Tools of the trade, I’d like to reintroduce you

/ June 18, 2015

I’ve worked hard since the January 2013 layoff from the big daily to become more relevant in the infrastructure of BloggyVille.

Lift up the hood and know as much as I can about making this baby here hum, so to speak.

And so I’ve learned to speak rudimentary Apple.

As you know if you’ve read my stories about my dear wife Karen, Ellie B aka Dogamous Pyle and Little Bitty life in the Syracuse city neighborhood of Eastwood, I take my photographs with my iPhone 6.

I spent March completing the WordPress Photo 101 workshop and its daily assignments. I believe I learned as I talked to my iPhone 6 to coax out good shots here, there, anywhere I can.

Waiting a turn at Apple's store at Destiny USA in Syracuse.

Waiting a turn at Apple’s store at Destiny USA in Syracuse.

Then when I get these shots such as the one featuring the gentleman biding his time outside Apple in Syracuse’s mega shopping, dining and entertainment complex Destiny USA, I wait for the iCloud to gently lift them out of my iPhone and kiss them on their way to my iPad Air, where the bigger screen allows far better editing and also places them in proper context for insertion into the WordPress blogging platform as I talk to my iPad while writing my stories on the bluetooth keyboard.

A few weeks ago, my iPhone and iPad stopped talking to each other.

My images no longer waltzed their way on the iCloud for my blogging convenience and your eventual viewing pleasure.

No. This calamitous dissolution of amicable communication meant that I had to email my photos to myself, open the emails on the iPad, and save the images to the photo library.

This took time. Hours. I did not cut down the amount of photos I snapped and just knew I’d fall in like with once I saw their greatness on the bigger screen.

I looked inside Settings on both of my Apple tools and slid imaginary buttons back and forth. I Googled and read information about the iCloud and my gadgets.

I called AppleCare, and understood all of their instructions about signing out of iCloud, signing back on, and merging the photo streams on both of my life-givers.

The iPad recycled and seemed happy. The iPhone stuck at downloading 5,987 photos. I restarted the process several time on my own. Same results.

My dear wife Karen and I went for our annual pre-tourist rush June week at the Happy Cottage in Cape Cod, and I took a dozen posts’ worth of pictures on my iPhone and emailed every one and saved them to my iPad. It took hours.

A bar by name only.

A bar by name only.

Upon return I used my iPad to make an appointment to visit the Genius Bar at our Apple Store. I explained the problem as succinctly as possible in my note.

Apple is taken very seriously in these stores, with dozens of smart-looking young tech savvies racing around with their iPad mini’s apparently helping three, four, five customers at a time.

I checked in. I waited for my name to be called so I could get my time with a Genius.

The genius at left helped four different folk as I waited my turn.

The genius at left helped four different folk as I waited my turn.

My guy listened to my tale of woe, carefully. He looked at my Settings on both devices. He said I’d been doing the right things in the right order to clear the problem. Oh, happy day! Thank you for your praise, young Genius! But it wasn’t working on my iPhone 6. Oh, no, what now, young Genius?

He plugged them in, started the whole cleansing process again, and sent me browsing for 10 minutes. I went wandering, and it was an accident that his Apple Watch beeped 10 minutes the second I returned. After all, he had both my devices sitting to his side.

His check saw movement on both the iPhone 6 and the iPad. And so he said sometimes the clean-out just gets stuck for no apparent reason. Go home and produce gold, Old Man! No, he showed me exactly how and why the best thing was to let them rest. The cleanse would work more quickly that way. And so I did. OK, I still checked emails and read my notifications and answered comments …

But then I put my babies to rest with a kiss to the top of the … I went to bed and let them sleep, too.

And the next morning, the argument was apparently settled while I slept. My ‘i’s’ are speaking with each other again. Photos were traveling freely from one All Photos folder to the other.

Oh, happy day!

Have you suffered the frustration of two cloud-linked devices going through a break-up, and if so, what did you do? Are you an Apple or Android or other fan in the Smart Phone world? Can you easily understand and follow electronic gadget instructions?

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72 thoughts on “Tools of the trade, I’d like to reintroduce you”

  1. Well, Mark, I don’t have an i-anything (except a Pod), but I have encountered a similar problem with one of my professional cameras (while I was away in Canada, nonetheless). I kept talking the battery and CF cards out, thinking that would (or should) reset everything, but to no avail. Finally, I called the guy who cleans my cameras back home in Florida, and he told me to take the battery and cards out – and leave them out overnight. Sure enough, that worked. I’m glad you’re back up and running. 🙂

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  2. I am Team Android all the way 🙂 Especially with my beloved Samsungs, will keep buying that brand until they tick me off (ahem*motorola*ahem) .

