I grew up with manual typewriters and mimeograph machines. I remember staying up late during my college years, typing my English composition essays, only to have to start over with a new page if I made a mistake, so I blessthe personal computer and my ability to write and make changes and corrections quickly and easily. With my flatbed scanner I can scan and save old photographs, color slides, and documents, and then send them by e-mail around the world. A year ago my children gave me an iPad, and this winter I bought an iPhone—two items I considered gadgets but now am finding indispensable.  In the small package of my iPad, I have books, movies and television shows, a compass, a calculator, a scanner, a camera, a file of photographs, e-mail, a GPS, weather reports, and much more. And when everything works, life is grand. It’s a brave new world indeed.

 When everything works….ah, there’s the rub. About a week ago my beautiful 14-month old iPad Air started malfunctioning. It went to sleep, and I could not turn it back on. I searched on the Internet for solutions and posted questions on my Facebook page. I tried rebooting, and sometimes that did the trick for a minute or even two, but then the iPad would turn itself off again, as though the Genie inside refused to wake up and work.  Finally I made an appointment with a Genius at the Bar in the local Apple store. (Instead of serving drinks at the Bar, they serve solutions.) The e-mail confirming the appointment warned me to back up my iPad to the iCloud, and I tried to do this via iTunes but got an error message part way through. 

The next day just before my appointment I made a last-minute attempt to wake up the iPad, and it roused just long enough for me to back it up to the iCloud.  A small triumph! But the Genius (a guy who looked about 18 years old) could not fix the iPad. The Genie inside was not asleep, but dead. I must have looked ready to cry, because the Genius said he was sorry, that they could not fix iPads the way they could iPhones and Apple computers. And my iPad was out of warranty. Only solution:  a new iPad at a reduced price, with all my old applications and files (music, photographs, documents, etc.) restored to it. Not exactly the ending I was hoping for, but better than it might have been.