Maybe that’s why they call them Kodak moments
It was the last day of our daughter’s first year of school. Party time. All the three-year-olds dressed like dolls; teachers relieved and sad; parents misty-eyed, promising to stay in touch over the summer.
Our children have three teachers. One is leaving for graduate school, the second is off to have a child of her own, and the third—a wonderful woman—will have to be taken out of the school in a box.
The teachers stood together for the last time, hugging each other and our children.
Moments like these are once in a lifetime. Fortunately I carry an iPhone. Unfortunately, my iPhone’s camera is once again taking blanks instead of photographs.
For those who have just missed the photographic opportunity of a lifetime because of this unfortunate iPhone bug, here, once again, is the method that will remove the corrupted file and get your iPhone taking photos again:
- Sync iPhone. This also creates a backup of the notes and other items that don’t get synchronized anywhere else.
- Go to Settings, General, Reset: “Erase All Content and Settings.”
- Once complete, reconnect the iPhone to begin syncing with iTunes.
- iTunes will ask if you want to sync from backup. Choose not to. Instead, “Set up as new phone.” This sounds scary, but it’s really not. (You don’t lose your phone number or anything. It’s just a dumb, needlessly scary Apple label.)
From resourcesforlife.com, whose solution this is: “You will lose notes, SMS history, and iPhone settings as well as data that is normally synchronized. However, corrupted system files (such as the internal camera roll files) will be replaced with fresh non-corrupted versions and everything should work.”
I didn’t post this to complain about not getting to photograph the last day of our kid’s first year of school. Nor did I post it to take a swipe at Apple for building an amazingly creative, industry-leading product that is, however, a computer, and thus subject to bugs and glitches.
I posted it because every six months or so, when my iPhone’s camera stops working, I forget how to fix it. Now it’s on my website. When the camera starts failing around Christmastime, I’ll know just where to look.
Tags: apple, iphone, camera, software, bug, whitebox, photo, photos, disappearing
Filed under: Apple, bugs, iphone, software
No, they call them Kodak moments because Kodaks actually take the picture. This is called an “It just works” moment.
You may not have gotten the photo, but your description was vivid enough to make me tear up a little. Thanks for sharing that moment.
Sorry to hear about your missed opportunity. I failed to capture the first steps of my son because I didn’t have a camera (or my iPhone) with me.
Let’s hope that the next version of the iPhone will feature an improved camera, because if we’re honest, even when it works, it’s not particularly impressive.
I only hope that the new iPhone out next month will not only fix this bug, but add auto-focus!
I hate moments like that! Gah. I’ve had multiple incidents on a previous camera of mine whereby the ‘format’ option was one key press from the ‘delete’ option, and thus it was a case of drop everything, insert another memory card then do a lengthly recovery process when you get home.
Jeff, that’s a pretty good reason to write a post. It’s actually the reason why I publish a whole blog ;)