(Phone) Storage Wars

The last few days I’ve gotten a few of those annoying messages saying that I was nearing the maximum storage capacity of my iPhone.  Of course, I shrugged and ignored them.  Don’t you just hate getting those little pop-up notices?

And then this morning, my phone froze up and one of my apps crashed.

Needless to say, this was a cause for more than mild concern and some significant regret that I hadn’t responded to those irritating notices.  In the Great Coronavirus Shutdown of 2020, what the hell would you do if you didn’t have a properly functioning smartphone that you desperately need to successfully work from home?   So I immediately launched into full frenzied phone fix-up mode.  I restarted my phone, then went to settings, navigated to my iPhone storage icon, and found that I was at about 63.6 GB on a phone that can store no more than 64 GB.  That’s obviously cutting it too close.

Mass deletion was called for.  And as I started that process, I discovered things like this:

• I had messages going back to 2015 that had never been deleted.  These included messages from my periodontist and optometrist reminding me of appointments that have long since occurred and “meet you at the coffee shop of the hotel”-type messages from business trips I had taken years ago.
• Apps that were taking up significant storage capacity that I had never used, or hadn’t used in years.
• A bunch of duplicate photos.
• Lots of music that I haven’t listened to, and don’t really need to have on my phone.

All of this was stuff that was useful and helpful and wanted at one point in time, which is why it was on my phone in the first place.  But my guess is that, when the Coronavirus Crisis occurred, the new texting threads and groups that have been created, and the other increased uses of smartphones in an effort to stay connected despite the stay-at-home edicts, have caused many phones like mine to march inexorably toward their maximum storage capacity.  And what would you rather have access to right now — COVID-19 memes that your friends are sending that give you a chuckle during this difficult period, or that Ticketron app that you downloaded and last used to get some tickets to a concert in 2018?

So, I deleted about 10 GB of random stuff.  It was a productive use of my shutdown time, and I felt better after I cleared out some of the debris.  Now my phone is coronavirus meme-ready again.

If you’re twiddling your thumbs wondering what the hell you might do on day 45 of the shutdown, you might take a look at your storage settings.  And be sure not to ignore those annoying pop-up notices.

In Fear Of Facial Recognition

One of the features that was added to the technology mix during the period between the purchase of my old phone and the purchase of my new iPhone is facial recognition software.  During the set-up process at the Verizon store, I held the iPhone as if I were looking at messages, moved my head from side to side and up and down until the phone had acquired about a 270-degree look at my head and indicated that it had seen enough, and the facial recognition feature was activated.

Now, whenever I pick up the phone, the software kicks in automatically and substitutes for the entry of passcodes.  It’s pretty amazing technology, really, and it’s a lot faster and less clumsy than the passcode-entry process.  I really like the convenience element.

But . . . as a result of this Apple has got my face memorized and digitized and stored somewhere.  And, the modern tech sector world of information-selling and data-trading being what it is, who knows who else now has the capability to instantaneously identify my less-than-noble features.  My cell phone service provider?  Every Apple subsidiary and affiliate and technology partner?  The FBI, the CIA, or the Department of Homeland Security, or some Russian or Chinese hackers?

Recently San Francisco passed a ban on the use of facial recognition software by police and other agencies, and other cities are considering similar legislation.  The proponents of such measures tout them as a victory for privacy and a safeguard against governmental overreach that could conceivably allow governmental agencies to track citizens as they go about their daily lives.  Opponents note that facial recognition software can help the authorities solve crimes — as the article notes, the technology was used to identify a mass shooting suspect last year — and that it can help to secure our borders and airports.

I’ve long since concluded that while privacy is nice, in the modern world you have to make countless choices that can affect your privacy in different ways.  Do you pay with a credit card that tracks your purchases, or cash?  Do you use a cell phone that keeps track of your location?  Do you participate in social media and share some of your life through Facebook, Twitter, and the countless other outlets?  Have you traveled outside of the U.S. recently and returned to the country using one of those passport and facial scanning re-entry terminals?  It’s hard to argue, too, that a face that you show to the world each day, that appears on your driver’s license, and that is captured regularly by the various surveillance cameras positioned throughout American society, is something that is extraordinarily private.

All things considered, I’m not too troubled by the use of facial recognition software.  It’s the protection of other highly personal information — such as health information and financial information — that is of much more concern to me.

In Password Hell

Today I went to get a new iPhone.  The battery on the old one was running down at Usain Bolt-like speed, and clearly, it was time.

