It works!

I've posted a bit recently about my problems with iOS 7. Here's what I hope is the final update.

The AppleCare rep called me Monday morning to see if the iPad had arrived. Her screen showed it as on the truck, which it was. What she didn't know was that it is a 2.5 hour drive from Duluth to here : ) The iPad arrived around 1:00 that day. It was cold! But, because there are no moving parts, I didn't hesitate to turn it on.

I went through the set-up routine, answering all the questions. I also connected it to the MacBook via iTunes. Disappointment! iTunes said it couldn't be restored without the iPad updating its software first. Bummer! Oh well, I finished the set-up routine on the iPad and let it do its download of iOS 7.0.4.

Much later...it finished the update and I was able to restore it via iTunes. Boy, does it take time to restore 53 apps and their data! Late that evening, it was up and running—pretty much. The passwords for stuff all needed to be re-entered—a very wise decision on the part of Apple! But, all the other settings were there.

On Tuesday, I opened Accordance for the first time. Major bummer! I had forgotten this (it happened to me twice before), but when you do a restore of Accordance, you have to re-download all your add-ons and purchases. Of course, I had forgotten my username and password, too.

I dug around in my records and found the username and guessed (correctly) at the password and then carried on with the restore. It took a while to download and restore, but now it is all there and running fine.

Note to my Accordance friends: Please revise the restore so it contains the modules! Also, the interface for the username and password should check when you enter it, not when you try to synch. Minor issues, though...it's still my favorite Bible software program : )

I give Apple an A for their handling of this. They definitely know how to make things right once they decide to. From the time they decided to repair/replace the iPad until I had the new one in my hands was 5 days—and two of those were Saturday and Sunday, so effectively a 3-day turnaround. I doubt very many other companies would do that without an expensive service contract...

Mess up?

Right after I got done with graduate school, I got a job as warehouse/operations manager for a company in the cutthroat business of video distribution. The gross margins were in the 5-7% range—and out of that they had to pay all expenses; net profit was probably in the range of less than 1%. With margins that thin, every customer counted. Consequently, customer service was highly emphasized. It was there that I developed the philosophy that the most important customer service employee was the warehouse employee. After all, what is the first thing that a customer sees from the company? That's right, the package. If it is mispicked or damaged, what is the initial impression on the customer?

Anyway, I digress...

One of the things I learned there was a tacky little phrase: Mess up? 'Fess up. Dress up.

Huh? OK, let me translate: If you mess up, then admit it ('fess up) and then fix it (dress up). Simple isn't it? Except it is hard to do for various reasons. For some it is pride; they are afraid that it will lower their standing in the eyes of some if they admit to being less than God.

For others, it is profit margins. To fix the product will cost money, so better to stonewall and hope the problem goes away. Pity the poor customer service rep who is trying to assist the customer, but the policies of the company get in the way.

So what is the point of all this????

Two fold. There has been a recent flap about plagiarism by Mark Driscoll. You can read about it here. Anyway, rather than admit to wrong-doing, someone (the publisher? Dricoll's PR team?) pressured Mefford to remove the accusations from the web site. Perhaps Driscoll's defense should be he was predestined to do it!

Personally, I see this as a case of pride getting in the way...

What's the other situation? My recent bouts with my iPad locking up/bricking because of iOS 7 (you can read about my woes here).

Well, I have to say that I am giving Apple a solid endorsement for customer service here. It was a bit hard to get them to admit it was their fault (Mess up?, 'Fess up.), but once they did, it has been amazing. The box to send the iPad back came the next day (Wednesday), I sent it out the day after that (Thursday), and they received it Friday.

The customer service rep called me to let me know it had arrived. Two hours later, I received an e-mail telling me it had arrived. A few hours later, I received an e-mail saying that a replacement was on the way. Today I checked the status and it is scheduled to arrive here on Monday!

Besides that, the customer service rep told me she would call to make sure it had arrived...

