only a 48% charge I’ve been forced to finally admit that history is repeating itself. Which means come Furlough Friday, I’ll probably be trudging back to the Apple Store in the hopes that they can right what has once again gone horribly, horribly wrong.

Sleek as it is, I can’t say that iPhone 5 has been my best Apple experience. If it were my first, I think I’d have a tough time justifying sticking with the platform at this point. I’m absolutely dependant on my phone and need it to be something that “just works,” rather than something I’m hauling around extra charging cables and an external battery pack just to keep in service. My last, Hail Mary play is restoring the phone to factory presets and adding apps back one by one to see if I can determine if one of them is causing a battery sucking do loop. That’s pretty much the only big gun I have left.

If all else fails, I hope there’s a Genius in Delaware who can fix my phone. If we go for round three of this mess, it’s going to be time to start seriously looking at other options and that’s not a road I particularly want to have to go down.

Apple Care…

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For the most part, I’ve had good experiences with Apple Care. There’s something to be said for an operation where you can make an appointment, walk in and generally get a repair or replacement within a couple of minutes.

After a few weeks of struggling with a glitchy iPhone, I finally decided to make my appointment before I was too tempted to send my phone hurtling towards the fireplace. I’m pretty sure blunt force trauma isn’t something that’s covered as warrantee work. After meeting with my “Genius,” the official diagnosis was “home button intermittent.” The cause, officially listed as “You have too many apps running in the background.” The exchange went a little like this:

Genius: If you shut those down once a day you shouldn’t have a problem.

Me: Yeah, I do that already. I’ve even done the half dozen other “fixes” recommended in the forums.

Genius: Ok, I’ll shut them down and you should be good to go

Me: Uhhh… yeah.

This is the point in the day where we spent five minutes trying to get the home key to respond in any way.

Genius: Well, we’ve managed to reproduce the problem.

Me: Yep.

Genius: Uhhh… Why don’t we just get you a replacement…

Me: Perfect

I had also hoped to look at the possibility of swapping out my iPad because of a stuck pixel. One very annoying bight blue stuck pixel. Apparently, though, some degree of “stickage” is considered to be within performance standard. On an $800 consumer electronic product, zero defects should be the performance standard, but arguing with the genius wasn’t going to get me anywhere. In fairness, she did offer to swap it out using my one-time warrantee replacement for accidental damage, but being this early in the life cycle, and given that I’m tapping this post out one handed, balancing my iPad on my knee over a concrete floor while holding a steaming cup of coffee with my left hand, I decided the better part of valour was probably holding the freebie in reserve until something apocalyptic happens.

But for the record that one dead pixel is super annoying.

Eclectic…

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I was loading up some new music for my trip this week and really looked at the “Just for You” box for the first time in quite a while. According to the wiz bang Genius at Apple HQs, my recommendations include: Waylon Jennings, Social Distortion, Rodgers and Hammerstein, Skid Row, Boston, and several selections from H.M.S. Pinafore. How’s that for eclectic taste in music.

For the record, what I actually downloaded was: All-American Rejects, Relient K, Simon & Garfunkel, The Byrds, several tracks from “Punk goes Pop II,” Bob Dylan, and yes, even Britney Spears (Yeah, I’m having a hard time believing I wrote that out loud too). So, I’m expecting my next recommendations from iTunes to be even more interesting.