browngeek

Over the last few weeks, four mysterious “water bubbles” started to appear on my iPhone’s screen. They looked like dead-pixels, but slightly bigger. Since they did not hinder the performance of the touch screen, I largely ignored them.

Then, a few days ago, one side of the iPhone’s headphones stopped emitting sound. Well, this I cannot ignore. Especially given the new law in the state of California - hands-free cellphone usage starting July 1st - I need the headphones fixed. So, armed with my pleasant past experience with Apple’s Genius Bar service, I went to the Palo Alto store on July 4th to get the iPhone and the headphones fixed.

After a 15 minute wait, I was ushered to the Genius bar where Brian was waiting for me. After a curt hello, he asked about the problems. I handed him my iPhone and explained the bubbles. Brian quickly consulted his colleague who pulled out a magnification lens from a drawer and peered closely into the bubbles and proclaimed - “Yeah, I’ve seen these before”. Brian then asked me if I had backed up my phone recently and I replied yes. He then said, a little nonchalantly, he is going to replace my phone with a new one.

Excuse me, but aren’t you going to first question me about what I did to the phone to get those bubbles in there, if I had dropped it in water or snow or toilet, if I have sweaty hands, if I misused it, if I do not clean it every day. Any question that will incriminate me for being at fault for putting the bubble in the phone. No questions? The phone was barely under warranty (less than a week before 1 year) and you *still* did not question me? Well, that is very refreshing. Brian then calmly handed me a new iPhone and a new pair of headphones. He then asked me to restore my backup from iTunes when I activate the phone. I said thanks (And still no questions?) and left. Happy to be an Apple customer.

The happiness did not end there. Back home, I plugged in my new iPhone. iTunes asked for my phone number and if I wanted to restore from a backup. Now, by “restore” I was expecting it to simply sync my contacts and iTunes playlists and calendars and little else. After that, I was fully expecting to redo all my customizations manually. Again, Apple is two steps ahead of me. By “restore”, they mean a complete frigging restore. When the restore was done, I had everything thing back where it was. The icons were back where I had dragged them, bookmarks on the home screen were back, the camera photos, the recent call history, everything. The only thing that were not restored, understandably, were the passwords for the wireless networks and email. Even the most recent searches in the Maps app were back! I was blown away.

Apple really gets it.