iPhone5

An iPhone5 in white (similar to mine).

Yrs trly is now the owner of an Apple iPhone5.
You’ll notice I didn’t say “proud owner.”
That’s because after blowing two hours standing around in the store watching frenzied techno-mavens pull their hair out trying to open my phone photos in Photoshop-Elements on this computer, with no idea on my part what they were doing, I’m left befuddled.
I bought my iPhone for a number of reasons.
—1) I was due for an upgrade anyway, per Verizon, my cellphone service.
—2) My ancient Motorola DroidX, at least two years old, had thrown mysterious hairballs at me, and now had black marks on its display-screen that made it hard to read, and it couldn’t be repaired.
—3) My younger brother in northern DE has an Apple iPhone 3 or 4, and tells me it always works. (My DroidX could be wonky.)
—4) The Apple iPhone is pretty. My Droid seems like a clunker.
So it came down to Apple versus the Droid platform.
A supposedly reliable phone versus something I’m familiar with that also throws hairballs.
My problem with all SmartPhones is the virtual keyboard. My Droid was a challenge.
I could only drive it rotated with the keyboard across the length of the screen.
The iPhone is smaller than the various Droids. Could I stand it?
So I looked at an iPhone at the store. It looked bearable. Plus it’s not a clunker.
It had to not overwhelm my back pants pocket. The various Droids seemed too big.
So now the Apple iPhone5, in a protective hard case, resides in my back pants pocket.
Like my previous DroidX, it’s essentially a phone, that also displays my e-mail, and occasionally surfs the web when out somewhere I can’t carry this laptop.
—Like chasing trains in Altoona, PA. I need to access my weather-site to see if a shower is coming.
(I’m a railfan and have been since age-two. I’m now 68.)
So back to Apple’s elegant architecture, which this here computer is.
Like this MacBook Pro, my iPhone is nice to look at, as gorgeous as my 1980 Ducati SS motorcycle (“dew-KAH-deee;” as in “odd”), which I often parked in front of my house in Rochester (NY) just to gaze at it.
Pretty as it is, what I really do is drive it, and it hasn’t failed me yet.
Sometimes apps freeze, but with OS-X they don’t take down the whole computer.
With OS-X I can force-quit just the hung app.
I hope this iPhone is as reliable; my DroidX wasn’t.
But all I could think of as I stood there in the store watching the frenzied techno-mavens pull their hair out trying this and then that was: “Steve, Steve; where are you? It shouldn’t be this hard.”
USB-ed to this computer, my DroidX was seen as a device.
With an iPhone it’s engage iTunes = engage guile and cunning.
I found it interesting the virtual keyboard on this iPhone was much easier to drive than my DroidX.
Sensitivity on my Droid’s virtual keys was apparently much wider than the iPhone, so you were often keying mistakes.
I can even drive the iPhone’s tiny screen-width virtual keyboard. Sensitivity of its virtual keys is apparently a mere pinprick.
Although my relationship with my MacBook Pro is hardly elegant.
But at least I don’t have flame-paint on its case. The MacBook Pro at the store did, and spider-web decals surrounding a skull and crossbones.

• “Steve” is Steve Jobs, inspiration and one-time head-honcho of Apple Computer. He was obsessed with making computer-interface easy. Jobs died not too long ago.