The kitchen table is covered with iTrash. We’re recharging the proprietary batteries. No grab and stash common batteries fit this gear. You can skip the pharmacy or the hardware store or the supermarket or the airport kiosk if you need a new battery. Rather, when the battery dies, you either buy the next generation of iTrash (Jobs’ marketing strategy) or you send in your unit and pay a hundred bucks for a factory replacement.
How did the table come to be covered with iTrash? I have to confess I bought an iPad. I figured it would be a handy little eBook reader, note taker, somewhat crippled but minimally adequate browser and email grabber. And maybe it would have some cool games. A day after I brought it home, it was clear that the iPad is a personal device and that Beth, normally a bit of a pixel-phobe, needed her own. Score: two iPads and a miscellaneous iPod from somewhere.
As it happened I’ve been a Sprint wireless customer forever, and my Palm Treo has always been overkill for my needs. No way I’m going to take gigabytes of spam down to that thing, and I just never really needed a “Personal Digital Assistant,” or whatever. Am I supposed to synch that thing’s calendar to my desktop every day? Give me a break. I’ve had a really boring relationship with every Palm I’ve ever owned, and don’t get me started about Blackberries and B.S. corporate chic. This summer I was gratified that Sprint was coming out with the HTC Evo, a 4G Android phone that would do everything an iPhone would do, and not play into the mall-rat retail thing that the iPhone has a lock on. I waited and waited. They advertised it as if it was immediately available, but I couldn’t get my hands on one.
Meanwhile the iPad was getting me hooked. It was sort of a gateway drug. Could the hard stuff be far behind? Well, no. An iPad is after all, an oversized iPhone without the phone part and it’s highly addictive. Buh-bye Sprint. Hello AT&T/Wireless.
And of course now my local Sprint dealer has the Evo in stock. Too late, dude. Peddle it on another playground.
5 Comments
You can’t handle the hard stuff! I’m writing this from my Apple laptop. My wife is in the den on her IMAC desktop. We both have IPhones. When I stopped at the Apple store to pick up my third generation IPhone I arrived just in time for an IPad demo. You could only buy two on a single credit card. Fortunately I had three cards. Bought five (count ‘em) five IPads on the spot for me, my kids and my wife. I love Stevie Jobs…and he loves me.
Time for you to upgrade to the iPhone 4, Don. My daughter-in-law keeps track of this stuff for me and she says that her 3G won’t do it anymore now that the iPhone 4 is out. (That Steve Jobs, what a kidder! Names his second generation 3G product the iPhone 4 in hopes of stealing the 4G market out from under the Android guys who actually are selling a 4G product.) Anyway, my 3G iPhone 4 is good enough for what it’s for. Nice and flat and good for skipping if you’re down by the lake and can’t find a decent flat rock to side-arm across the water. Also I got some good pictures of the tractors and the steam engines at the Rock River Thresharee last weekend, then navigated home around Lake Koshkonong using the nifty built-in GPS. I like it. Beats the old Palm Treo by a mile!
I’ve been looking foreword to getting together with you and Beth before the summer disappeared and behold–It’s gone. OK, before the fall falls. Ok?
Yes, for sure. I’d say drop in any time, but you should give me a heads up first so I can get the dog hair vacuumed up! Or maybe we can make it over your way. Either way, let’s spend some time together in the next month or two.
Fer shizel.