Ode to my iPhone
It’s been almost three months with my iPhone and we are still madly in love. Oh. My. God. After seven years with Nokia phones, I am just overcome with the joy of an interface that tries to help me, that realises that, hmm, maybe the people I call the most don’t have names beginning with ‘A’, so gives me a favourites list. That lets me view the text message I’m answering while I’m answering. That lets me send photos I take from either the Photos app, or the Messages app, or the Mail app, instead of picking one at random and making me guess until I just give up. That turns off data roaming by default so that when I’m abroad, I’m not suckered into spending 20€ by accident. There’s a Compass app, so I can orient myself to face North, the way I like it, without peering at maps! Oh, iPhone. I love you.
And that’s before I get to the App Store, and the low priced joys inside it. I could go on for hours just about my favourite apps, but I will limit myself to three.
Sleep Cycle Alarm Clock: uses the built-in accelerometer to monitor my sleep patterns, and wake me during my lightest sleep. I set the latest time I want to wake, slip it under the sheet by my pillow, and some time up to thirty minutes beforehand, it wakes me up - and I feel refreshed and ready for the day! Also, I get graphs illustrating my sleep patterns for the previous night, and averages on my sleep time. I love it! I bought it on sale for 0.79€. I have pimped it non-stop ever since.
Momento: I was only introduced to this a couple of weeks ago, so we are still in the first flush of love. I think it cost 1.79€ but I won’t swear to it. Basically, I can link use it as a private diary, tag entries, add photos, and sync with my Facebook (and Twitter, but I don’t Twitter) too, so I have a public and private record of my days. For someone with a memory like mine, it’s wonderful to be able to flick back and see things like - oh, I don’t know, the last time I felt motivated at work, for instance.
Ice Age 3 Platform Game: bought on sale for 0.79€, with the easiest interface to a game that I have yet found on the iPhone. You play as Scrat, chasing acorns through levels that are really great puzzles, ability to go back to checkpoints instead of having to start the whole level over again, and 36 standard levels to complete. If you get all the acorns in all the levels, then bonus levels unlock. There’s hours of playing in there, for less than a euro! Oh, I love it so so so much.
I could go on. Just picking three apps has me twitchy, since I’m missing out so many other other ones - Things! Notebooks! ShoppingList! ReittiGPS! Stanza! And the best things is that these apps are continuously being updated, by people who are not entirely unlike me, so if I send them an email pointing out small problems or annoying features, or ways that it could meet my needs even more fully - I’ll probably get a polite and friendly reply, and might even see fixes and new features that I suggested. Free! It’s wild!
Basically, my iPhone is the all-in-one SF device that has been promised to me since I started reading SF in the late eighties. I’m a techie, gadgety type of person, so I have been lusting for this gadget for the vast majority of my life. It’s amazing to finally have it. The future is here - I can die happy.
I was telling a friend of my parents about how this is fulfilling something I had always dreamed of, and she told me that she had had the same desire when she was a child, after watching a film of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves. From a privileged family in the South of France, there was a constant argument about who had to open and close the gate, especially at night, and she had longed for the Open Sesame of Ali Baba. Then, when the automatic gate opening devices had been introduced, her dream had come true - it was magic! She had longed for it, yet never thought that it would actually happen.
We decided that we didn’t really care if flying cars were invented or not.
And that’s before I get to the App Store, and the low priced joys inside it. I could go on for hours just about my favourite apps, but I will limit myself to three.
Sleep Cycle Alarm Clock: uses the built-in accelerometer to monitor my sleep patterns, and wake me during my lightest sleep. I set the latest time I want to wake, slip it under the sheet by my pillow, and some time up to thirty minutes beforehand, it wakes me up - and I feel refreshed and ready for the day! Also, I get graphs illustrating my sleep patterns for the previous night, and averages on my sleep time. I love it! I bought it on sale for 0.79€. I have pimped it non-stop ever since.
Momento: I was only introduced to this a couple of weeks ago, so we are still in the first flush of love. I think it cost 1.79€ but I won’t swear to it. Basically, I can link use it as a private diary, tag entries, add photos, and sync with my Facebook (and Twitter, but I don’t Twitter) too, so I have a public and private record of my days. For someone with a memory like mine, it’s wonderful to be able to flick back and see things like - oh, I don’t know, the last time I felt motivated at work, for instance.
Ice Age 3 Platform Game: bought on sale for 0.79€, with the easiest interface to a game that I have yet found on the iPhone. You play as Scrat, chasing acorns through levels that are really great puzzles, ability to go back to checkpoints instead of having to start the whole level over again, and 36 standard levels to complete. If you get all the acorns in all the levels, then bonus levels unlock. There’s hours of playing in there, for less than a euro! Oh, I love it so so so much.
I could go on. Just picking three apps has me twitchy, since I’m missing out so many other other ones - Things! Notebooks! ShoppingList! ReittiGPS! Stanza! And the best things is that these apps are continuously being updated, by people who are not entirely unlike me, so if I send them an email pointing out small problems or annoying features, or ways that it could meet my needs even more fully - I’ll probably get a polite and friendly reply, and might even see fixes and new features that I suggested. Free! It’s wild!
Basically, my iPhone is the all-in-one SF device that has been promised to me since I started reading SF in the late eighties. I’m a techie, gadgety type of person, so I have been lusting for this gadget for the vast majority of my life. It’s amazing to finally have it. The future is here - I can die happy.
I was telling a friend of my parents about how this is fulfilling something I had always dreamed of, and she told me that she had had the same desire when she was a child, after watching a film of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves. From a privileged family in the South of France, there was a constant argument about who had to open and close the gate, especially at night, and she had longed for the Open Sesame of Ali Baba. Then, when the automatic gate opening devices had been introduced, her dream had come true - it was magic! She had longed for it, yet never thought that it would actually happen.
We decided that we didn’t really care if flying cars were invented or not.