When I got to the Verizon store, the pleasant young guy who took care of me looked at my phone, chuckled softly, and noted that the phone was more than five years old.  That’s like taking world history back to the Pharaonic period — when cell phone data storage was miniscule, cell phone cameras were crappy, cell phone batteries were tiny . . . and, not incidentally, cell phones were a lot cheaper than they are now.

So, I had to decide how much I wanted to spend for my new phone.   It didn’t take me long to decide that I didn’t need to spend $1500 (which, amazingly to me, is what the Verizon store employee who is probably making not much over minimum wage confessed he had spent on his phone) and would be perfectly happy with the cheapest iPhone 10 they had — which was still incredibly expensive.  Then I had to pick a color (red), and a phone case (a clear Pelican) and then it was iPhone set-up time.  And that’s where the process ran off the rails.

“What’s your Apple password?” he asked pleasantly — and I felt cold, icy fingers of fear clutching my heart.  And then he asked for my iTunes password, and then for my gmail password, and the depths of angst and despair burrowed ever deeper into my soul.  “I’m not sure,” I said uncertainly.  “Well, what do you think it might be?” he asked, slightly baffled and no doubt wondering how could anyone who uses a modern phone wouldn’t have all of their passwords memorized and ready to use at any moment.  So I gave a few half-hearted attempts, using passwords that I know that I’ve used for something or another over the years — but there was no conviction in my efforts.  Sure enough, none of the passwords worked, and I got the accusatory buzzings and beepings that inevitably accompany password failure.  So the pleasant kid had to reset my passwords — passwords that will now promptly be forgotten, and vanish on the wings of the wind down the password memory hole.  It made the new phone process even longer and even more embarrassing.

As I left the store I realized that there is a reason I get a new phone only every five years.

Old Phones For Old Folks

I’ve really come to dislike those T-Mobile commercials.  Filled with quick cuts from one group of happy, dancing twenty-somethings to guitar-playing scruffs to youthful, grinning selfie-snappers, all of whom are precisely dishevelled and wearing kicky scarves and snazzy hats, the T-Mobile commercials are even more specifically focused at an age group than toy commercials on Saturday morning TV.

And it’s an age group that I no longer belong to.

I’ve been dimly aware for some time that I’m completely out of it when it comes to phones.  I know this because of the shocked expressions of my younger colleagues when I haul out my cell phone, immediately followed by a bemused expression when I plug it in to charge the battery — again.  It’s the same bemused expression you probably gave your grandparents when you noticed that they spilled food on themselves while eating a recent meal and are walking around with tomato soup on their blouse and breadcrumbs on their cardigan.

I think I’ve got an iPhone 4.  Could a new iPhone do more, if I got one?  Undoubtedly.  But my current phone provides the limited phone/email/internet access/apps I actually use — and, candidly, rather than being moved to ecstatic dancing about getting a new phone, I kind of dread the thought.  I know that when I go to get one the customer service rep will be some precisely dishevelled, phone-arrogant twenty-something who probably plays guitar on breaks who will ask me condescending questions about my phone needs that I don’t fully understand.  It’s nettlesome.  Plus, there’s an obvious risk that, when I get a new phone, the apps I actually use will mysteriously vanish or move or be unworkable.  So I stick to my old, tried-and-true, reliable-if-constantly-leaking-battery-power phone.

When I see those irritating T-Mobile commercials, I feel guilty about my phone backwardness — but then I read a recent survey that shows that a majority of Americans will upgrade their phones only when the phone stops working or becomes obsolete.  That basically means I’m still comfortably in the majority and maybe even a titch ahead of the curve, because my phone still works fine and doesn’t appear to be obsolete — not that I would know.

Ha!  So take that, T-Mobile!  It’s nice to know that there is a Silent Majority of technology-challenged Americans who aren’t data obsessed and sent into paroxyms of dancing joy by the newest cell phone and data service plan.

Now excuse me while I check my shirt for food stains.

Thumbing It

The other day I inadvertently caught my thumb in a door I was closing.  My thumb throbbed, I cursed, and then I realized with a start that until my poor pollex was 100 percent again I was totally unable to fully participate in essential activities of modern life.

The development of an opposable thumb has long been viewed as a crucial step in the human evolutionary process.  The thumb is a simple body part, made up of bones and hinges.  Yet the fully opposable thumb is unique to humans, and its development allowed humans to become complex organisms.  The thumb permits us to grip items securely and throw them accurately.  The thumb is essential to the use of the fine motor skills that allow us to perform detail work.  It is what made humans into toolmakers and tool users.

