After spending years--okay... decades--developing a healthy aversion to finger prints on computer screens, I find myself writing this post by touching the shiny surface of my new iPhone and sliding my index finger back and forth across an interactive picture of a qwerty
keyboard. How slick is that?
It wasn't too long ago that this kind of technology debuted in email chains in a video file of a "touch table" demo. The table top was actually a huge screen that changed as if by magic in sweeping fluid motions as the demoer's fingers flew from corner to corner of the table.It was mesmerizing to watch and inconceivable to think that anything like that would be in my own hands in time for me to actually learn how to use it. Yet here I sit, making fingerprint tracks willingly as I play with "Wordpad," one of hundreds of applications available for the my new 3G iPhone. In fact, everything in my life with a screen now is vulnerable to the same treatment: I routinely attempt to poke my camera to life via the LCD display, and decide my blackberry must be broken when I can't initiate a call by touching the screen icon. The disturbing aspect of the whole thing is that a smudged screen still really bugs me.
Yes, it's a phone and internet connection that also now houses my entire music collection, address book, calendar, and the daily combined insights of every major and local newspaper in the world. And yes, Third Child was an integral member of the design team at Apple who created the charger connection (in spite of being ridiculously proud of him, we're still gonna have a chat about battery life). And yes, it may yet prove to have a meaningful business application someday. Meanwhile, this is the closest toy so far to the jetpack and/or hover car I always wanted for Christmas.
But, like everything else in life, nothing is perfect. Since the device lacks the fundamental word processing ability to cut and paste, my next trick will be to figure out how to post this puppy from here.
Stand by...
Do you have a "LoJack" on this iPhone? Scary to think what you'd lose now if you lost it!
ReplyDelete