H.I.T.S.
If you’ve seen our new H.I.T.S. show, you’ll have seen the new iPhone up close and personal. I’m not surprised that many of my students tell me they know someone who owns one or that they want one as well. A lot of people mistake my iPod Touch for the iPhone, but when you see one up close, they look quite different.
I have to confess that, after seeing Doren’s, with all the bells and whistles it has, I was hooked (at least for a bit).
Sanity returned when, after we finished filming, Doren told me a bit more about it.
My first problem with it is that the service is just too expensive for the average person (or me) to justify. At an initial price of $200, it seems comparable with other high-tech phones. In fact, it’s a lot cheaper than many. But let’s face it, a monthly bill of $100 or more is just too high — I’m quoting Mrs. Schulze, at this point. If ‘they’ would offer a service for around $50 monthly, they’d probably outsell most other phone companies, but, of course, that will never happen.
It did make me think this week about how amazing it is to have modern cell phones that send texts, take and send pictures and video and play songs. It’s really incredible how all of this technology has just flown by.
Just look at the choice of phones and phone companies that you now have.
Todd, who works with me, was showing me a Cricket phone and the services you can get, all without a yearly (or two) contract.
You can see them at a href=”http://www.mycricket.com/ http://www.mycricket.com/ end
, where, according to their page, you can get unlimited everything for $45 a month — with no contract.
From what Doren has told me, legislation may be on the way to stop all this two-year contract stuff. It would then be similar to Europe, where companies are also not allowed to “lock” phones so that you are forced to use only them as a provider. I guess you can’t blame them for trying to make certain phones exclusive to themselves.
Apple is also guilty of the same thing. Since they opened their applications store at a href=”http://www.apple.com/iphone/appstore/ http://www.apple.com/iphone/appstore/ end
, people who own either an iPhone or an iPod Touch can download all kinds of games and little programs that are either free or cost anywhere from 99 cents on up. I used an Apple store gift card (a Christmas gift from one of my students) to buy some games, which quickly downloaded wirelessly to my iPod. One of them is a game of pool, which I have found to be a little too entertaining.
Apple also recently updated the system that runs the iPhone and the iTouch.
With this update, you get a new icon that takes you straight to the store.
You can also hook up your iPod to your computer and browse through what they have in that manner.
Another thing that just blows me away is how I can take a picture on my Motorola phone and, using Bluetooth technology, sync wirelessly with my Mac computer and transfer pics onto it.
I saw another amazing bit of technology this week when my buddy, Jimmy Porreca, came in and hooked up some wireless stuff for us at the store. Jimmy is truly a gadget freak. I’ve known him since we both worked at the local Fiat dealership back in 1978, after I had just stepped off the “banana boat.”
Back then, Jimmy was obsessed with cars, but now it’s high-tech stuff. He’s a Maccie, too. Anyway, he showed us some remote video cameras he’d hooked up for a company and demonstrated how you can zoom in really close to something, all from hundreds of miles away, via a laptop and the Internet.
Of course, you can also do that with Web cams and see friends who live hundreds (or thousands) of miles away. My mother-in-law, Mary (our latest Maccie convert), has also hooked up a Web cam and talks to people as far away as England.
I find that to be contrary to many people’s opinions that high-tech and the Internet have combined to ruin human interaction.
I think that it promotes it.
I hear people remark that texting, etc., is ruining the act of people talking to each other. In my opinion, it’s just an evolution in communication and you’re still doing just that (communicating, that is).
Just because it’s now in a format that some people find confusing and different doesn’t mean that it’s any less valid.
It reminds me of how, over the years, I’ve heard different generations say how music is not the same as in their day.
If you grew up in the 1950s, you’d probably find it difficult to go to local “record” stores and get songs from that era or at least find a varied selection of artists.
Thanks to the Internet, though, all of that is now available. In my own case, I’ve found countless songs and clips of TV shows from the ’50s and ’60s, when I grew up.
Without a computer and the Internet, I would never have known they existed.
My lesson for this week, then, is: don’t knock it ’til you’ve really tried it.
Until next time, happy surfing.