The Apple (3G) of My Eye

Let me preface this post by saying that as a recovering and lifelong PC user,  I’ve been clean and sober for nearly (6) months now (AKA got my first MacBook Pro six months ago). It was my work that kept me from jumping in head first because of the compatibility issues. But to the brave few who can actually muster up the balls, it’s worth the risk.

Now back to the iPhone issue:
My wife has a 3G and I have a 3GS, she needed the 3.0 update so she could copy, paste and a few other cool new features. She uses a Sony Vaio and I use a MacBook Pro so everything works differently when you have an issue. So I connected her iPhone to her notebook, started up iTunes, clicked the update button and watched in awe as it took a digital dump. Not only did it render the phone useless, iTunes could not see the phone at all. I tried reinstalling iTunes, rebooting the PC, restarting the iPhone, reinstalling the USB drivers, tried two different USB cables, used msconfig to stop all services except for ituneshelper and qtask and nothing. Having tried everything I knew and after scouring Google for answers I quickly realized it was going to be a long day and that I was NOT the only person suffering from the dreaded 1604 error.

This left me with no alternative but to call AT&T because I assumed that Apple would be unreachable only (2) days after the release of a new iPhone and iPhone O/S.

611 is the number you call from your cel to get AT&T support so I called and started navigating the prompts until I heard “for Apple iPhone support press 1″. Then I took a deep breath, settled back into my chair, took a sip of water, closed my eyes and reluctantly pressed 1. To my amazement within a single ring I was greeted by a friendly voice who appeared to speak English as a first language. He was friendly, calm, helpful and determined to resolve my issue quickly. We ended up doing basic troubleshooting and he quickly understood that I had a clue and had done everything correctly up until this point. He eventually confessed that Apple had no resolution for this error but said there was a work around and all I had to do was restore the iPhone on a different computer  and my Mac happened to be in my lap at the time. He stayed on the line as I did a quick restore and then plugged the phone back into the PC so it could sync again. It worked flawlessly and I was grateful but sure wish that tip had been in the FAQ on apple.com. It does say “try a different computer” but it doesn’t say “restore to factory settings on another computer and then sync to your normal computer” which would have been clear enough for me to figure it out without calling in. Either way my blood was starting to boil as I navigated the voice mail prompts but it quickly cooled off when this Apple rep (yes he worked for Apple, not AT&T) took charge and led me to the promise land.

Way to go Apple for excellent customer service and thanks again for not forcing me to speak with four different people who all call me Mr. John.