By Jodi A. Shaw
Am I the only one without an iPhone? The magical touch screen has been on the market in Canada for over a year now, but in the last three months, it seems everyone has abandoned their Blackberries in favour of Steve’s little toy. Meanwhile, I don’t even have one on my Christmas wishlist.
Blackberries were bad enough, I thought, but iPhones have sparked a spooky trend: Silence in public places. I boarded the C-Train last week at the noisiest stop imaginable — the University of Calgary station — and was surprised by the quiet, even though the train was packed. To my left, a group of five girls hovered together, all but one with an iPhone in hand. Not a word was exchanged between them; instead, the phoneless girl rested her head on another’s shoulder, watching as intently as the rest of them as they thumbed at their phones.
In line at the grocery store I’ve noticed several individuals (one with three kids in tow and another with his wife or girlfriend) opting to appy it up on their phones while waiting instead of conversing with their families or flipping through a magazine.
A friend of mine recently told me about giving a friend a ride across town and barely getting past “hello” because the passenger entertained herself with, you guessed it, her iPhone for the entire ride. She asked me if I thought that was rude.
Many of my adult friends are anticipating iPhones in their stockings this year, my husband included, but I fail to identify with the need. So I went to the Apple store to find out what was wrong with me. Almost 40 minutes later, I left with a wealth of knowledge and hands on experience. “There are over 50,000 apps to choose from,” the sales person exclaimed. It’s a phone, it’s an iPod, it’s the Internet! It’s a camera, it’s a gaming device, it’s a GPS.
It all sounded pretty spectacular. There’s an app for everything, including nutrition and fitness apps that almost had me sold. But wait a minute . . . am I going to give up on my weekly runs with my girlfriends because I now have an iPhone workout companion? Am I going to spend my evenings curled up on the couch with an iPhone instead of my husband?
It’s a phone, people. Granted, it’s a pretty cool phone, and, while I’m beginning to enjoy the quiet rides on the C-Train, I also enjoy looking up at the world instead of craning my neck to look down at a touch screen.
COPAC says
You are not alone. There are still a few of us who have given in to neither to the iPhone, nor to any of the other of the smart phone ilk. We are COPAC (Cranky Old People Against Change). We believe that internet was a good thing up to and including the invention of the web (web ONE mind you, none of this web two social networking crap) and email. What’s so gall darned important that it has to be sent in a text rather than an email? Whatever ever happened to touch typing on a proper keyboard, none of this squinting at some microkeyboard which in the iPhone’s case isn’t even real and giving the thumbs the sort of workout they never evolved to do? Mark my words, soon a whole generation will lose the use of their thumbs, one day, BAM, they’ll all stop working from overwork. And what good is a human being without opposable thumbs, one of the defining aspects of the species? That’s when COPAC takes over.