Genius Ignorance

Since the iOS 5.1 update, my iPhone 4S has had terrible battery life. I joked about it being related to the new "4G" label displayed on the phone. That joke stopped being funny to me when I needed to charge my phone three times a day.

Next, I noticed that the slide to unlock would occasionally stutter. At least once a day I observed app icons randomly displaying a loading progress bar when they were not being updated.

I headed over to my local Apple Store to talk to the experts. Right away I realized I was in for dissapointment. The greeter at the door asked what my problem was. After my explanation, he immediately asked to see the phone. He looked at the suspended apps and denounced that the problem was identified. I needed to kill my apps. This was the beginning of some embarassing support. I respectfully disagreed with the greeter. He scheduled Genius Bar support for me and I waited.

As usual, the Genius was very cordial. She was polite and friendly. But she eventually broke my heart when she also suggested my problem was related to suspended apps. I also politely disagreed with her. She politely reiterated that suspended apps are still running and consuming power. I described the numerous other problems and She relented and requested that I reset my phone to factory settings. Not a restore from backup, which I had already done twice, but a reset and manually reconfigure every app. I'm sure my facial expression revealed my unspoken words. She apologized and empathized but offered no further suggestions.

I agreed to try another reset and restore from backup (third times the charm). I explained that I have a hundred apps with many hundreds of settings. I'm configured with corporate WiFi credentials and with a corporate exchange account (both are a pain to setup). Then there are all of the iCloud settings and iOS preferences.

This is what Apple is training their Geniuses to tell people: It's your fault. You're using it wrong. Spend an entire day to reset the phone, install all of the apps again. Reconfigure them all. Place them all in folders and on home screens again. Kill your apps.

Here is what people like me hear: It doesn't "just work" but we will never admit our failings and will instead train smart people to say stupid things.

So, yeah, here I go again.