In the modern world our thumbs are more important than ever before.  They are our principal texting digits.  Your thumb performs the swipe that unlocks your iPhone.  Your thumbs anchor your hands on a computer keyboard and pound the space bar when you type your report.  Your thumb is what empowers you to open a clutch purse, use a bottle opener, pry open a child-proof container, and take notes with a pen.  Of course, it also allows you to signal an interest in hitchhiking and indicate ready assent in a noisy place.  The list of activities that require a thumb is endless, and it will continue to grow as inventiveness moves our species toward even greater reliance upon handheld devices.

With the enormously increased use of our thumbs these days, you’d think that doctors, physical therapists, and surgeons would be besieged by people with thumb-related ailments — but that doesn’t appear to be the case.  The humble thumb abides.

That Morning Email Fix

For nearly 50 years I lived comfortably without a mobile phone.  I could go out to eat without needing to check constantly on social media, see whether I’d received a text, or take a photo of my food and post it somewhere immediately.  Now I seem to be as addicted to my handheld device as a heroin addict is to his daily fix.

I check my email first thing in the morning, check it routinely throughout the day, and typically do so again the last thing before I head upstairs for bed at night.  I am in a business where client service is crucially important and I want to be promptly responsive to any messages from those clients — but I know that is, in part, just a rationalization.  If I check my phone for email, I can get back to my clients in impressive time and always will seem to be in touch — but I’ll also see whether any other messages are waiting for me.

Why is this so?  I think it’s driven in part by ego and in part by the natural curiosity of the human brain.  We want to know if people are responding to us or thinking of us, and we are easily bored.  Rather than just take a walk down the street, why not check in on Facebook, too?  I suppose there’s no significant harm in missing the simple pleasures of a walk that you’ve taken many times — only to get another message that you’ve been invited to play some unknown Facebook game — but when referring to your handheld begins to interfere with actually living your life it seems like it’s time to reconsider what you’re doing.

I thought of this increasingly during our trip to New Orleans, when I encountered people who seemed to be focused on tapping things into their handheld to the exclusion of everything else — even if it meant stumbling into people on the street because they weren’t paying attention to where they were going.  The point was driven home when Richard, Russell, UJ and I were sitting on the second story balcony of a place on Frenchmen Street, enjoying a beer and the view, and we noticed a group of 10 or so young women who appeared to be part of a wedding party at the next table over.  Virtually all of them had their eyes locked on their phones and their thumbs flying.  They weren’t really in New Orleans, they were in cyberworld — so why physically be in New Orleans in the first place?

It was sad, and I’m embarrassed to say that I’m not much better.  I like blogging and feeling like I’m connected, but I need to make sure that I’ve worked out an appropriate balance between the real world and the virtual one.

In The Back Seat Of The Cab

If you’ve traveled frequently for work, you’ve probably spent a lot of time in the back seats of cabs.

More time than you’d care to think, I’d wager.  If, at the moment you depart for that Great Airline Terminal in the Sky, you added up all the time spent in cabs over your working life — all those 45-minute trips from the airport to your hotel, all those crosstown rides through hopelessly snarled traffic when the UN is in town, all those half-awake dashes to catch an early bird flight — you might have spent a week or maybe even two in the back seat of a cab.

We tend not to focus on our “cab time.”  This is a good thing, because cab time sucks.  When you are in the back seat of a taxi, you’re checking your flight information, catching up on your email, or groggily wondering whether you’re overdue to experience some form of travel hell.  You don’t focus on the cabbie’s driving, and you especially don’t pay much attention to where you’re sitting. God forbid!  If you did think about such things, you’d ask some unsettling questions, and you’d start carrying a can of Lysol and a plastic sheet on every road trip.  How old is this cab, anyway?  What’s that smell?  Hey, is that a stain on the floor?  Just who were the passengers before me?  Were they doing something unsavory?  Were they suffering from some debilitating communicable disease?

I’m in a cab right now, trying not to think any of these disquieting thoughts.  It’s time to play Spider Solitaire on the iPhone, zone out, and trust the unknown professional behind the wheel to get me to the airport on time.

On Elfin Fingers

I never realized how thick-set and uncoordinated my fingers were until I got my iPhone.  Of course, the fact that the iPhone keypad is apparently designed for elfin fingers hasn’t helped.

