Sigh. I haven’t felt like much of an Apple Fanboy lately. I’ve had a series of annoying technology-related frustrations, the most important of which was the failure of my iPad Pro.
It’s hard to express just how much I use my iPad Pro. It’s a daily work beast and comes with me everywhere. So, to find that it’s data connection was no longer working worried me slightly. Especially as we’re at the start of 2021’s ‘great re-opening’.
Lots of online research came to nothing. Everything I tried seemed to fail at turning my 4G connection on and the error messages were getting quite worrying. I had a couple of very long, very frustrating support interactions with Apple, during the last of which I made an appointment for face to face support in the Apple Store closest to home: Stratford.
Shudder. There aren’t many places I’d like to visit any less on a Saturday afternoon.
Positive that all I needed was the input of an Apple Genius and potentially a factory reset (which I couldn’t seem to accomplish on my own), within five minutes I was told that there was nothing they could do – except sell me a replacement for several hundred pounds. The genius pointed out that she could attempt a factory reset, but that there was a good chance it would completely bork the iPad and I wouldn’t be able to set it up again.
The only way to know for sure, just like Schrodinger’s cat thought experiment, would be to reset it. Ugh. Major ugh. A big and expensive risk.
Which is exactly what I had read on the internet just a couple of hours before.
I have to say, it was the first time this fanboy had left an Apple Store feeling despondent and let down. With rumours of new iPads setting the internet abuzz, I was determined not to replace my iPad with a 2020 model. And sure as eggs, just a few days later, Apple unveiled their new 2021 iPads.
I bought one and felt grim while doing it. Seriously. I’ve never felt less excited to be getting a new Apple gadget. I didn’t want a new iPad. I didn’t need a new iPad. Or felt I shouldn’t have to need one. But there I was, with an iPad that couldn’t use its SIM card and connect to data networks. And so I pressed ‘buy’ and sank back into my chair. Bested by technology failure.
The only light at the end of the tunnel is that when my new iPad arrives, I’m going to attempt a factory reset on the 2018 model. If it dies, so be it. I wave my clenched fists in the general direction of Cupertino. But if it survives, I’ll be able to sell it and recoup some of my investment. Which should take some of the sting out of this purchase.
The other perspective, of course, is that I’ve been incredibly lucky when it comes to tech failures over the years. I can’t remember the last time I met an unsolvable technology issue, so hopefully this will be the last one I have for a while.
But still. Grump.
(Photo by Francois Hoang on Unsplash)
MacPsych on the move 
That’s a shame – nothing worse than feeling hard done-by, especially with Apple. As I worked in some kind of IT support for the best part of 30 years, I know how often tech fails, and how disruptive it can be. That’s why I usually think to myself, at least once a month, how lucky I am to have never had such an IT failure myself. That said, of course, everything is backed up, everything is in the cloud, because eventually everything fails!
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