8/9/12

Welcome to the 21st, Lane

I came home from a really crappy day yesterday, where I wanted to hang that cartoon where the kid is saying “I see stupid people”…only I wanted mine to say “I work with stupid people” and I knew that wouldn’t go over very well if I hung it in public, so I just hung that one on the wall in my mind.

Rob and Sydney followed me into the kitchen where I was pulling out stuff for supper and handed me a wrapped box.

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Inside was an iphone 4s. 

Now, Rob and Sydney are excited as heck, but I gotta tell you that this is one of the most high pressure gifts I think I’ve ever received.  Whether the whole family goes to iphone depends on whether I can get this to work for us; for me. 

We have phone difficulties with cell coverage at home, and even last night, I had to walk up the hill to get a sufficient signal to activate the phone.  We have an in-home tower, but the phone wanted a real tower to activate me and the closest real signal is a quarter mile away.  Up the street.  In my lounging gym shorts and crocs.  I looked down at myself after about the hundredth car had driven past and realized that I looked a mess.  And, all my neighbors had seen me.

Anyway, Rob is anxious because he did the studying about the phone and is anxious that it should work properly…and after the horror stories he read about people that had bad experiences, I can understand why he felt that way.  Every time I get it to do something, he gives a big sigh and tells me what could have happened.  Even I’m starting to cringe a bit.

Sydney can’t wait to get her hands on it and having played with her friend’s iphones, she knows all about it.  At one point last night, I couldn’t do something and said, “here, Sydney.  Do this.”  and she did and she gave me that look that made me feel a hundred and fifty years old instead of in the prime of my life.

Rob told me about the learning curve and I’m anxious that I will get frustrated and stop trying to learn about it.  But, I’ve gotten it to do a whole bunch of things in just a few hours of playing with it.  And, if this all works, and it looks like it is, then I’m going to have this phone for a long time.  And, I have plenty of time to play with it.

My greatest fear about the phone is that we will pay for it and I won’t use it.  That would be bad.  When I said that to Rob last night, he said, “that’s why we just bought one this time.”  More pressure.

Okay, so despite the pressure, I’ve actually done pretty good and there was only one short burst of bad words strung together that I later had to apologize for saying.  Oops!  Then, I put it down.  And, that’s been my lesson for learning to use the iphone.  If it ain’t workin’, then put it down and try again later.  Don’t sit there, hunched over it, frantically pressing the same buttons over and over again and expecting a different result.

There lies fury.

Be well and what’s your favorite app?

Lane

15 comments:

http://thankfullga447 said...

I am not a phone person, but I do love my IPhone, we got rid of our old phone and just use this. I travel so it comes in handy when I am on the road and I love all the free apps. Check out flipboard. I can review my blog listings. Sydney will know how it all works.

Linda in TX said...

I got the Android equivalent (provider doesn't have IPhone) and went through exactly what you are going through. Except Sydney doesn't live here and I could have really used her help. It took me a while (a week before I could even answer the damn thing) but now I do love it. I love my Google calendar the best because it also comes up so well on my computer. If I had Sydney in my house, I'd pay her to sit down and teach me - and she'd feel so superior and good about herself doing it!

Kathleen said...

Hey, lane. Think of it like the refrigerator. You don't need to eat it all at once. Learn what you want and need, And save the rest til you get hungry for it. Enjoy...

Anonymous said...

get Sydney to teach you! my son taught me how to use a computer!!

lw said...

I haven't decided that I need one yet-- but it took until 1996 before I bought a microwave oven. I'm what you call a late adopter. I have to see real benefits before I buy new technology.

Unknown said...

I love my i-phone. I am still learning and am so glad The Baby was home to show me how it worked! I love it more every day and am always finding new things to do with it. I think I really like the instagram app. I love being able to take photos with my phone and edit them right on the phone! Be patient and enjoy!

Churn Dash said...

My favourite apps are the map and calculator... and then my radio app. It seems amazing to me that I can listen to a British radio station whilst driving around America.

I also have a quilt shop app, but it's not as up to date as I would like. My JoAnn's app has had a bit of a work out of late.

I wonder how Siri would work with my accent - I recently upgraded my mac to mountain lion, the dictation program is useless to me!

Have lots of fun with your phone, the more you try out the more you will use it. I'm sure Sydney will love showing you how to get the most out of it.

Quiltluver said...

I love my Iphone because I don't have to carry a separate camera, phone and Ipod anymore. I use it a lot for audio books downloaded from the library. We don't have cell signals in our house, but the micro cell tower works great. Once you start using more of it, I'm sure you'll love it. The camera is great at quilt shows!

Coloradolady said...

ummmm....I don't have an Iphone, my husband does and I can't work it so I have a dinosaur that I use...and it is about to crap out!!

