I dropped my iPhone on the concrete floor of my laundry room as I was getting off a call and miscalculated the location of my coat’s inside pocket and let it fall. BAM. It landed right on its corner, bounced and landed face down. I was calm, but thinking to myself, “there’s no way that it can’t have cracked.”  And yeah, it was cracked. Dozens of small and large cracks. The touch screen still worked though and I could actually still read email etc. In one area I could actually see the board beneath the screen. It was like seeing Darth Vader without his helmet.

But a cracked iPhone is a conversation starter. Holy smokes. Pull it out and people notice and then feel your pain and have to talk about it. “Oh how’d you do that?” or “Ouch”. Thing is though that I was feeling no pain because I have Visa purchase insurance which covers damage to purchases within 90 days. Even if you dropped your phone on the laundry room floor. Who knew?

Anyhoo, so yesterday I go to the Apple Store in Pacific Centre to pick up my replacement. Oops, backing up: before this, like a week ago, I had to book an appointment with a genius, who checked out the damage, took the phone back stage and emerged with a piece of paper and a promise to call me next week when stock of the 16 GB in black arrives. And yeah, they called Thursday, (days before the time that he promised, very nice) and told me it’s ready for me and just go to the store for activation. I asked if I have to book another genius appointment. She said, “No, you can just talk to a concierge.” Hehe, “concierge”. So I go to the store Friday after work. And there’s a concierge (red shirt) right at the entry. They are pretty organized: I said that I received a call that my iPhone is ready for pick up and showed him the slip. He said, “Ok, Mr O’Sullivan, just go down that desk and Julie (? I forget the name) will activate your new phone for you.” As I walked in the general direction of Julie, (which one is Julie? The place is packed) I hear the concierge say into his headset, “Patrick O’Sullivan is on his way to pick up his replacement iPhone.” I may be paraphrasing a bit. He may have actually said something like, “See the cool looking tall guy in the dark grey coat making his way over to you? Yeah him. He’s here for his new phone.” And as smooth as an Olympic baton pass, so this gal comes over and says, “Mr O’Sullivan? I’ll help you with you new phone.” She takes the slip and asks for ID to confirm that I’m indeed Patrick. I’m thinking: come on. Can’t you tell? 

It was all very well orchestrated. Julie asked an assistant to fetch my new phone and this gal came out with my new phone in a box, a MacBook and a tether. The ONLY issue I had was that this gal who was putting my old SIM card into my new phone was a bit casual with her keys: her iPhone SIM key/poker/pin/thing was on her key chain and so inevitably her keys were making contact with my fresh new shiny untouched iPhone. Bah. So I asked her to please be careful with her keys. And she said the plastic wrapper is still on the phone. So?! Anyhow, generally the in-store activation process was quick and painless. My new phone seems to have two dead pixels though.  

Whatever. The pain in the ass part was when i got home to sync my new phone with my old phone’s back-up data. You plug it in to iTunes and you have the option of uploading a saved back up or starting clean. Nice. Ok, back-up. Oh! but you see, it can’t upload the back-up until you install the current firmware. Grumble, but fair enough. That stands to reason. So it tells you to update the firmware and then return to upload the backup. Fine. You update, but here’s the rub. The ”Automatically sync when this iPhone is connected” box checks itself even though I had this unchecked with my previous phone. So what you say. Well, what happens is that after you update the firmware, the phone starts syncing automatically and in so doing creates a back-up of your empty phone. So when you go to the next stage to upload a back-up it actually loads the most recent back-up, i.e. the one from 4 minutes ago, not the one you made last night with all your data on it. Exhausting. So I uncheck the automatically sync option, and then delete the most recent back-up and then reload the old back-up from the previous night which thankfully was still available. Bah! Two problems:

1. in order to load a back-up you have to click on “Restore.” Restore? That doesn’t sound right. The explanatory text associated with this option is “If you are experiencing problems with your iPhone, you can restore its original settings by clicking Restore.” Well, I don’t want to return the phone to original factory settings; I want to restore it to where I was last night! So this feels counterintuitive. It feels like it’s going to undo the firmware update that I had to endure and thereby waste another 10 minutes of my life re-installing it. There should be a separate button for “Restore a back-up”. Or the text should be clear that you click on restore even if you are loading a back-up. In software interface design, insufficient explanation is frustrating. It’s like a multiple choice question. Well, what happens if I click here? The fork in the road and both options suck. Just give me the full story and explain the implications of clicking here or there. 

2. The Automatically sync option should not be the default if you are loading a back-up. A new phone should not trigger helping itself to checking this box.

Anyhoo, a little room for improvement, but generally I’m happy. Remarkable how shiny and smooth a new iPhone is. Pretty pretty.

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