Dear Ghost of Steve Jobs:
I know that you’re a ghost and that you might have very little corporeal influence, but I also know that there are three pretty important Christmas ghosts who changed Ebenezer Scrooge’s life over the course of just a few hours. So I bring to you my grievances instead of shouting into the void of anonymous forums. I’m desperate, and morally opposed to witchcraft and voodoo, so this is my next best option. The problem is that my iPhone 6s has been crashing intermittently for 7 months.
I will never forget where I was when it first happened, on the red line on the way to an already-cancelled White Sox game. I was bummed to have to enjoy the scenery and company of friends on the way back, but I survived those phoneless hours. The next day, while snapchatting a picture of a chimp in a hammock at the Lincoln Park Zoo, it crashed again. I was annoyed, but not yet certain this was part of a bigger pattern. I spent the latter part of that same week in and around the Bay Area, where I believe your presence kept my device’s malady at bay. Once I was back on the east coast, my phone has kept its habit of dying a few times a week.
It crashes at different times of day while I’m doing different things. It completely shuts down after a brief-but-still-backlit-blackout. The battery level is nearly always between 30–40%, more specifically between 34–38%. Most of the time, I’m using something that requires my camera or TouchID, but other times I’m just Googling things like “how to ignore a friend’s poor life choices” or “heart shaped jacuzzis near me” when I am suddenly cut short in my quest for knowledge. If I let it get past the 30–40% range just by allowing my battery to quietly decline throughout the day, I can use it all the way to 1%. I’ve used my phone at 1% battery for 3 hours recently, but I’m pretty sure if I called 911 to report my own kidnapping when the battery was at or around 38%, I’d never be seen again.
So I did the thing I hate most in the world. I went to the most profoundly confusing earthly remnant of your legacy, the Apple Store, a bright, crowded tech mecca staffed by unnecessarily haughty late bloomers. I was assisted by a nice young man, probably named Blaine, who checked the battery and said it was fine. He instructed me to do a reset, first from an iCloud back up, and then from an iTunes back up if necessary. Then, if that didn’t work, I’d have to do a full factory reset and start from scratch with no back up at all. I did all of those things. No solution.
So I chatted with Apple support. My case was promptly escalated to Kevin, a senior specialist with an encouraging bent in his messages. I told him that no one believed me when I said it always died at 38%.
Soon, the three dots indicating he was typing changed to say, “I believe you.”
He instructed me to wait until the phone died again, turn it back on, generate an error log and upload it directly to Apple’s engineers. This is objectively cool to me, because I love technology and think it’s neat that my phone as a little digital ecosystem is confusing a bunch of people who probably didn’t drop their single college math course every semester for 4 years. The stakes were high, though. I would only have 10 minutes from restarting to generate the log using a what I assume is the Apple equivalent of the Konami code. I was told that I would feel a swift vibration when I had generated the log. I asked Kevin if I could put this as technical experience on my resume. He said yes.
A few days later, it died and was resurrected. Within a few moments of its failure, I held the magic button sequence just long enough to feel a gentle shudder that let me know I had done exactly the right thing. After nearly two hours on the phone trying to use Apple’s tool for direct uploading, approximately 30 minutes of which was spent on hold listening to what seemed like the longest R.E.M. song ever, I walked the support tech through the process of finding the logs manually and had to email it to her more than once. Just so we’re clear here, I told an employee of Apple’s support team how to troubleshoot an issue. She was lovely, just like Kevin, but I was frustrated.
So I waited again and was finally told that I would next have to wait for it to crash AGAIN and try to do a manual restart four times in a row. It crashed. I restarted it. It crashed 3 minutes later. I lost a pretty sweet picture of my husband climbing up a rock wall in the process. R.E.M. was still stuck in my head.
So I emailed, told Kevin the results of the resets, waited a few more days and was told that iOS 10 would probably fix the problem. I upgraded yesterday and within 24 hours, my phone has crashed 3 times. I am now having to send yet another series of system logs to yet another person at Apple in hopes that they will maybe fix it.
My phone’s warranty expires this month, so I had been trying to get a replacement before it completely lost its ability to be a phone. But that actually doesn’t matter, because the standard Apple warranty does not cover software issues. So I have some perfectly good hardware, at least. My only upgrade option through my carrier is the Samsung Galaxy Note 7, which is actually some kind of pipe bomb disguised as a phone. I also have a cheap, no-name Android device in case of emergency, but I am still not so frustrated as to seek that fate which is worse than (iPhone) death.
So here I am, just a girl with a busted iPhone, asking you to haunt the employees of the company you help found until they fix it.
My husband and I have always known that we will eventually move to the West Coast. When asked why we would want to move all the way across the country, he always says “That’s where I want to work. That’s where Apple is.” He wants to work for Apple for the same reasons that I have endured random crashes for 7 months, because Apple is still the best in the world. While the iPhone wasn’t my first, it has, even with the relentless frustration of the past few months, been my best. I’m struggling with how our relationship has faltered.
It’s a longstanding loyalty, Steve. I didn’t get a car when I turned 16; I got an iPod. I’ve celebrated the death of the 30-pin connector and the headphone jack in the name of aggressive innovation. In the house I’m currently sitting in, I am within feet of three iPhones, three generations of Macbooks, a signed copy of Walter Isaacson’s The Innovators, two Apple TVs and an iPod nano. We’ve also held on to our first iPods, a mini and a video respectively, even though they stopped working years ago! If Apple made a semi-automatic weapon that could only be purchased through the gunshow loophole and/or a ritual sacrifice, I’d probably own it.
When Apple compelled us to Think Different, it worked. The world is fundamentally different (and better!) because of these products. I am fundamentally different because I use them. So why I am tempted to go with the option that might actually light me on fire in lieu of an iPhone that can’t get its act together?
So I ask you again, controversial ghost of a brilliant man, can you help me get an iPhone that works?
Courageously,
Erin Boudreaux
cc: Tim Cook, Michael Stipe
