So last Friday morning, there I was, blithely swiping away through Facebook on my iPhone while avoiding getting 
out of bed, when a notification popped up reminding me that I still hadn’t updated to the latest iOS. “Huh,” I thought. “I have a few minutes to spare, I’ll do that now.”
So I plugged in the phone, opened up Settings, and hit the update button.
And that was the last access I’ve had to that damned phone. Because ARGH…I’d forgotten to back the thing up first, and I had unwittingly set foot on a slippery, slippery slope that led me to accidentally kill my entire Apple account. I kid. You. Not.
At first, everything seemed to be going fine, and the phone began updating while I made coffee. (That’s a key point there…the part about making coffee and not yet drinking it, because I’m pretty sure lack of caffeination played a role in this disaster.) About 10 minutes later, I poured a cup of said coffee and checked on the phone’s progress. (Again, no actual caffeine had yet been consumed.) There was a pop-up message about not enough storage, blah blah blah—and maybe some kind of question about wanting to continue, but I’m not sure about the latter because I quickly hit ignore (because I couldn’t be bothered to clean out my storage BECAUSE NO CAFFEINE!!!) and again told it to update.
That was when my second foot joined the first on that slippery, slippery slope.
My iPhone ground to a complete and utter halt. I had enough caffeine in me by this point to realize I had a problem on my hands–and to go online to Apple support to find a solution. Following the instructions there, I plugged the phone into my computer (after first spending an additional 20 minutes updating my iTunes software), and then attempted to restore it. First from its last backup–you’ll remember that I hadn’t done one before I started this whole chain of events, but I thought I had the phone set to automatically back up to the cloud at least occasionally, so it was at least worth a shot.
Sadly, the attempt was a no go, and I was faced with doing a full factory reset.
I drank more coffee, bit the proverbial bullet at the idea of losing all my stored data (apps, contacts, the works), and hit the necessary button. The phone merrily updated itself in short order, more coffee was consumed, the phone restarted, and then…
Freaking heck. I’d forgotten my Apple password. After multiple attempts, Apple security kicked in and locked me out altogether. I could have just waited a while until it reset, but noooooooo. I was impatient and wanted to go out, and I didn’t want to wait until I could try again, and I didn’t want to make a trip to the Genius Bar, and I didn’t want to listen to canned music on the phone while I waited forever to speak to someone, and then I saw the words Account Recovery and I thought, “Aha! That’s what I need!”
In spite of the warning that recovery could take up to a few days (“Pshaw! these things never take as long as they say,” I thought to myself), I went ahead. I did it. I requested that my account be recovered, went through the bazillions steps needed to confirm I really, really wanted that to happen, and then…
Then, I think the caffeine finally kicked in, and I realized the monumentalism (totally a word) of my error. Clicker’s remorse quickly set in. I went back online to book an appointment at the Genius Bar and discovered that, for a forgotten password, I could request a call from Apple support. I did, and thirty seconds later, our home phone rang. Huh. So much for waiting forever to speak to someone.
I explained my problem, and the young man on the other end looked up my account for me to see what he could do. And really, he was ever so nice–sympathetic, even–when he came back onto the line to tell me that I’d officially screwed myself over. He could have helped me with my forgotten password, you see, but because the account was already in recovery, he could do nothing. Noth. Ing.
Nada.
I was going to have to wait…UP TO TWO WEEKS, as it turns out.
I’m on Day Four.
Technology super powers. I totally haz them.
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