Apple products are famous for their ease of use and greatness of cost. The cost is actually offset by many by the ease of use (and the “coolness” factor if you’re a dork.)
Most of the time, Apple products just work. They’re intuitive, they do what you want (mostly) and if you’re not a true geek, you don’t need to ever look at internals or manuals.
However, this means when they fail, they fail in a spectacular fashion. This is what happened to me.
Actually, it’s still happening.
My iPad is apparently full. Usually, I get a warning that I’m almost out of space, and I delete some stuff – the problem goes away. This being an Apple product, you can’t just easily expand the space, which would also solve the problem. You can, however, buy a larger model iPad.
So, last night, my iPad crashed. Hard. In fact, it wouldn’t turn back on. So, I called it a night.
This morning, it wouldn’t start. So, I Googled for help, and the Apple site said to reset your iPad, press the Home key and the Start key. I was a bit concerned that “reset” meant “wipe out”, like it does in the rest of the computer world, but this is Apple. It just started up and I was ready to go.
So, I went to the configuration panel to delete some stuff. As soon as I pressed Usage, the iPad went back to the Home page. Then, it rebooted.
Oops.
So, I thought – how do I make this into a hard drive, and I’ll just move some of the files off?
I attached it to my PC and nothing happened. It mounted as a camera, but there wasn’t anything built-in to download photos. So, my Spousal Unit took over.
At this point, the universe almost turned inside-out. She is not supposed to be IT support for me.
She plugged it into her Macbook and Photoshop tried to start downloading files. Then, it crashed.
I updated iTunes on my backup PC and connected it. It started thinking about syncing, then it crashed.
Finally, Photoshop started on my PC and began downloading photos. I managed to get about forty at a time (out of over three hundred) before it would reboot. So, progress, I suppose.
At this point, it looks like I’m going to the Apple Store. Their tech support people are called “geniuses.” I always thought this was a bit over the top. However, sometimes, you do need to be a genius to work around a system that is designed to not let people work around it.
What is annoying to me is that I AM A COMPUTER PERSON. This should not be difficult. I’ve dealt with out of disk space errors on everything from mainframes to smartphones. Why is this so hard to fix?
The Spousal Unit said she will take it to the Apple Store, but I really want to go along. I want to learn that if you hold the power button with your left finger while facing Cupertino, pressing the Volume button up and chanting Steve Jobs’ name backwards (“Gates.. Gates…”), the damn thing will just mount as a drive. I would really like to know that.
I suppose I could also just buy a new iPad, which I think is the actual plan for making you go to the Apple Store to see a genius.
In the meantime, I have most of my photos off the iPad. So, that’s a start. I guess.