Holy expletive. I made things go from bad to worse in less than an hour. It all started last night with The Man asking me if I was deleting photos on our photo stream. Even though there is a warning:
for some reason, like an idiot, I thought that when I deleted items from the photo stream, it was only my iPhone and iPad affected. Somehow, I thought Apple knew which devices were mine and which were The Man's. In my argument, Apple is super duper smart and the devices are in different owner's names so I really thought I was fine.
Well, The Man uses his phone for work. He uses the photo capability in particular because he's able to take photos instead of make copies of receipts, work order forms and document his work in progress. Imagine my surprise when I find out that instead of using his Camera Roll, he stored these photos in the Photo Stream. And I had been deleting them. All the meanwhile, he had been deleting his photos on the Camera Roll to gain memory space.
Ay-yi-yi.
When we realized what each other was doing, I could tell he was upset. Even though he never said it, he probably wondered what the hell I was thinking. I told him that I was going to work on retrieving them by restoring my phone to an earlier back up date. After another "I'm sorry", I went downstairs to figure it out. I had no idea how to do it because I hardly used our Mac but, by golly, I had (half a) brain and Google so I would figure it out.
I spent about 20 minutes just trying to figure out how to access the back up in iTunes by way of Google. Another 20 minutes passed and realizing that I needed to plug my phone into the computer, I figured out how to access my back up history. I saw that my phone had been backed up through hard-wire back in 2011 but there one back up through iCloud from just yesterday. Perfect!
Then disaster hit.
I don't know what wrong button I pressed but I clearly hit something terribly wrong because instead of restoring to the back up from yesterday, my phone goes back to its 2011 self. Actually, I was using an iPhone 4 at the time so it was more than father version of it. I was worried but then thought, "No problem, ElleDee. Just go back and restore it again, this time pressing whatever correct button I missed and put it back in its 2014 glory."
When I went to Settings and then iCloud, my phone asked for my AppleID password. For the AppleID from 2011. That's right, we use a different one now. I thought it was one of my go to passwords. None of them worked. I was getting flustered and thought I'd just reset the whole damn thing. Evidently, I used a different 4-digit passcode for the phone lock because when it prompted me to enter it, the one I now used was incorrect. To add to the pressure, it also said:
Oh. My. Gawd.
At this point, I felt like my phone turned on me. What the EFF was I going to do? I went from accidentally deleting photos (which is bad enough because they weren't mine) to my phone being stuck in 2011 and me not remembering my password or passcode. In order for me to try to reset it by computer, I had to turn off the "Find my iPhone" feature which, guess what? Needs my AppleID password.
Are you EFFIN' KIDDING ME?
I had just taken a shower and it was also a cold night and I was sweating. "Forget this," I thought. It was time to call Apple Tech Support. Hell, that time had come and went about 40 minutes ago. So I called. And they were closed. To appease the crazies like me, the website did offer the ability to schedule an appointment the next day. I took one of the earliest appointments available - at 5:15 AM. I could have probably taken an even earlier appointment (I believe the hotline opened at 4 AM, PST) but I didn't want to risk oversleeping. Silly me, though, I wouldn't get a good night's sleep. Yup, I was too anxious and worried that I had created a clusterf*ck so big that it was either going to cost me a lot of money to fix or, worse yet, I would have to schedule an appointment at the Apple Store. I HATE going to the Apple Store.
I should note that when I went upstairs for the night, The Man didn't give me a hard time. In fact, he looked sympathetic. I had to ask him if I could borrow his phone so I could use it while talking to Apple Tech Support since mine would be tied up and we didn't have a house line. I also looked like I had a bad day, I'm sure.
I woke up the same time as The Man which was around 4:00 AM. I decided to just get up and get ready for work so that I would as much time as possible with tech support. If there's one thing I know it's that fixing technical issues takes a lot more time than it did to get into the predicament. As luck would have it, this was also the day I had to be at work much earlier for a 7:30 AM meeting.
I waited until 5:18 AM (my appointment was at 5:15 AM) for Apple to call me. That's right, I let three minutes pass before I said to myself, "Oh no. You better call the hotline and get this going!" Apple has a pretty decent prompt menu which got me to a technician rather quickly. I won't get into the nitty gritty details because this is probably already too boring. We were on the phone for an hour, the tech having me try various ways to get around the old AppleID because there was no way for him to reset the password. We hit two or three roadblocks before he figured out a work around. Bless his heart, he figured out a way to get my current AppleID back onto my phone! There's no way I could have done it by myself because he himself had to try multiple methods before getting to this point. Then there were still roadblocks to restore my phone. In fact, he couldn't do it straight from there. We had to wipe my phone clean, add my AppleID, and, yup! You guessed it. Another roadblock! But this tech was persistent. He had me try a couple of things and he discovered another workaround for this new issue. In the end, he was able to restore my phone to its 2014 self.
I was so thankful to him. Halfway through the process, the tech sounded like he was giving me multiple steps because he was going to get off the phone with me. I asked him to PLEASE stay on the phone with me and that I would pay the fee they charged since my phone was out of warranty. But I knew that my phone would turn on me once he got off the line with me and I would be stuck. The tech laughed and stuck it out until it looked like I was out of the weeds. For an entire hour. Then he didn't charge me. That's right. After being on the line with me for a whole hour about a phone out of warranty, he didn't charge me for his services. I had to rave about Apple Tech Service's customer service. I told him I would be happy to fill out any survey to say how awesome he was and I also sang Apple's praises on my Facebook page. Seriously, the technician was patient, helpful, resolved my issue and didn't charge me. Wow.
What about those pictures, you ask. Well, the tech shared with me this bit of news which I can't believe The Man and I hadn't figured out ourselves. Although The Man uses the photo stream feature far more than I, I do have it on my phone and so you would have thought one of us would have realized this. When I told the tech what had started the whole clusterf*ck, he said that the photo stream is a temporary folder. I explained to him that The Man used it to create space on his Camera Roll and memory space on his phone. The tech said that he needed to switch it - The Man needed to save photos on his Camera Roll or, to save space, save it on the computer. Although that doesn't help a lick w/ recovering the photos I had deleted, at least we know what to do moving forward. And I have my beloved phone back in its pristine condition.
Yes, I came to the realization that I am uber-dependent on my iPhone. You've hooked me, Apple!
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