Posted on 12/18/2011 4:22:25 PM PST by varmintman
Prior to 02 I'd gone for some time hoping I could die of old age without ever touching a cellphone but that clearly wasn't going to happen; I was getting into too much trouble from not being able to find pay phones which basically stopped existing around that time. I mean, superman never had to look more than 30 feet for a phone booth to change in, but he'd go crazy now.
And then, a bit less than a year ago, the company I work for insisted on me buying an Iphone and the main idea was having access to email on the road. I mean, I'd never wanted anything to do with Apple after the stunt they pulled shutting down the Atari 520ST in 85, but I ignored any misgivings I may have had and bought the thing....
The biggest problem has been the thing getting a mote of dust or lint or something in that little hole for headphones and believing it was working with headphones when it wasn't. That keeps the user from hearing the other guy unless he figures out what's going on and puts the phone on speaker. The problem can usualy be fixed by blowing PC cleaning air into the headphone hole but it can take an hour or more of doing that.
That is still preferable to taking the thing to the local Apple store for service. Their normal mode is to have you make an appointment to be seen in two or three or four days and that basically means going several days off the air.
Then there's the thing about batteries. If a battery dies on any other cell phone you buy a new battery for $20 or $30 and replace the dead one. The Iphone needs to be replaced if a battery dies and, that's right, you need to make an appointment for that and that can mean several days off the air.
I mean, who the hell would buy a car which had to be replaced whenever a battery died.....
But the kicker came yesterday morning when the thing (actually the second one after the first being replaced for a battery), not only pulled its ugly little thing of acting like it thought it was on imaginary headphones, but aside from me not hearing other people other than on speaker, nobody else could hear me.
The normal deal with ATT is to be eligible for phone upgrades every two years; in this case the situation wasn't going to go for another year or more and I simply paid the full price for a Samsung/Android phone and the best ATT could do was a trade-in program which gave me 200 for the Iphone so that the whole deal cost more like 400 than 600, but I view that as money well spent, the Samsung Galaxy appears to be a much nicer phone.
Word up, yo.
Yeah, cell phones certainly have their benefits, but I preferred it when everyone wasn’t so damn accessible, especially myself.
I can appreciate your example, but I may have to actually call a repairman once every year or so. That doesn’t justify the cost of the phone + service, so it really makes no difference to me in that scenario.
As far as owning a cellphone, I never have. When I was younger back in the early 90’s, I even refused to pay for a landline until I got a girlfriend who basically made me.
These days, work was actually providing one for me for a few months until I told them I lost it. (Actually, I accidentally broke it.) During that time, they couldn’t get a hold of me, anyway, because I had the phone turned off all the time. I was too apathetic to charge the darn thing. When I told them I ‘lost it’ they caught on to the fact that it was pointless to try to leash me like everyone else, they could see on their cellphone bill that I wasn’t using any minutes, so they cancelled the service. The phone was a nice one too, a Blackberry Storm, I believe. So now, I’m the only employee working at the company that they can’t get a hold of whenever they want. They have never said a word to me about that. We have a quiet understanding, I guess. It isn’t enough of an irritant for them to rock the boat. Sometimes employers have to put up with a little if they want to keep employees happy, right? I’m still the last salaried employee that refuses to punch the time clock too, but that’s another story.
My wife doesn’t care that I don’t carry a phone. No, she’s not the ‘girlfriend’ that I mentioned earlier. ;-)
Lucky you. I could never get away with what you’ve apparently gotten away with.
In the olden days, I developed a program to allow data center operators to send text messages to us system programmers, as we were called, on our periodic duty. They (the operators) were only happy to do it every night. This was before Al Gore invented the cursed cellphones, when we were carrying pagers. I turned mine off whenever my turn came every three weeks or so, and claimed later that when the page came I must have been in an elevator or underground in the subway (at 2-3 AM!) The operators were always, without exception, able to solve the “problems” all by themselves.
You do know that you don’t have to answer the cell phone when it rings?
My cell phone is the handiest tool I own. Sometimes I use it to make a call also.
Apple did NOTHING to the Atari in 1985... nothing. It was not even on it's radar screen in 1985... the Amiga and Atari were competitors.
If you want on or off the Mac Ping List, Freepmail me.
Strange, when the New York Times polled their readers on computer use... they found that Apple Mac users were more conservative than were the PC users. The New York Times... not exactly your bastion of right leaning people. Your position is a myth. The buyers of Apple are a cross section of the US now... representing the political spectrum.
It did not even happen... the Atari ST 540 was never "shut down by Apple"! Not at all. Never!
The way I described it is the way it was being described by industry journals at the time.
NONE OF THAT EVER HAPPENED!
"The Atari ST is a home/personal computer that was released by Atari Corporation in 1985 and commercially available from that summer into the early 1990s." Wikipedia.
The iPad needs the 3G version to even have GPS... but the iPhone will use it without the WIFI turned on, but accuracy is better with WIFI on... it uses the known public WIFI nodes to increase the accuracy.
You are going to catch a lot of flak from the Cult of Jobs members around here ;^)
No, they didn't... I was there. I read every thing from the industry and published a newsletter for the Commodore Amiga. It did not happen... The Atari ST was NEVER SHUT DOWN. If you read the Wikipedia article, you will find NO MENTION of such an event. Do you seriously think that would go unreferenced???? Not by a long shot. It SIMPLY DID NOT HAPPEN!
Thanks for the ping Swordmaker. I passed over this thread yesterday as a lowgrade gripe-fest but the wide-ranging comments have been hilarious...for real ;-)
Thanks for passing on the truth
>>>So many myths and myth conceptions in this anti-Apple and anti-Phone screed it is funny!—PING!
Maybe it’s just me, but I find bigotry and ignorance on this level to be not a bit humorous.
“Just saying” is meant to convey “I merely present these facts for your consideration so that you may draw your own conclusions.” It is often employed sarcastically, when a conclusion is clearly expressed or implied.
Didn’t the battery outlive most Yugos?
Bugs me, too. Why say it and then say you said it? I think some use it as a disclaimer after they say something. If so, why say it and then immediately disclaim it? I think some use it to excuse what they think is a daring and brash comment. They over estimate themselves. More than likely it is just the latest silly fad that started on some TV show or came from a dumb jock of rap singer. Once it was the misuse of "myself" when "me" was the proper word; then there was "each and every", an obvious redundancy; and "whatever". Regardless (No, not irregardless), it is juvenile.
No it didn't! You repeated the 57 words in order to attempt to explain what you meant, so what did you save? It was never clear to me but .... no, I am not going to use that stupid phrase.
I thought it was obvious enough I was using “shut down” as a figure of speech. Again what the journals were reporting was that Apple hauled representatives of Atari and DRI into their offices in Cupertino and demanded a longish list of crippling changes to both the 520 and GEM or they (Apple) would simply tie the ST up in courts for ten years and nobody would ever make a dime with it and, again as it was being reported at the time, Atari caved.
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