My own personal ‘Her’ story

Siri left me for a while Wednesday.

Well, not really. I don’t even use the intelligent personal assistant and knowledge navigator application on my iPhone.

And, yes, saying I was abandoned briefly by the faux female on my phone sounds a little too much like Joaquin Phoenix’s last movie. But it seems better than admitting the hoops I jumped through to get the phone working again after it froze up. Let’s just say if this blog was a 12-step program for iPhone addicts, I could have begun this post: Hello, my name is Chris …

There, now that I’ve begun to confess the degree of my addiction, here is the rest of the story.

I sat down at my desk Wednesday, turned on my PC and plugged in my phone to charge it up. A message popped up, saying I needed to download the updated iOS 7.1, which I initiated. But something happened and the phone locked up.

Even I could figure out the image on my phone screen meant that I should plug it into my computer, but it had been plugged in when it froze up. So I consulted with Google, which is the Brome Hill IT department, and learned I needed to launch iTunes on my computer and then plug in the phone.

It. Didn’t. Work.

At this point, I reached for reinforcement and consulted a teenager. She tried the same things I had with the same degree of success and said I had better go to the cell phone store. So, I drove across town to the surprisingly nearly empty store. I was greeted by a really friendly kid with spiked hair and trendy spectacles. His phone had done the same thing last week, he said, and “all you have to do is launch iTunes and plug in your phone. It will fix it right up.”

As he moved on to do something else, I just left rather than scream that I had already tried this.

Back at work, I began to suspect part of the problem might have been the USB ports on my PC, which, I discovered, don’t work correctly. This discovery led to another trip home, where I got my laptop and fired it up only to realize I had never used it to download iTunes.

After downloading it, I plugged in the phone and a repair message popped up on the computer. I waited around 30 minutes for it to finish, only to discover the phone was still frozen. I borrowed the teenager’s iPhone to call the cell store, where I was transferred to the tech department and put on hold.

(At this point, I just have to say: The number of text messages and phone calls a teenage girl can receive in five minutes is awe inspiring.)

I discontinued the call, gave back the phone I had borrowed, gathered up everything else and headed back to work, where I could call tech support on a land line. At work, I called the cell phone store, was transferred to tech support and then transferred again to Apple tech support, where my call was disconnected.

After taking a deep breath, I called the store again. A nice woman looked up and gave me the serial number for my phone and a toll-free number for Apple tech support.

To make a long story shorter, I called this number twice and had to launch the repair in iTunes two more times. But the third time was the charm and my phone is working again.

And I fixed the problem without resorting to perhaps the most well meaning advice offered by a Facebook friend: Hold the top button and home button simultaneously. Otherwise, you’ll need to bring it to the Apple store for them to diagnose it. So sorry. Had this happen once.

The nearest Apple store is 75 miles away, which just means Wednesday could have been worse.