I went to Apple School this morning because  I couldn’t figure out how to use my IPhone.

Oh, I can make and receive calls and even send and receive text messages, although I’m pretty anti-text.  It takes me forever to send one because I keep hitting the wrong damn keys.  My messages look something like this:

R U gpinh to the gy this a?  Translation:  Are you going to the gym this AM?

The akr went off and I thouht it was a sigm to gp back to skeep.  Translation:  The alarm went off and I thought it was a sign to go back to sleep.

I delete entire sentences to get one word spelled correctly.  And that’s another thing.  No one spells anymore.  We have taken brevity to a whole new level…for instance:

RU = are you

BTW = By the way

OMG = Oh my God!

LOL = Laughing Out Loud

The examples above are about the only ones I know.  If someone truly advanced in ‘smart phone lingo’ sends me a text, I haven’t a clue what they’re saying.

My girlfriend and gym pal (although I’ve been bad the last couple of weeks, so we may not be gym pals anymore), showed me the Pandora App.  WOW, music while you sweat.

Years ago I got an IPod for listening to music (it’s somewhere in the house) and had an Apple ID and password.  When I got my Mac,  I’d forgotten the ID and password for the IPod, so started again.  When I got the phone, I couldn’t recall the previous info so started yet again.

Of course, I had problems hitting the right keys and somehow the ID got screwed up.  As a result, the ID (which is an e-mail address) was saved and is completely wrong.  Apple was sending confirmations to me at an insurance company in Connecticut every time I’d try to fix it.

Finally, I called Apple Support and explained I couldn’t download Pandora.  We discovered all kinds of ID’s and passwords on my account.  I’d been collecting them like Halloween candy.  All tolled,  it took several hours, but I finally have the musical app on my phone.

There was clearly more to learn.  “Why won’t my mail download?  What is that Health App?  Why won’t my calendar on the phone connect with the calendar on my Mac? And, what is Siri?”

Time for an Apple School Workshop.  I asked why my phone and Mac calendars wouldn’t connect, and that’s when the subject of ICloud came up.  ICLOUD!  WHAT IN THE SAM HILL IS THAT?  We checked out  ICloud on my phone and my ID had the insurance company’s e-mail.

In order to change it a password was required. I just stared at the screen.  Of all the passwords used in the past few years, which one was used on this bogus account?  It took 45 minutes, but I now have one Apple account that is for everything.  Of course, its password is new.  I’ve written it down in my password book, saved it on my Mac and IPhone .  In case the book gets misplaced, if I find the blasted IPod I’m  getting rid of it.  I refuse to go through this again.

Later in the day, a friend called.

“So, what have you been up to?”

“Went to Apple School for an IPhone workshop.”

She sounded skeptical, “You had to go to school to learn how to use a phone?”

“Well, it’s not just a phone — it’s a SMART phone.  It communicates with my Mac via a cloud!  I can actually talk to it and it answers me — sometimes with a woman’s voice and sometimes with a man’s voice.  I don’t know which I like best.”

“Yah, but it’s a phone and you had to go to school to learn how to use it?”

Some people are not easily impressed.