And if none of these work? I keep repeating the process until eventually I realize I'm in serious techo-trouble, freak out, and start calling everyone I know for help. Their advice?
Hit Control/Alt/Delete, reboot the device, or turn it off.
Uh, thanks guys.
So when my iPhone stopped receiving email on Friday and none of my quick-fixes worked, that troubled feeling in my gut started to fester. Then, after my third reboot, my entire history of emails disappeared and I really started to worry. What if The New York Times was trying to reach me for reprint permission? What if The Atlantic Monthly was accepting one of my essays? How could I respond with my overwhelmingly enthusiastic "yes!"?
Trying not to reveal my growing panic, I nonchalantly mentioned my dilemma to a few co-workers. What I wanted to hear was, "Oh, that's happened to me before. This is what I did [enter solution] and afterward my email worked fine."
Instead, what I got was, "Yikes, good luck with that."
It was time for the big guns. The experts. The Genius Bar at Apple.
I arrived at the Apple Store promptly at 10am. They were just opening their doors yet the store was already swarming with excited customers. Really? Had Steve Jobs come back from the dead or was Taylor Swift making a guest appearance? When I expressed my surprise, the greeter looked at me as if I'd crawled out from under the Stupid Rock.
"There's usually a line out the door," he sniffed.
Whatever. I told him about my dilemma and said I needed help. I needed experts. I needed the Genius Bar.
"No problem," he said, grabbing a skinny, bespectacled boy walking by. "Gerardo will help you."
If Gerardo was wearing a back pack, I would have guessed he was on his way to his first day of school. Middle school, that is. But beggars can't be choosers and the store was packed. I was desperate. After explaining my mind-boggling problem, he reached for my phone.
"May I?" he asked. Such a polite child. "Go to town," I said.
His fingers flew across my phone: swipe, press, delete, enter, swipe, scroll, scroll, enter, enter, send!
And voila! Problem fixed."Your carrier changed servers," he explained with a modest shrug. "You just needed to delete the account and re-enter it."
If someone put a gun to my head, I couldn't begin to repeat the process I had just witnessed. The boy was clearly a genius.
After thanking him profusely, I had to ask. "How old are you?" He said he was 21 but knew he looked much younger. "Enjoy it," I told him. "One day you'll appreciate it."
And gratefully equipped with a working phone and Gerardo's business card, I left the mayhem of the Apple store and crawled back under the Stupid Rock.
