The first thing some of us did when our new iPhones arrived was try to plug it into our Macs using an existing dock connector cable. It only took a second for us to realize, "Hey, dummy, that won't work!" and dig out the in the box instead. We're not the only ones who will do that, we bet.

You might also pause to see if you have the Lightning plug oriented the right way, just as we did with the old connector. Which, of course, you don't need to do: it works either way. (Some of us plugged and unplugged the connector a couple of times, just for the novelty of it.) We never paid much attention to where we put our iPhone cables: We always had a couple stashed here and there around the house. You'll likely have just one Lightning cable for the time being; watch it closely.

The shocking thing about the Lightning cable is just how small it is. We know: Apple said that it was a lot smaller. But it's actually kind of hard to pick up; it's not much wider than the cable to which it's connected. To insert it in the iPhone, you need to hold the connector squarely between your thumb and index finger. So even though there's no fiddling around with the connector's orientation, you'll have to retrain your muscle memory.