You have as long as you want to prepare it, but then the world decides what it's really about.
- Merlin Mann
My iPhone broke over the weekend! I had a first generation, order on iDay, phone and had served me well for seven good long months. During the party on Saturday night, I came to the realization that I couldn't send text messages. I could receive them, I could write the respond, but the "send" button on the screen wouldn't tap.
It was in the days to follow as I was fiddling with my phone I came to realize that about a one-inch band across the phone was no longer responding to taps. The "send" button fell inside of this band. I was complaining about this on work on Monday when a coworker suggested that I got ditch work a bit early to go get it fixed at the Apple store. So I made my online appointment at Burlingame for 4:15pm, jumped into my car and drove there.
Downtown Burlingame has metered parking? This type of thing offends me and I had no quarters, but just a quick half mile drive away everything was fine and residential. So I parked my car and walked back to the store to make my appointment. At 4:18pm or so, the genius called me up, I demoed my issue and he fiddled a little with my phone. He said "I'm going to go into the back for second to clean it" and walked behind a door into genius land. I sat at the counter looking around at the people there with their computers. I heard one guy buying and iPhone and asking, "so how does this work if I don't have a computer?"
Finally the genius returned from the land of wind and ghosts with my phone and looks a little embarrassed. "You got a couple texts. I tried not to read them, but it's big on the screen and I did. I thought you might want to see." There are on my screen were two messages from "Sarah."
I read the first one and think, "ohh, she is talking about her pending resignation from work and how stressed she is about it." I read the second and think, "I hate you Sarah." I clear the messages and explain to the genius it is just a coworker having some fun with me. He starts to fiddle with my phone again and the now terrifying sound of a new SMS arriving occurs.
The genius chuckles, hands my phone to me and says, "You're a player man." "No! It's just a coworker having fun with me." "Whatever, I'm not here to judge." I look at him with a gaze that would cripple a human. He laughs again seeming to know that Apple Store has diffused my powers. One more messages come through before he pops the sim card out of my phone and puts it into a new one.
We activate the new phone, and he starts to put my old phone into the case to ship back to Apple. "Umm, aren't you going to wipe the data?" "Sure, we wipe the data, we just don't do it here." "I would be more comfortable if you wiped the data right now." "We're not some fly-by-night shop, we wipe the data." "Don't you remember the girl getting the refurbished iPod filled with adult videos because Apple forgot to wipe the data? Just give me the phone and I'll wipe." He hands me back the phone, "you trying to get rid of the proof of your affair in the SMS history?" I nod, "yeah. Her husband would kill me."
Finally I ask, "what data was deleted on the old phone that won't get synced back onto my new one?" He quickly and incorrectly responds, "none. It's a full sync so you get everything back." I sigh. "Well, like for example, I know the wireless networks and keys don't go back on. Is there anything else like that?" He looks confused, "no, it should be a full sync. You'll get everything back." "Really? So my complete SMS history will come back on my new phone?" "Well no, that's only on the phone."
I think, "exactly" as I walk out the door with my new currently bubble-free and fully functional phone. I guess I should spend on some Apple Care. I don't have my coworker's number, so I can't text her back on my new working phone. Luckily, she sends on final message on my drive home.
She mentioned that it was my coworker Doug's idea and how much funnier it would have been if the exact same texts said "Doug" on the top instead of "Sarah."