My proud moment of the historic event on June 29th, 2007 during the iPhone 1st generation unveiling to the world. I waited in line for 6 hours with fellow Apple enthusiast to get my hands on one of these revolutionary cell phone. Hah good times :)
Please bear with me but I will eventually get to my point after my rants, thanks for your patience. You can also just fast forward and scroll all the way down to my list of why I heart Apple.
Just this past weekend, I was in the Riviera-Maya, Mexico shooting the wedding of Tiffany + Brooks (stay tune for their photos). And since my schedule was going to be a jam pack 3-day weekend, I decided to activate the password mode on my iPhone in the event I loose the phone. I figured losing the phone is no big deal since I can delete all of the sensitive info remotely via Apple's me.com service. I figured this was a good idea as a preventative measure. Sooooo this is when everything started to get a bit more interesting.
Flashforward a few hours later, I landed safely in Cancun, checked into my room at Mosquito Blue in downtown Playa del Carmen, and headed straight to the closest convenient store called Oxxo (think of 7 Eleven) for a prepaid phone card. When I got back to my room I realized all the instruction were in spanish (of course), but thanks to the concierge, he helped me figured out that all I needed to do was press 1 for instructions in english...yeah! So now I am all set to call my wifey (oh yes, we were not shooting together on this event) and when I started to punch in my password the freakin' numbers on my phone were not responding. WTF? I rebooted the iPhone by pressing and holding on both the "on" and "home" button down until the iPhone rebooted and the Apple logo appeared. All seemed fine until I tried to re-enter the code. The keypad pad went berzerk, for every number I would touch, it would give me a different number. After entering the password a couple of times I realized I set the phone to reset (erase all data) after 10 failed attempts. I couldn't believe this was happening!
Now normally I don't really care about the info since I have everything backed up on my laptop but one really important application is my new Xpense Trkr app on my iPhone that helps me keep tracks of all my driving mileage during the year...this was the only piece of info that was important to me and I needed to retrieve it pronto. So what to do? Absolutely nada until I get back to the states.
Moving on, the wedding shoot on Saturday was gorgeous and fabulous (promise will post some photos soon).
Sunday, rise and shine and back to Cali. On the flight back, I started thinking of the worst case scenario about my iPhone...what if I can't retrieve the info on my iPhone...and I have no way of communicating with my wife when I land, etc.
As soon as I arrived home I made an appointment with the Apple Genius Bar for early Monday morning. I was given both the good news and hopeful news which is better than the good and bad news version right? The good news was my iPhone's serial number was part of a batch that was made that had a known failed keypad, meaning Apple would replace my freakin' old beat up tired ass 1st generation iPhone with another brand spanking shiny new 1st generation iPhone. The hopeful news was since my last physical sync between my iPhone and iTunes was only 3 days ago, then theoretically all of the information from all third party apps on the iPhone should have been backed up during the last physical sync.
We connected the new shiny iPhone to my laptop. Let the waiting games begins...20 mins later, the sync was done and when I opened up my Xpense Trkr, voila..all of my mileage expenses for 2009 were there. I was so stoked that I just wanted to give my Genius Bar guy a hug, but instead I resorted to giving him countless thank yous and many gestures of gratitude. I love Apple, man!
Okay, finally my conclusion and to the point of why I heart Apple...let me count thee ways:
1. Apple rocks..duh (just a bonus to start it off right...right?)
2. The backing up of data for 3rd party apps on your iPhone. Who would want to lose their highest score on Bejewel?
3. Apple will always make the best product and ensure customer satisfaction. Sorry Windows and PC's but you got nothing on Mac!
4. Only Apple will be totally sincere and honest enough to fess up and tell me, "Hey dude...you're iPhone is on the list of known defect list"...and offer to replace my iPhone for F-R-E-E! I mean come on, who the hell has this kind of customer service? Not Dell, IBM, Verizon and definitely not you're freakin' credit card companies.
5. Apple products always work seamlessly and effortless.
6. The clean Lines and esthetics. No bulk for performance.
7. In the long run, you get more than what you pay for.
8. Apple service is unmatched: Genius Bar, Apple Care, One on One, free Apple store classes and seminars, etc.
Dear Apple, thank you for showing and reminding us all that it is still possible to run a successful business without greed, distrust and malice. I wish everyone, especially the auto makers and the financial sectors would learn from your examples.
Once you go Mac, you never go back.
