On 03/13/2015 10:31 PM, Eric Norris wrote:
I have an iPhone. It’s not hard to use.
I find touch screen phones virtually impossible to use in the only circumstance I care about (the only reason I have a cell phone, actually): outdoors in the sun, when somebody's had an emergency on a bike ride. Bright sun on the screen and you can see absolutely bloody farking nothing.
“Complications” answering a call? Huh? It rings, and to answer I slide a big red button to the right across the screen. It even shows you which way to slide it. I’m mystified at how anyone could be confused by that.
Or how about this very common scenario: phone rings when you're riding. By the time you hear it and stop, it's gone to voice mail. Call voice mail -- if you can actually see the touch screen buttons, which in the bright sun is almost impossible -- and after it rings, it wants your PIN. But, on my phone, by that time the GDMFSOB buttons are gone and there's nothing you can do to bring them back. So, I have to slide out the texting buttons, which are the size of grains of sand and which require a 3 button key press to get ther # sign in order to enter the PIN.
Complicated enough for you? It certainly is for me.
Yes, a flip phone is easy to answer. But that’s about where its “benefits” end. My iPhone will do about a half million other things besides just being a phone. I can text my exact location to my wife, take photos, receive texts, check a map if I get lost … I could go on for days.
Almost none of which are things I would ever want to do with a phone on a bike ride. ALL I want of a phone on a bike ride is to be able to call 911 to get an ambulance, or contact a rider who has gone missing. Everything else I do at home, on a real computer, with a screen about two feet wide and a real full size keyboard that even clicks and feels just like one of the old IBM keyboards, and a fine mouse. No squinting at sun washed out touch screen buttons or pinching around to try to get text large enough to see. And no $1500 per year cell phone bills for the dubious privilege of being able to do on the road things I would never even want to do.
I still remember a chat I had with one of the first people at work to have the first Iphone. We're waiting for service at the IT hardware desk and got chatting. I ask her how she likes the phone. "I LOVE it. Best phone I've ever had. Best thing since sliced bread." So I ask, how is it for voice calls? "It sucks. Useless. I've given up on voice calls and just text all the time." Silly me, I thought it was a phone, and all about voice calls...
And let's not even talk about form factor and weight. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
