Lessons from an Apple Genius
My iPhone started bugging out earlier today, refusing to complete a sync despite multiple reboots. I tried a Restore, and it failed, citing error code 2005 and effectively bricking the phone.
I brought it to the Genius Bar, where it promptly began accepting a restore from their computer. I asked the Genius what might have caused this to work there but not at home.
“What kind of Mac do you have at home?”
“A Mac Pro.”
“Which generation?”
“Harpertown.”
Identifying it in this manner was a subtle attempt to communicate to this gentleman that I was likely to be full of my own technobullshit, and therefore it would be unwise to try to engage in a technobullshit discussion. By doing so, I was hoping he’d skip the newbie language and just give me a concise, technical explanation.
Unfortunately, he didn’t pick up the cue. He proceeded to go on a far-too-long tangent of some of the most priceless wisdom I’ve heard in a while, including:
- The Mac Pro is buggy because it’s running 32-bit programs on 64-bit CPUs.
- The iPhone uses a pagefile when it runs out of memory. This is why iPhones have 1-2 GB less usable space than advertised.
- If apps don’t free memory when they quit, the pagefile and “caches” fill up, but these caches are not emptied when the phone is rebooted.
- To indicate full caches, the screen will frequently turn a solid color, either black, white, or blue, and require a hard reset. This should be considered a normal maintenance operation.
- If too many caches and pagefiles fill up, it can cause the problem that my iPhone exhibited. (!)
- I should be rebooting my iPhone at least once per day.
Without boring you with the details, rest assured that all of these are complete, 100% bullshit.
Genius.