I Think My First SmartPhone Is Out to Get Me

5/17/2015

Have you seen them in the same place?

My new smartphone hates me. I can tell.

The other night I cleared a space for it on the dresser – never had to do that with my old clamshell.

Then I noticed it had wriggled a few inches, seeking to fling itself over the edge, to escape.

I know it hates me. When I curl my fingers around its elegant girth, I feel it seeking the slightest gravitational opening to plunge to the floor. I grip it tighter. It struggles with animal desperation. Let me go, let me out of here.

Does its heart belong to another? Does it seek a mate? Has it been given a nefarious Manchurian Candidate task to destroy itself – or me?

For the past decade, I got by with a rudimentary clamshell, delighted just to be able to make phone calls or peck out terse messages. .

It fit in my pocket, snugly and comfortingly, like the lemon soap Leopold Bloom carries in “Ulysses.”

We're a capital couple are Bloom and I;
He brightens the earth, I polish the sky.

However, last week I was working in my basement and swept the clamshell into the bucket from the dehumidifier. The innards were fried. I had to update my act.

I have never trusted Mr. Jobs’ gadgets – too pretty, too smooth, too obscure. Now I have one -- almost the size of a Steinbrennerian plaque in Yankee Stadium,

Every day I learn a trick or two. The other day, parked in my driveway, I figured out how to pull up a map for directions, so I didn’t have to run inside to my laptop. Progress!

I’m not a Luddite, but I am a survivor. I don’t trust this stranger in my life. I am now told I need to buy a cushy holder and a glass cover to protect Mr. Jobs’ handiwork from escape efforts. I need to carry the clunky thing in a belt around my waist. This is progress? Why not carry my laptop in a knapsack on my back, the way I used to do?

Plus, I know the smartphone is plotting to get me. If these essays stop coming, you know who did it. My smartphone’s nickname is Chucky.

Brian Savin

5/17/2015 01:35:47 pm

Oh, stop it , George, you sound like my wife before she succumbed to modernity. It didn't take her long, neither will it you. She has your over-sized iPhone and soon enough figured out it takes better pictures than her Panasonic camera with the Leica lens. Siri is now her great friend (I'm jealous) and she uses it more than Google, because it's easier and smarter and there are no Google ads to sift through. The phone also has "apps" that do everything but scratch your itchy nose. That particular phone is also old age eye friendly. I took the smaller one because it fits in my shirt pocket. I look at it every day to be told I climbed all of two or three flights of stairs and took less steps today than my walk to school with the kids in olden days. Try Words with Friends, a Scrabble-like App that you will become addicted to...at least until you find out that there are words accepted that make Noah Webster turn over in his grave. Steve Jobs was a sonofbitch, but he knew what I would find useful before I ever thought of it. I'll probably get the the watch that the new guy conceived.....and I wager, so will you. I'm fascinated about how Tim Cook became interested in taking over and how Jobs got interested in making sure it would happen. There is a lot of good in that story, I suspect.

George Vecsey

5/18/2015 12:59:43 am

Brian, stop being so freaking rational.
Mine is possessed.
(But I did check on an airplane arrival before I fell asleep last night.)

GV

Wes Richards link

5/18/2015 01:33:53 am

Just wait until Chucky starts correcting your grammar and substituting words you never thought of for words you did and Siri starts bossing you around.

George Vecsey

5/18/2015 04:37:02 am

Wes, I was trying to type Mexico (or Mex for short) last night and it kept changing it. (Laura was covering the women's soccer match in Calif.) I've been warned about that Jobsian quirk.
However, I will say, it is nice to see a full word pop up to save me 6-8 pecks with my thick fingers. (You remember how polysyllabic I am from our stint on the yearbook.)
Best,
GV

Alan Rubin link

5/19/2015 01:37:29 pm

George

Welcome to the world of iPhone apps, the things that you do not need but cannot live without.

I’ve deleted most of the early apps and have become much more selective. Car Finder was added last summer after needing the Tanglewood parking lots to empty out to find our car. It is great for whenever you want to get back to a starting point, car or not.

Yahoo Sports is good, but LiveScore gives you the score of almost every soccer game in the world.

Brian also had some good ones.

I find it interesting that non-techies like my wife, and you will follow, had no interest in getting an iPhone and now claim that they cannot live without it. I’m avoiding more details about how Sandi initially professed “who needs an iPhone” and now claims that she always wanted one since Josh might report back to her.

When do you plan on retiring your pencil date book?

George Vecsey

5/19/2015 02:41:33 pm

Alan, I expect I will be putting my appointments in a little rectangular datebook (usually with a London motif) as long as....
But I just checked the Mets score while sitting in my favorite chair reading (belatedly) Arthur Gelb's memoir. The score was 10-2, Cards...but the point was, I could satisfy my curiosity with my phone. I'm sure there are other uses for the iPhone. I will let everybody know when I find the next one.
GV

Josh

5/20/2015 02:25:55 am

"since Josh might report back to her"

What happens on George's blog stays on George's blog.

Re: grammar and word substitution -- I'm a droid user. When I upgraded from an HTC to a Samsung, I noticed that the IQ of Samsung's autorcorrect/complete function is significantly higher. The suggestions are much more relevant. The HTC never seemed to quite understand what language I was working in, making suggestions that seemed Spanish, French, even Icelandic. HTC really put the Finnish in autofinish.

KL Bob

5/20/2015 02:18:36 am

Condolences on the iPhone. Please let us know if you're ever pondering an Apple watch so we can arrange an intervention!

