I was biding my time at the Panera Bread at the mall waiting for my 11:30 a.m. appointment at the Apple Store when it dawned on me—Cade just might be right. (My appointment? It appears that I have made an inexplicable series of decisions regarding my laptop which resulted in, among other things, transforming myself into multiple users on the same machine!) At 11:30, surely one of the twenty-somethings in matching t-shirts, all replete with iPods or iPads or iThings dangling from holiday-themed lanyards, will magically press a button and assure me that my technological misery will end one day soon enough with the reincarnation of Steve Jobs or my early demise. At this point, either way, I’m good.
How the heck I became multiple users on my beautiful, new MacBook Pro, I’m not sure; but let me back up for a second. See, I have an iPad 2. I’m not complaining. I love my iPad. Add the abilities to cook, clean, and make-out, and it would be perfect. As it is, it’s pretty cool. In addition to all the stuff I already know how to do, I recently discovered Facetime. Actually, I should say that Facetime discovered me. Last week while my granddaughter and I were killing green-headed pigs with disgruntled feathered ammunition I got a Facetime request from a friend far away. From that point on, all ten days, I have used my iPad to find other Mac users to Facetime with. Enter my daughter. Yesterday, armed with her brand new iPhone, she and I Facetimed. (Surely that is not the proper verb for communicating while using one’s computer; surely.) That led to the idea that she and I would Facetime, wait…um…we will use Facetime while I am in Europe. So, I fired up my MacBook Pro laptop to make sure it would work with Facetime, too.
Uh, yeah. That’s all I did—fire it up; unless you count the two hours I spent confirming that I know virtually nothing compared to most 12-year olds with regard to technology. I learned that Facetime on my laptop won’t actually connect with other users. I learned that I have two—two different!—versions of Microsoft Office on my laptop. I also confirmed what I already knew—that I don’t care enough (to change my reality!)
Long ago, Ambrose Bierce once wrote, “There is nothing new under the sun but lots of old things we don’t know.” Hello. Preacher meet the choir. With Steve Jobs’s passing, that is probably now true. Last night when my MacBook decided it didn’t like me or Facetime, I went on-line for advice. I got everything from explicit directions to chat conversations that seemed to insist that my Facetime does work (despite the evidence to the contrary.)
Oh see, I forgot to mention one thing—it works. It loads. It turns on. It shows me all my contacts (although it thinks that I am my son. Even he will admit that, in confirmation of his worst fears, the converse is the reality.) It even calls when I tell it to. What’s the problem? It doesn’t work. When I do all those things on my iPad, assuming another Mac user is on the other end, all is well. They answer. We chit-chat. We hang up. With my laptop, not so much.
Why do I bring all this up? Because as Cade, a student at Endeavor Charter School, once told his classmates after I interjected commentary during his oral report, “Guys, that was a cautionary tale!”
What if I get to Holland and I can’t Facetime? (Darn, there, I did it again…what if Facetime doesn’t work?) What if the next time I use my laptop my user id’s have multiplied—again? What if I then have yet an additional version of Microsoft Office? What if Alfred Hitchcock is my neighbor? What if Anthony Bourdain is sitting in every Dutch coffeehouse? What if my new class doesn’t like me? What if Cade was right?
11:30 cannot come soon enough.
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