Thursday was not a good day, and it exposed how dependent I am on a few little bits of high technology.

First, there was my iPhone. I notice it was resetting, displaying the white Apple logo on the screen, then soon getting back to the “start” screen. I checked in settings, and saw that it had done an automatic update to IOS 17.2.1, and was now considered “up to date.”

Good deal, I thought to myself.

Then the screen went black and it reset again. That was weird.

But, a while later, I realized that it was now resetting every few minutes. I could use it in between reset, and all seemed fine. But then the it would repeat the reset cycle, again and again.

Of course, I went online and found a lot of complaints about similar issues, but most related to difficulty in installing the upgrade. This phone thought it had finished the upgrade. But there were a number of step-by-step suggestions for a fix. I tried several. Forced restart. Made no difference. Update network settings. It still continued the reset cycle. Clear all settings. Nothing.

Time to escalate. The phone is new. I ordered it from Apple on September 19, and it was delivered almost a month later, around October 15. This means it is still under warranty.

So I started an online “chat” with an apple tech somewhere in the Apple corporate world. She was very good, whether she was an actual person or an AI persona.

She guided me through the process to “recovery mode,” which involved connecting the iPhone to my Macbook Pro via a cable, then going through a slightly different reset routine. After a minute or so, the phone displayed a computer and a cable stretching out towards it.

Now, she said in the chat, go into finder.

That was easy.

Click on “iPhone” in the finder.

I didn’t see it. “Where is it?”

“It should be in the left hand panel, listed along with the Macintosh hard drive in ‘Locations’.”

I told her it wasn’t there. She asked for a screenshot. I grabbed one, sent it over to her.

Pause. “Let’s get you an appointment with a technician,” was her reply.

So at 6:40 p.m., I reported to the Apple Store in Kahala Mall and made my way to the Genius Bar in the back of the store. There was only a very short wait, a minute or two, before one of the resident geniuses came over to offer his assistance.

It didn’t take long. We did some preliminaries, he watched it reset a couple of times, hooked it up to his computer and looked grimly at whatever was reported.

Long story short–It has to be repaired, and the parts are not available on island. So the easiest approach was to let them ship it to their repair center, which allowed then to give me a “loaner.” So I have a nice, Coral-pink iPhone XR from back in about 2018, and after transferring my identity and cell phone service to it, it seems to work. I’ll be able to do the basics–make and receive calls, texts, and mail–until my phone is returned.

This is a “second level” repair, if I heard it right. That means they’ll use the existing case and screen, but the rest of the guts of the phone will simply be replaced, and the phone returned. At that point it will be like getting a new phone, restoring it from yesterday’s iCloud backup. It’s not fun, and takes most of a day to transfer the data, reload the apps, and so on, discovering things that need to be done along the way.

The estimate for the cost of this repair is $649. That’s exactly half of the original cost of the phone three months ago. It is a very good thing that it is under warranty and so cost to me is $0.00. Whew.

But that’s not the end of the story.

When I got home, my Apple watch was in the process of resetting. I guess the process of wiping out the phone resulted in “unpairing” the watch and my phone.

But pairing the watch has been simple, so I wasn’t worried.

After a few minutes, the watch gave instructions. Place your watch close to your phone. Okay. Done.

But then it all went off the rails again.

Came the message: Your phone is too old and cannot be paired to this watch.

Ohhh-kay. So both my iPhone and Apple Watch are temporarily out of order.

I’m still feeling a little anxious in their absence.

Now I hope this doesn’t somehow infect my laptop or iPad. So far, so good.