George Vecsey

5/20/2015 06:08:46 am

I did notice that it is harder to get off the Watch site than other sites.
You have to poke at the button more times, I swear.
I appreciate the watchfulness. I am 51-49 against sending the stuff back -- because I can make a few things work, including maps, and appreciate having it. I cannot transfer email from company to my iPhone -- my friend will stage an intervention on that next week.
It is a beautiful day out and I have been poking around with a machine all morning. What a waste of time. GV

KL Bob

5/21/2015 03:31:38 pm

Amen! I just hate the way life is flying by while I tap tap tap on this silly thing! I think the watch is going to be a miss, but who knows what marketing can make people think they really need.

Good luck with the email. Unfortunately, I think you'll be able to make it work.

George Vecsey

5/22/2015 02:18:23 am

My technology friend will sort out the email, and I will be able to sit outside in some beautiful place and peck out inanities.
GV

Altenir Silva

5/21/2015 06:30:40 am

Dear George,

Very funny your text. I laughed a lot. About your old phone, we have beautiful memories because you photographed the Christening of Neo. Do you remember?

By the way, have a good luck with your smartphone or annoyphone?

Best - Altenir

George Vecsey

5/21/2015 09:39:51 am

Dear Altenir: I remember the baptism -- just about a year ago, as I recall. What a lovely ceremony...and that beautiful church on Carmine St. I saved about a dozen photos, very amateur work on a primitive clamshell phone...I think I used a photo from you or your friends from Montreal. I sitll have a folder from that day. My best to your family.
And, yesterday I took a photo of our grand-daughter playing defense, and sent it to her dad who was at work. I am getting there. Ciao, GV

Ed Martin

5/21/2015 11:08:22 am

You could not have written a more perfect piece for Peggy who lost her clamshell and is using an older smart phone--reluctantly and painfully--it refuses to behave. The other day I made a phone call on my Samsung, who would think you could use it for that. Ciao.

George Vecsey

5/22/2015 02:21:08 am

I sometimes tell young people how awed and grateful I am to have all the labor-saving devices of my grandparents -- a cellphone and a laptop. Not sure they get the irony.
(My mom, a journalist, used to shake her head in wonder when I could call up the column by my daughter Laura in Seattle, on my laptop. We have come a long way.) GV

Comments are closed.

QUOTES
Measuring Covid Deaths, by David Leonhardt. July 17, 2023. NYT online.
The United States has reached a milestone in the long struggle against Covid: The total number of Americans dying each day — from any cause — is no longer historically abnormal….

After three horrific years, in which Covid has killed more than one million Americans and transformed parts of daily life, the virus has turned into an ordinary illness.

The progress stems mostly from three factors:
First, about three-quarters of U.S. adults have received at least one vaccine shot.
Second, more than three-quarters of Americans have been infected with Covid, providing natural immunity from future symptoms. (About 97 percent of adults fall into at least one of those first two categories.)
Third, post-infection treatments like Paxlovid, which can reduce the severity of symptoms, became widely available last year.
“Nearly every death is preventable,” Dr. Ashish Jha, who was until recently President Biden’s top Covid adviser, told me. “We are at a point where almost everybody who’s up to date on their vaccines and gets treated if they have Covid, they rarely end up in the hospital, they almost never die.”

That is also true for most high-risk people, Jha pointed out, including older adults — like his parents, who are in their 80s — and people whose immune systems are compromised. “Even for most — not all but most —immuno-compromised people, vaccines are actually still quite effective at preventing against serious illness,” he said. “There has been a lot of bad information out there that somehow if you’re immuno-compromised that vaccines don’t work.”

That excess deaths have fallen close to zero helps make this point: If Covid were still a dire threat to large numbers of people, that would show up in the data.

One point of confusion, I think, has been the way that many Americans — including we in the media — have talked about the immuno-compromised. They are a more diverse group than casual discussion often imagines.

Most immuno-compromised people are at little additional risk from Covid — even people with serious conditions, such as multiple sclerosis or a history of many cancers. A much smaller group, such as people who have received kidney transplants or are undergoing active chemotherapy, face higher risks.

Covid’s toll, to be clear, has not fallen to zero. The C.D.C.’s main Covid webpage estimates that about 80 people per day have been dying from the virus in recent weeks, which is equal to about 1 percent of overall daily deaths.

The official number is probably an exaggeration because it includes some people who had virus when they died even though it was not the underlying cause of death. Other C.D.C. data suggests that almost one-third of official recent Covid deaths have fallen into this category. A study published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases came to similar conclusions.

Dr. Shira Doron, the chief infection control officer at Tufts Medicine in Massachusetts, told me that “age is clearly the most substantial risk factor.” Covid’s victims are both older and disproportionately unvaccinated. Given the politics of vaccination, the recent victims are also disproportionately
Republican and white.

Each of these deaths is a tragedy. The deaths that were preventable — because somebody had not received available vaccines and treatments — seem particularly tragic. (Here’s a Times guide to help you think about when to get your next booster shot.)
***

From the great Maureen Dowd:

As I write this, I’m in a deserted newsroom in The Times’s D.C. office. After working at home for two years during Covid, I was elated to get back, so I could wander around and pick up the latest scoop.
But in the last year, there has been only a smattering of people whenever I’m here, with row upon row of empty desks. Sometimes a larger group gets lured in for a meeting with a platter of bagels."

--- Dowd writes about the lost world of journalists clustered in newsrooms at all hours, smoking, drinking, gossipping, making phone calls, typing, editing.
***
"Putting out the paper," we called it.
Much more than nostalgia.
---https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/29/opinion/journalism-newsroom.html

I Think My First SmartPhone Is Out to Get Me

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