[General] An informal essay: Erratic iPad

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Monte_Cristo

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Joined
Nov 18, 2011
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Student or Learner
Native Language
Chinese
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China
Current Location
China
This is an event I recorded in English. Hope some native speakers could proofread it. Thanks in advance : )






Erratic iPad

The other day when I arrived home I found that my iPad2’s battery died. As usual, I connected it to the charger and did not find anything abnormal. The next day after I got up, I attempted to use my iPad to read some news. To my great surprise, it was still charging and I could not even start it up. Anybody who has ever used an Apple gadget knows that it only takes a few minutes for an iOS device to start up automatically after being charged. Given that my iPad had been charged for a whole night and could not boot up, there had to be something wrong with it. I tried pressing the Home button and the Wake/Sleep button simultaneously for a few seconds, but it did not work out. Then I searched online, trying to find out whether someone had had the same experience as mine. Indeed some people had had similar problems and posted their problems on some forums to look for help. Unfortunately no satisfactory answer had been offered. Dismayed, I contacted the online retailer from whom I bought this device. Unexpectedly he said such a thing was impossible. Why would I lie to him? Anyway, I gave up on him.

Then I found the Apple tech support number and called it. Seemed this was my last hope. After hearing the description I gave to him, the technician told me to do those things I had already done. Hence nothing exciting happened. Finally he asked how was the weather like in my place and what was the indoor temperature. I was like “What? What does the temperature have anything to do with the malfunction of a renowned digital device?” Anyhow I told him that the indoor temperature was around five degree centigrade (41 degree Fahrenheit). He replied that the ideal condition for an iPad to be charged was between 10 and 30 degree centigrade (50 - 86 degree Fahrenheit), so it was possible that my iPad’s problem had been caused by the low temperature. On hearing this, I thought this was like a big joke. Five degree is a daily normal temperature here in winter. How can a prevailing gadget be unable to work under normal condition? I have an iPhone1, the oldest version of iPhone. I have been using it for nearly four years and it is still functioning pretty well except for imprecise battery percentage display. The phone has fallen down accidentally for innumerable times and I even dropped it into the water once. Therefore, it was not reasonable for me to hope that higher temperatures would bring my iPad’s life back.

However, trying is better than doing nothing. So I took it to the bedroom, connected it to the power supply, put a hot water bag under it and cover ed it with a quilt. After finishing all these, I started to use my laptop, without expecting anything would happen. Amazingly, a few minutes later I heard the iPad was shaking. I rushed to the bedroom to see what was going on and miraculously the iPad indeed had booted up. What a funny experience!

This incident reminded me of the time when I was in the military. As cadets in the military academy, we had to stand guard very often. My academy is in the northeast China, so it is freezing during the winter. Sometimes we had to get up in the midnight and stand sentry outside the ammunition depot for two hours. The temperature could drop to lower than -20 degree centigrade and there was no wall to resist the chilling wind since we were outdoor. Two-hour standing there was super uncomfortable, so we usually brought some digital devices to kill the time, though such behavior was obviously against the rules. Mostly we brought cellphones. But for a period of time I was into an ebook, so one time I took the ebook with me, expecting to reading some interesting novels to make me forget the time. Surprisingly I found that the device which functioned well under normal conditions acted weirdly in such extreme weather. Usually when I pressed a button, it reacted so instantly that I could not even notice. But this time it took quite a few seconds for the device to respond after I pressed a button. You could imagine how I suffered during the two hours.

Back to the iPad topic, it is understandable that the ebook did not perform well under extreme conditions since it cost me only 200 yuan. On the contrary, it is not unbearable that the iPad2 malfunctioned under relatively normal condition because it cost me 5000 yuan. I have always trusted in Apple and Steve Jobs has always been my idol. But this time Apple really let me down. Turned out Apple is not as reliable as I expected.
 

Monte_Cristo

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Joined
Nov 18, 2011
Member Type
Student or Learner
Native Language
Chinese
Home Country
China
Current Location
China
Somebody help?
 

Barb_D

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Staff member
Joined
Mar 12, 2007
Member Type
Other
Native Language
American English
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United States
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Your style of writing is very natural. You have a number of fragments, but I'm guessing (hoping?) that your use of those is deliberate. You may cross the line to too informal with too many fragments, so watch this.

There are very few out-and-out errors. The digression to the bad e-book while you were in the Army is distracting, for me.
 
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