My daughter has terrible service in Austin, and she has an Iphone too.

I need to step out of my box, but I don't really care for learning to use new phones at all!!

Kath said...

"Don’t sit there, hunched over it, frantically pressing the same buttons over and over again and expecting a different result."

Sounds like me trying to work our (simple) DVD player. Heaven help me if someone ever buys me an iphone. Well done Lane for giving it a go!

Rebecca Grace said...

Lane, I promise the iPhone will not defeat you -- and this is coming from a girl who cannot fathom which of the 23 remote controls in the living room (no exaggeration, unfortunately!) is the one that turns on the television this week. I listen to NPR instead. :-)

Favorite iPhone apps: Well, I have the iPhone right before yours, so I have no little robot assistant voice thingy. But I listen to music on my iPhone all the time, plugged into a docking station in my sewing room -- especially Sirius satellite radio, with no commercials. There is a Fabric Stash app that you can use to store images of all of your quilting fabrics, along with yardage info, that's supposed to help when shopping for more fabric, and there's another quilting app that has a library of quilting blocks and you can play with the layout and color them in, but it doesn't do any yardage calculation or anything. I have lots of games on my iPhone that my kids use (they earn game time by doing things I want them to do, like piano practice, homework, helping dad outside, etc.). I also have a dictionary, calculator, and alarm clock apps that I use constantly. I have the Amazon Kindle app so I can read books on my iPhone, and I have a paid digital subscription to the NY Times so everyone in my house gets to read the paper on the computers as well as on iPhones and iPads. I also use the NPR news app, which I think was free. There's a Sign and Send app that lets you turn any emailed document into a PDF, sign it with a stylus, and then email it back to whomever it needs to go to. Sherwin Williams has a free Color Snap app that you might like -- you can take a picture of anything, isolate one color in the photo, and the app will match it up with a Sherwin Williams paint color. I use a Weather Plus app that stores multiple locations, so I can monitor weather in a faraway place I'm about to travel to, or see what the weather is like for someone who has traveled far away from me. I have Spanish, French and Mandarin Chinese teaching game apps on my phone (Spanish and Chinese for the kids because they're studying them in school, French for me, because I studied it once but not hard enough!) and I have a French-English translator. I have the Oregon Trail game on my iPhone! The one we had in school when I was a kid, where you hunt and trade wagon wheels and your kids get carried off by eagles. I have math drills apps for addition/subtraction/multiplication/division practice. There are a lot of educational apps out there like that. I have two different apps that time and quiz you on sight reading music, and I have a metronome for figuring out the tempo of a new piece of music. I have Netflix and Amazon, Starbucks (for locating the nearest espresso fix) and eBay, and Zappos (handy when at the shoe store and the only shoe in stock that fits my son's foot is an objectionable color). Oh, and I have a DataMan app that lets me know how much of my data plan I'm using, and alerts me so that I don't go over. And of course I love that my phone is a camera, so I can capture every inspirational thing I see, wherever I go, as long as I have my phone with me.

Have fun with your new phone!

Shevvy said...

I only gave in and got mine a few months ago and now I wish I had done it sooner.

I can do everything I need to do while travelling away from home so it makes packing so much easier.

I even have books on it now so thats another thing less to pack.

The keypad took a while to get used to and I still have fatfinger syndrom now and again but it is very useful.

But all those things do have an impact on the battery life and some apps are worse than others. It doesn't last very long.

There are a few things you can do to help, the web has tips all over the place. Turning off bluetooth and location services make a bit of different.

Tammy said...

Hi Lane, In December 2011, I caved with a capital "C" and got my first cell phone ever it is an Iphone 4s with a 64 gb hdd. I was always anti-cell phone, I felt they were an invasion of privacy.

The app that sold me was facetime. I connect to my son in Calgary and it is just like the Jetsons tv phone you can see the person you are speaking to, give them a video tour of your house or garden it is fabulous.

I rarely use the phone part, but i use the notes for shopping lists, the reminder for scheduling appointments, the calculator all the time, I have over 1000 photos on, it as well as tons of music and instant French immersion levels 1, 2 and 3. I practice my French or listen to music when walking my dog. I have netflix and can watch tv shows or movies.

We have excellent 3G cell service where I live in Canada. We also have WiFi at home and WIFI is free in lots of public places. The iphone is everything in size small. I love it.

Carla said...

Hey I'm still behind in phone technology but may break down next month and upgrade knowing full well I hate the thought of learning something new again. Oh well here's to yet another change.

Elizabeth said...

I'm a wee bit jealous. I hope by now you're loving it and it hasn't cost you any more swears. We're looking into getting new phones; my smart phone is dumb and my husband's non-smart phone is even dumber. I really want an iPhone, but we're probably going with T-Mobile, which doesn't do iPhones.

xo -E