    My biggest issue is when i switched computers, desktop and most recently laptop, trying to figure out how to sync the old school ipod and transfer songs that had been uploaded from long-gone CDs. Always fun, and I always end up with duplicates of some songs and missing a few others :/

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  3. Although I am grateful for my new phone I have to be careful about leaving things open or they run a d use gigabytes. Which I Don’t Get why but I do need to connect to public wi-fi more when I can.

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    • Yes, Robin, open programs run even in the background, using up your data plan. But on WiFi, no data is used. So you should hook up to that. If you’re phone is smart it will remember and reconnect to that public WiFi again when you return to that spot. I hope. Knock on wood. 🙂

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  5. I’m glad it’s all working for you again Mark, how frustrating it must have been to do this all through email. I am so un-tech savvy and have never used the cloud that I have not had the misfortune of these types of problems. ❤
    Diana xo

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  6. Hmmmm….interesting….. I do not have an iPhone but do have a Mac computer. For a couple of years now I have emailed my pics to my email from my phone. So I can edit them on a bigger screen (computer). Suddenly I can NOT email my pics to my computer. Causing me great anguish. Drawing my little pics and then sending them to my computer let me work on them at home, in my car, at lunch, etc. Now….I cannot. 😦 Which might be why someone I know has NOT gotten any pictures in the last few days…..

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  7. Great blog, it reminds me of a classic Woody Allen set, in the days when he did stand-up, about his answer phone and toaster ganging up on him. I have no such technical problems about my gadgets talking to one another, though I do fear that they are talking about me.

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  9. “Thank you for your praise, young Genius! But it wasn’t working on my iPhone 6. Oh, no, what now, young Genius?” haha this was a fun read. I just got a iPad and upgraded my iCloud storage… I haven’t used it a bunch yet

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  11. so technology needs a rest too. Glad they sorted out their problem with each other. You are way ahead of me Mark with technology. My camera and laptop could talk to each other but then I would have to connect with Wi Fi when I’m out and about and .. I just glaze over at the thought.

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  12. i’m happy the little apple siblings are on speaking terms again. i’ve had things like this happen and had to rely on the geniuses to solve the problems, as i’m not too tech savvy. (a huge understatement)

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  14. Whew,I’m feeling old now Mark. I used to keep up with technology but it has long since raced off into the sunrise without me. I am distrustful of the Cloud although I am sure the technology will become more secure and usable. My biggest concern is letting personal info out of my control.No doubt I will come to accept it. The amount of possible gain is very high and the risk is low, so it seems a good plan – I’ll come around.

    Meanwhile it is great to hear that this tech is useful to you Mark. Like all tech it will have its bugs but the value seems to be there to make it worthwhile. 😀

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  15. Well, at least it wasn’t one of those things where, after all that trouble, they were just like ‘just unplug it’ and you feel foolish. You know, I work in an electrician’s office and one day the air conditioner broke and I was kind of wondering why they didn’t just fix it but, okay, it’s really the building manager’s responsibility. So, the building manager sent in an electrician (ironically) who told us we just needed to unplug the thing and plug it back in!! Sorry to go off on a tangent but your story reminded me of that one. I was sure it was going to end ing a similar fashion.

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  16. I have a go-phone. It doesn’t talk to anything. I am really old school. If I want to take a photo, I have to go into the house, go to the closet, get the camera out, take the picture. Then I attach the umbilical line from the camera to the laptop and allow them to talk with one another. Clouds make me nervous. My kids are quite savvy at doing this stuff. My son can print something on our printer when he is at the other end of the house and it always freaks me out when I am working on the PC and all of a sudden the printer kicks into action – out of the blue. I remember AOL and dial-up modems. I remember when there was no internet or clouds, or nothing, just wide open space. Maybe I need to get with the program!!!

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  18. I am just barely able to understand what is relevant and what is not with my little baby iphone. Much as I love it, just like my teenage daughter, it totally baffles me, often. I did some updates recently, and now, much to my chagrin, it gives random buzzes and beeps, notifying me of some mysterious events that I can’t quite figure out. Often. Really, really often. It’s a bit annoying, actually. So I am impressed with your refusal to surrender, as that is usually my first idea- say “screw it” and learn to bumble on with buzzes and beeps, or without something else. Good job!

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  21. I can feel your frustration and am glad your gadgets resolved their problems through fairly simple mediation and waking up anew. I used a Windows phone for many years (hated it) now have an android and do like that whatever photos I take are automatically uploaded to my google account. I can then download to my computer if I want, but there’s no hooking up the phone to the laptop or emailing myself.

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  22. Oh my goodness, I do not envy that situation one little bit.
    I cannot say that I am good at tech, but I am a good problem solver, and usually work these things out. I have seen rest fix many things, especially my own frustration 🙂

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