Hopeless

Because cameras record only light waves, this picture does not convey in any way the incredible cacophony of frog calls coming from this otherwise not-very-lively-looking marsh at the Greenwood conservation area in Ajax, Ontario. 9 April 2023.

This past week I went to the Apple Store in the Eaton Centre to buy a new iPad. My old one was a 7th generation model from way back in 2019. 

I took them up on their offer to start my new iPad under supervision and sat at the table set aside for customers to bring their Apple devices to life (I think they called it the initiation table, which has a creepy ring to it). 

For the purchase, I’d been helped by a guy with “Twix” on the badge hung around his neck, which I assume is what people call him and not his favourite candy bar. I’d so confounded him with my old woman powers that he forgot to try and sell me AppleCare insurance. When he finally remembered he was supposed to extract another $80 from me, I told him the moment had passed. 

At the table of initiations, I took a seat next to a middle-aged woman wearing glasses and a mask, and holding like it was a sick kitten her iPhone 7, issued into the world in 2016, approximately 100 years ago in Apple time. 

She expressed six degrees of dismay to first one and then two and then three different Apple people in green shirts whose job it was to help her, but none of whom could. I was focused on what I was doing so I missed the gist of the cause of her otherwise palpable unhappiness.

I got my gizmo to the point where all it had to do was download my content from the cloud. There was no saying how long this would take and she was sitting right there, and all the Apple people had fled, so I asked her what was wrong.

Long story short, she’d never upgraded her operating system. So she was, what, ten, a dozen, versions behind. Her phone had stopped working. She couldn’t retrieve her photos or open her email. She couldn’t just get a new device because there were things on her phone that were not in the cloud, and she couldn’t bear to lose them. She mentioned she didn’t have a job, and so perhaps her other problem was that she couldn’t afford a new phone.

She thought this might be Apple’s fault, and wondered if next time she shouldn’t just get an Android device. I decided not to say that those also need to have their operating systems updated.

She was in a terrible, entirely self-made bind. I felt bad for her, but, geez. 

Then my device was ready to go. In what could be described as the very least I could do, I called over a fourth Apple person, a fresh one who didn’t know yet how hopeless this all was, and asked if he could help my friend. 

Thanks for reading.

Karen