I liked the BlackBerry keypad.  It was a permanent keypad, with little raised buttons that were completely thumb-friendly.  The iPhone, however, dumps the permanent keypad in favor of a temporary one that vanishes when not needed, in order to accommodate a larger screen and better visuals.  The price of good visuals, however, is a tiny set of touch buttons that are best suited to the light touch of dancing fairy feet. Does anyone who doesn’t live in the world of the Lord of the Rings actually possess the thumb dexterity needed to routinely accomplish shift-A or shift-S?

My stubby-fingered, stumbling attempts to type on the iPhone keypad are a source of deep personal embarrassment.  I’m very concerned that I’m going to wear a hole in the screen where the backspace/delete button appears.

Apptitude Test

I’ve replaced my inert BlackBerry with an iPhone.  If you buy any Apple product, you are of course legally required to at least try to be as cool as your Apple device.  Being an iPhone owner, I therefore necessarily must act as cool as possible.  But — God help me! — I don’t know how.

The route to coolness with an iPhone is clear:  have cool apps, and then adroitly display them to your fellow iPhonistas.  For example, at Friday night’s Bob Seger concert, the Red Sox Fan wowed our guests by showing them an app that was a lighter that he flicked open and lit — for use, obviously, in calling for encores at rock shows.  Pretty cool!  Another fellow concertgoer with a taste for warm chocolate desserts gave me a run-down on her iPhone, with dozens of dazzling apps that she deftly demonstrated as they spun by.  Even more cool!  But how do you find that kind of stuff?

The app store icon on my iPhone has more than 20 different categories.  Each has dozens — if not hundreds — of options.  Do you just start with “games” and look at each option in each category?  How do you confirm that an app is as cool as it looks?  Can you get some kind of trial period before you commit to spend the $0.99 on Angry Birds?  (Hey, those $0.99 purchases could add up!)  Do you take word-of-mouth recommendations from friends?  Do you regularly check the “What’s Hot” tab to make sure that you are completely up-to-date?

I confess that I am feeling a bit overwhelmed.  I’m sure there’s an app for that — but where?

Thank You, Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs has died at age 56.  Jobs, who co-founded Apple and then returned after a decade-long absence to turn the struggling Apple into the world’s most profitable company, had long battled pancreatic cancer.

Under Jobs’ leadership, Apple rolled out personal computers, laptops, iPods, iPhones, and iPads — all products that helped to create and define the booming consumer electronics industry.  He was reputed to be relentless in pushing his employees to meet impossible deadlines, surmount daunting technological hurdles, create new features, and constantly push, push, push the envelope.  As a result, he spurred Apple’s development as the world’s strongest brand — characterized by high-quality ground-breaking products with ultra-cool designs that came in sleek packaging and were advertised by iconic campaigns.  In the process, he created legions of dedicated and loyal Apple consumers like me.  But Jobs did more than that.  Apple’s enormous success encouraged competitors and other entrepreneurs to develop ever-improving products at ever-low prices.  It’s one reason why the consumer electronics industry remains one of the strongest sectors of the global economy.

When a person is as driven as Steve Jobs was supposed to be, you wonder if they ever paused to reflect on what they have accomplished.  When Henry Ford saw  roads where horses had once trotted filled with Model Ts, and formerly empty lots give rise to automobile, steel, and rubber factories employing hundreds of thousands of workers, what did he think?  When Steve Jobs walked through an airport and saw countless travelers listening to iPods, playing games on iPhones, or watching movies on iPads, did he feel a sense of immense satisfaction at his achievements — or was he thinking solely about the next great product?

Whether he fully appreciated it or not, Jobs had a profound impact and improved the lives of millions of people — whether they were consumers who revel in their Apple products or people employed by the companies who make, package, or market the products that Jobs helped create.

Thank you, Steve Jobs!  May you rest in peace.

Weird App

This BBC story caught my eye — about an iPhone app that consists of video and audio of speeches and statements by Benito Mussolini, the former Fascist dictator of Italy who was Hitler’s Axis ally during World War II.  According to the story, it was the most popular iPhone download in Italy until it was removed from the market in the face of threats of legal action.

Groups have expressed concern that the popularity of the Il Duce app might presage a resurgence of the Fascist movement in Italy.  I suppose that is possible, but I think it is equally plausible that young people just downloaded it because it is new, shocking, and a bit of a razz to watch black and white footage and listen to speeches of the comically strutting ex-dictator with the out-thrust jaw.  I’m not an iPhone owner, but my perception is that many people with iPhones seem obsessed with “apps” and showing everyone what unusual “apps” they have.  The Mussolini app may just feed into that obsession.

Still, it’s weird.  In America, are there “apps” for offensive speeches by the likes of Joe McCarthy and George Wallace?