I received an update to my phone a few days ago. It's one of those "push" things... kinda like when you were a kid and you were told, "This is for your own good."
It rarely was.
Well, Verizon or that alien Droid creature or somebody just knew my phone needed to be updated. You turn the phone on one morning and it greets you with "83% downloaded for update." Then, turn it off, and when it comes back on, you have an updated phone.
Now, I admit, I kinda like gadgets. I wanted an iPhone in the worst possible way, but Verizon didn't offer it at the time... and I am still pissed at AT&T over the "you own the shell that the phone is in, but you don't own the phone" crap from back in the 80s. So, I bought a Droid the day they were released. I figured it would be an almost-as-good-as-an-iPhone smart phone. It didn't take me long to really like all the cool things the phone could do. I didn't need an iPhone, I have a Droid!
Then, Verizon was able to offer the iPhone... the 3g or q or something like that, if I remember correctly. But, my Droid did everything I needed. I didn't need an iPhone. and we are pretty darn Mac-centric in our household. That original Droid up and died one day, without any warning... about a month before my "New Every Two" contract was up. I went into a Verizon reseller store and said, "I'd like an iPhone."
The salesman said, "No, you don't."
"Yeah, I'm pretty sure I do. And if you won't sell it to me, I'll go down the street to the next place that will."
We were in a small town at the time... he pretty much knew there wasn't a "next place down the street."
He told me, "You have a Droid. You wouldn't be happy with an iPhone."
"I guess that would be MY decision, and my hard-earned bucks. Now, give me an iPhone; the 32 gig model."
"We don't have that model. The 16 gig is all we have, and you won't be happy with that."
It was nice that he had such concern for my happiness. "Are you gonna sell me the iPhone or not?"
"I have something even better! And, it is something that will make more sense for a savvy user like you." (Yes, he was buttering me up.) "It's the newest Droid - it's called the Bionic. Faster than any iPhone could ever hope to be. It is 4G capable - blistering speeds! Look how big the screen is!"
I put my foot down... and bought the Droid. It really was a good smart phone. Really.
A month or so later, Joan got an iPhone4. It was smaller, sleeker, and just worked really slick like all the other Apple stuff we have. But, by now, the Droid Bionic had replaced our Mifi card as our connection to the internet... and it really was a LOT faster.
I admit it - I like Joan's iPhone. It's just friendly. It doesn't sound like an alien machine when it starts up. But, it didn't have 4G capability until the recently released iPhone5. And, my Droid just keeps on workin'.
So, back to the update... when my phone turned back on after the update, it looked... different. The screen was mostly black (a feature to extend battery life, I read). The easy e-mail stuff was jumbled. And, it didn't "ping" at me to tell me I have a new e-mail or text. Oh, it wasn't as easy as the iPad or Joan's iPhone with e-mail, but now it was even more ... well, different.
About this same time, I got an e-mail from our boss in the Pacific Northwest, asking about an update to a weather app on the iPad... "You know this stuff. Can you help me find...?" I had him convinced that I am tech savvy. I pulled out the iPad, fired up that app, and figured out what he was looking for.
I would have done that all sooner, if the damn Droid had "pinged" at me to tell me I had a new e-mail. It took me an hour of poking around to get each e-mail account back to pinging.
What is so updated about that, when you have to mess with it to get it back to "as good as what it was"?? All the fonts on the screen have gotten smaller... apparently so you can get more words on that (little) BIG screen. And all that black on the screen? Yeah, I know it's for the "good of the battery," but that makes it harder to read. And... it's different. Not better different, just different.
It's not just "the alien"... Apple let me know there was an update for the hand-me-down iPod Touch I use every night. After it was done loading it, it decided the device was really too old for that update and it rewarded me by wiping all my content off the device. Not a real big deal, because that iPod has a small memory and I occasionally have to take stuff off before putting new stuff on... but I am the one who decides what comes off. Yeah, I had it backed up, but there was WAY too much stuff on the back up to put it all (or even most of it) back on. You know what that makes it, don't you?
Yeah, different. I'm sure it's for my own good.
Heck with it, we're going to the beach. ;-)
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Nice day for the beach...
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