Friday, February 17, 2017

An Apple A Day

Last week I wrote about al the devices I had lugged along with me to Chicago. I made it sound like I have a love - hate relationship with them. I think it is more tipped toward love.

I’d barely gotten off the plane when I went to check my Apple watch. The way it is supposed to work is that when you turn your wrist, the screen comes on. Only it didn’t. I thought maybe I hadn’t twisted my arm enough and tried again, but it stayed dark.

Then I took it off my wrist. It is supposed to know that I did that, light up and ask for a pass code. The watch face stayed dark. I thought that maybe the charge had run out. When I got home, I rushed to plug in the charger and put the watch on it. The screen stayed dark. Okay, so maybe it was so dead that it needed to get some charging in before it would even light up to show it was charging.

The next morning, it still wouldn’t come on. I tried every button on it and still nothing. Finally I faced the obvious it wasn’t going to work. I found an old Timex that was still ticking and strapped it on. At least I would know what time it was, or sort of what time it was. My Apple watch got its time from some source that knew exactly what time it was. The Timex had to depend on how accurate I had set it. It didn’t tell me what day it was, or what the temperature was. It didn’t get my emails and worst of all it didn’t keep track of how many steps I’d taken. It couldn’t tell me my heart rate or show me a favorite picture. I missed my Apple watch and all its tricks.


As soon as I could I took it to the Apple store, but there was a three hour wait to see a technician and I didn’t want to wait around the mall or come back later. So, I tried again the following day and this time the wait was more like a half an hour. It figures they would send me a text when they were ready for me at the Genius Bar.

I presented my watch to the technician and he tried a bunch of stuff and it wouldn’t power on. If it wouldn’t power on they couldn’t do a diagnostic. He took it in the back and did who knows what to it, but still the best he got it to do was show the Apple icon like it had powered on. But that was only supposed to last for a moment before it became a watch again. He told me they would have to send it away to figure out what it was wrong. In order to do that, they would have to unpair it with my phone. The trouble was it was still paired to my old phone which I didn’t have with me.

So, I had to make another appointment - nothing available for two days - to come back with the phone so they could unpair it and then send in the watch. The technician packed up my watch and I left.

When I got home, I opened the box to look at it and the screen had come on. Now it did say that it was Sunday and some crazy time, but it came on. So now I’m trying to charge the watch and the phone it is paired with to see what happens. The good news is that if it powers on they can check it out when I go back to the Apple store. And they won’t have to send my baby away.

While I was waiting at the Apple store looking at a screen touting their products, I learned something cool. Apparently, there is a button on my watch that will call 911 anywhere in the world where I happened to be. My mind started clicking and all I could think of was how one of my characters was going to use that information. It always delights me how I get benefit out of every experience.

1 comment:

Linda O. Johnston said...

Yikes. That sounds like a tech nightmare. But how fun that you found something in all that went on that you can use in your writing!