And soon, sweet dreams

Taryn at the Apple Store in Pioneer Place. (SOOC, cropped.)

SWEET is the challenge topic.

The past 48 hours have not been my most Apple fun. What a nightmare trying to get the new iOS 7 software to behave on my iPhone. AppleCare chat sessions and phone calls and hours of backing up and resetting and restoring. Last night I went to sleep smiling at my victory over incomprehensible settings and incomplete documentation. Thanks to persistence on my part, my iPhone could once again send email and receive calls. Almost like a smartphone!

But there were two things it was still dumb about, so today instead of enjoying the company and talents of my writing group, I hied myself off to the Apple Store to consult the geniuses at the Genius Bar. (It's very wise, if you're shopping for a new home, to choose one within commuting distance of a Genius Bar. They have saved my neck numerous times.)

One of my two problems turned out to be a misunderstanding of how the Find My iPhone feature worked, quickly resolved. But the other one, which involved syncing my Google mail, contacts, and calendars with my computer, was thorny. My genius went in search of a genius-er genius, who had to go find a still more genius genius. It took all three of them working together on my phone plus an iPad plus a Macbook Air to discover that syncing Google apps via Microsoft Exchange (which a previous Genius Bar genius had set up for me when I bought the phone), was no longer supported. Google now provides its own syncing mechanism, which we duly installed and voilà, everything was working again.

Handshakes and high fives ensued. My 10-minute appointment had taken three person-hours, not counting mine.

My Apple experience suddenly seemed sweet again. I even spent a little time looking at Macbook Airs and iPads and the iPhone 5S's and iMacs, thinking about my next hardware purchase. I have, after all, been a loyal customer since the earliest Macintosh with its floppy disk drive.

Finally I tore myself away from the hardware and started taking pictures. Is it possible that iOS 7 has improved what my iPhone 4S camera can do? I really liked my snaps, especially this one of Taryn smiling down at her device (better viewed large) as she rang up the sale of a new Apple gadget to a family of eager customers. I waited until she'd handed them their box of goodies and said goodbye. When she turned toward me I flashed her photo at her and asked her permission to post it. She said yes. I emailed her a copy of the image, and she asked if I'd send her a link to my blog also.

So here's a shout-out to Taryn and the Genius Bar at Pioneer Place. They put a smile on my face again. Pretty sweet! Pretty tiring also, though. It's going to be an early night.