That is a clear case of "Dress up" if ever I saw one. So, even though the iOS update was screwed up, Apple gets an A from me for fixing it... Here are the relevant screen shots:

iOS 7.0.4 woes, continued

Well, it's been about a week since I last posted on my iPad woes. During that time, I've scoured the Internet and the Apple forums (fora?) looking for answers. What I've discovered is that about 1-2% of iOS devices are experiencing the problem I'm having. That might not sound like very many, but it works out to between 500,000 and 1,000,000 devices. Yep, the number of zeroes is correct. Up to a million devices!

I read here that you could get it to kickstart if you held the home and power buttons down for up to 15 minutes! I had nothing to lose, so I figured I'd try it. My fingers would slip off one of the buttons after about 10 minutes. Finally—I'm a bit slow sometimes!—I decided to take the iPad out of its case. Now I could actually hold the power button down without destroying my finger : )

I held it down for 20 minutes. No success : (

I decided to try Apple Support. I set up a chat session last night and was online with them for over 2 hours. The initial contact was somebody who called himself Micheal [sic]. I suspect he was in India; he went through the script, but I had already done everything there. We got disconnected, so I tried again and this time I got someone calling himself Mercedes. Again, I suspect India‐definitely not a native English speaker. After about an hour of more of the same, he told me it was a hardware issue and that I would have to pay to have it fixed.

NOT! I told him it was a software issue. I never had an issue until iOS 7. He told me to hang on for a minute. He transferred me to someone else. This person called himself Colsen and was very pleasant—I found out later in the conversation that he is based in Atlanta. He reviewed the case, asked me to resend a couple of screenshots and photos I had already uploaded but didn't make the transfer. We tried various things for about 30 minutes before he came to the conclusion that it needed to be reset by an Apple tech.

He asked if I could get to an Apple store. I told him I was about 5 hours from the nearest one : (

Looks like sending it in is the only option...so I'm waiting for the labels and packaging to come from Apple. The bright side: They pay the freight. And it doesn't look like I'm going to have to pay anything—which is the way it should be. It was their software screw-up that has "bricked" it...

By the way, Apple, if you happen upon this post...I suspect the problem is in a code change in the software power off sequence. Every time the software tries to reboot the iPad, it locks. If I'm not connected to a power source (either via USB to the MacBook, or via the power adapter), whenever the software turns the screen off, it locks. Anytime an iOS update tries to reboot (since iOS 7.0), it locks. Please fix it! You have about a million devices that are worthless until you do...

Update:
I just spent 33 minutes on the phone with 2 different people at Apple. They are going to repair/replace it free. They didn't even ask for the credit card information. Of course, I had to keep reiterating that it was a software issue, not a hardware one. But, hey, it looks like I'm going to get a working iPad again soon...

iOS 7.04 woes

A while back I posted about my woes with iOS 7 and my iPad . Since then I have figured out a bit more of what's going on. As long as the iPad is plugged into either a power outlet or computer, it will come back on when you push the home button. Considering this is supposed to be a mobile device, that kind of puts the skids on it, doesn't it?

Anyway, if it isn't plugged into some power source, the screen is supposed to go black to save battery power. If it is allowed to do so, it goes into recovery mode. Usually you can get it back by holding the home and power keys at the same time until the Apple logo shows up. But not always right away; sometimes it takes dancing on the keys a bit and waiting around. Sometimes I plug it into the laptop and let it go through the restore—it doesn't really restore though. The Apple logo shows up on the iPad, then the progress bar quickly moves to finished—and it sits there, and sits there, and...well, you get the idea. The only thing to do is kill it by holding down the home and power buttons at the same time until the power goes off. Then, I can usually get it to come back by holding down the power and home buttons at the same time.

Unless, of course, it is an iOS software update...up until last night, I have always been able to get it to come back after an iOS update, but it would take a bit longer. This time, iOS 7.0.4, it won't come back. I can get the Apple logo to come up and the progress bar runs to done. But when I kill the power, I can't get it to come back. At all. Unless I run it through recovery mode; but then it freezes at the progress bar being done.

I've been messing with this for almost 24 hours and it's getting old...there doesn't seem to be any answers on the support forum and Google isn't being terribly helpful, either...

I'm sure it is a software issue; it only started happening with iOS 7. And it only happens when the software does the power shut off—unless it is an iOS update.

Anybody got any ideas? Otherwise, I just have an expensive paperweight...bummer!