Hello! And welcome to our Friday column, Worst of the Week. There’s a lot of nutty stuff that goes on in this industry, so this column is a chance for us at RCRWireless.com to rant and rave about whatever rubs us the wrong way. We hope you enjoy it!
And without further ado:
I have always thought of mobile phones as very sophisticated and complicated electronic devices that used alien technology, tears from baby seals and something from the Mayan calendar to allow people to communicate with each other from just about anywhere on the planet. And with current high-speed data services that allow actual communications with aliens, extraction of tears from baby seals and tracking of the Mayan calendar, I feel my original inclinations have been confirmed.
It’s with this knowledge that I find it sort of odd/funny/strange/befuddling that the latest flap with antennas and mobile devices as hyped by Apple and its iPhone 4 was “solved” by the grand puppeteer Steve Jobs by telling everyone having an issue to put a rubber band around their spankin’ new device.
That’s right, a rubber band.
How in the hell does something that can barely keep a newspaper together and inevitably breaks at just the moment you are ready to shoot one at your stupid brother make it so that a device as complicated and sexy (that’s right, I said sexy) as the iPhone 4 either works or does not work. I thought the only time a rubber band was ever put near a cell phone was when one was needed to just keep it together after having been dropped for the 209th time.
Now we are to believe something as basic as a rubber band will cure all of our iPhone 4 ills? Like Desi Arnaz said, “It’s a conspiracy, I tell you.”
If Steve Jobs had strode onto the stage at Apple’s headquarters and told the assembled masses that all the ruckus being caused by the iPhone 4 having its communication abilities strangled out of it was caused by something like a nearby black hole, or solar flares or even turtles that use too much hairspray, I might have believed it.
But, trying to tell me that the ability to strangle the life out of a call placed on an iPhone 4 could be solved by a rubber band made me blow a fuse. (Luckily I had a spare rubber band lying around that I used to secure that fuse.) Sure I was born in the morning, but yesterday morning? Come on Steve.
Listen Mr. Jobs, you have all the money in the world (and flaunt it by running a multi-bazillion dollar corporation and yet taking no official salary) and all you could come up with was “Just throw a Sirco rubber band ‘round her and you can again talk with ‘dem aliens.” Nothing about hyenas or the ozone layer or health care reform? So disappointing.
I may not be the sharpest balloon in the box, but even I am not buying this “fix.”
Next thing you are going to tell us is that the short battery life of the iPhone 4 can be fixed by just running around on carpet with just socks on to generate some static electricity. Or that to fix any current and prevent any future scratches to the all-glass case all we need to do is rub some calamine lotion on it. Or that all you need to do to keep people from thinking you are a self-absorbed idiot because you are constantly telling people that you are calling them from your iPhone is to wear a Luchador costume.
These are high-tech devices that need to be revered and exalted by the masses or they will lose their ability to awe us with their very existence. By solving their design foibles using nothing more than a chewing gum wrapper and a toothpick makes it seem like any backyard yokel can fix himself up one of them walkie-talkie phones.
All we can hope is that the next time Apple, or any cellphone maker comes out with a way to fix something on their device, they use lots of complex charts filled with big words. Our cellphones deserve that sort of respect.
OK, enough of that.
Thanks for checking out this week’s Worst of the Week column. And now for some extras:
–I remember growing up and almost yearly purchasing the Guinness Book of World Records to find out if someone in the previous 12 months had managed to eat more than 173 live squid, or if anyone had managed to grow their small toenails longer than 13 feet or if we as a species had advanced enough to now be able to fit more than 210 monkeys into a Volkswagen. But, of course the Internet had done away with my fascination for anything “… Book of World Records” related.
Until now.
It seems that six “gamers” in the Netherlands recently broke the world record for consecutive time playing a video game when they played a single game of “Red Dead Redemption” (I believe it’s a child’s game) for 50 hours. Full kudos to these gents for surmounting what I think has always been the 4-minute mile for the gaming crowd by playing a single game for more than 50 hours and showing that with real training, focus and I assume liters of both beer and Red Bull, humans are capable of just about anything.
–I say kudos and hip-hip-hooray (the extent of my Japanese) to NTT DoCoMo for recently announcing it would remove the SIM lock on all of its devices, a move huzzah’d by of all associations the Rural Cellular Association. (The one of America, not Japan.) While I believe the RCA was mostly moved by the precedent of allowing Japanese consumers to move their mobile devices across to any other rival carrier, I believe secretly they are looking for this decision to eventually allow for unfettered importation of Hello Kitty-designed and inspired devices that are severely lacking for availability in rural markets. Or, maybe that’s just something I am hoping for.
I welcome your comments. Please send me an e-mail at dmeyer@ardenmedia.com.
