I recently got a new cell phone and number. I won’t bore you with details, but suffice it to say I never make a technology change without being coerced.
The process is usually accompanied by kicking, screaming, pouting and finally dejected acceptance that I will again have to learn another new device. For me, that’s a process which usually lasts until the next time I’m forced to change.
My old device was one of the first Samsung Galaxy phones with that cute little stylus. I’d sometimes withdraw the stylus from its built-in slot and touch a few things on the screen just to see what it would feel like to play with. Then I would replace it until the next time I was bored enough to revisit the function.
The Galaxy was very touch-sensitive. It had buttons in all the places where you would naturally hold it, which of course triggered actions you didn’t intend, but I got used to working around that. The Boss, however, could never get the hang of handling my phone when trying to assist. It was his ultimatum that my next phone, the one I am now trying to get used to, would be an iPhone. It’s easy, he said.
I don’t like it. Not one bit. It’s bossy, telling me what it wants rather than allowing me to decide how I want it set up. After six hours of reorganizing the contact list, which didn’t transfer over efficiently from my old phone, I realized that all those changes had also been applied to our email accounts on both the phone and the home computer.
I didn’t ask Apple to do that. And Apple didn’t ask me if I wanted it done. They just assumed everything should be linked together and proceeded accordingly.
My old phone had a function where you could press a key and the type would stay in all caps until you touched the key to restore normal typing. It appears that the iPhone has to be pressed for each and every capital letter you type. If that is truly how it functions, then that’s an amazingly dumb omission for such a supposedly smart phone.
And as for the voice technology, she asks me questions when I haven’t spoken to her and when I do, she doesn’t understand what I’m saying. I saw a news article last spring that discussed how “Siri” and her compadres aren’t really consistently up to snuff, especially when it comes to emergency matters. The article used examples like a phone user saying “my head hurts” to which the response was “it’s on your shoulders”. Uh, thanks for clarifying.
While it’s amazing what technology can do, as a certified amateur I sometimes think we’ve gone too far with our expectations. It’s no wonder that for some people, their single most important relationship is with their mobile device.
Mine is going to put me in therapy if I don’t catch on soon.
Pat Lenhoff is a freelance columnist for Pioneer Press.
