Two for Two

Anyone out there have an iPad 2? Anyone out there experience a failure with their SIM card? About a week ago, I started noticing my internet connection spontaneously resetting while I was using 3G data. Soon enough, the spontaneous resetting became full-blown network dropout, followed by the iPad telling me “No SIM Installed.” Funny, because there most certainly was.

Being understanding of these types of things, I tried lots of things. I put a piece of tape on the back, cut to size, in the hopes that perhaps that might make the fit a little more snug. No luck there. I did the old Nintendo blow-in-the-slot trick (no heckling, please). No dice there, either. I’d have to manually eject the SIM card tray and push it back in every single time, which became quite annoying when the thing couldn’t hold on to a signal longer than a few minutes.

Finally, I took it into an Apple store to have it looked at. A really nice guy helped me out, but seemed to think that, at least initially, the failure was caused by a faulty SIM tray, and that replacing the SIM tray would fix it right up.

For those who don’t know, the iPhone and iPad 2 (and some other phones, as well), have a SIM card tray that slides into and out of the phone instead of an integrated slot buried somewhere under the battery. This allows the entire design to be more or less seamless, while still allowing the owner to swap SIM cards in and out, if necessary. It has very little to do with the phone spontaneously being unable to recognize the presence of a SIM card. If the tray were broken or out of alignment, sure. But the idea that swapping the tray out for a new, identical one is just silly.

Needless to say, the Apple Genius realized that the swap wouldn’t work, and was advised to replace the whole shebang. I picked up the new one yesterday, synced the bad boy up, and it’s been working flawlessly. This swap also had the neat fringe benefit of getting me an iPad 2 with a much better screen that didn’t leak light. My first one did, and, although it wasn’t a big deal, when you buy an Apple product, you want it to look and work like a million bucks. They usually do, but it looks like the first iPad 2 I got wasn’t quite ready for prime time. This one, however, is fantastic.

I think the whole process went incredibly smoothly, and I’m really happy that the Genius Bar folks were able to acknowledge that there was indeed a problem that needed fixing.

My girlfriend also had a problem with her MacBook Pro, namely, her hard drive came down with a slight case of death. Anyone who’s ever had a laptop that I know of has, at some point in time, experienced a catastrophic and total hard drive failure. This is essentially a standard part of owning a laptop. She had the foresight to purchase AppleCare when she got the laptop, so the Genius Bar folks took it in, replaced the hard drive, and got it back to her the next day. If this isn’t awesome customer service, I don’t know what is. Since she also had her data backed up with the awesome BackBlaze, she didn’t skip a beat. A day of inconvenience (if you can really call it that), and she’s back in action.

Moral of the story: AppleCare is a necessary part of owning an Apple computer (sorry, it just is), and always always always back up your data. Twice, if possible.