OT: Switch it off and back on ...

[Alex Tweedly]

My wife is always annoyed / amused that my stock response to any 
non-trivial computer / broadband / phone problem is the magic 
"power-cycle" method. As she says "4 years getting a BSc in Computer 
Science, 25 years in the electronics design and software business - and 
that's the best you can do". I suspect the most annoying part for her is 
that it nearly always works :-)

Anyway, today that technique just worked again - when even I didn't 
expect it to. Her new iPhone (two weeks old) was in trouble - it 
wouldn't charge. We tried multiple different connector cables, and power 
sources just to be sure - but it just wouldn't register the power 
supply, and power was down to around 10%. So I made sure we had a 
current iCloud backup, installed Telegram on her iPad while she still 
had some charge left (to get the SMS to confirm the main phone number) 
so she could still get/send messages (and let the main contacts know via 
What's App). And then (with NO expectations of success) switched it off 
and back on - and the darn thing is now happily charging.

Why can't we build tech items that don't suffer such problems and get 
fixed by this solution ....

-- Alex.