Well, as hard a blog as I’ve ever had to write, but it’s time to admit that the other woman in my life has finally packed her bags and left.
I first met ‘Mrs B’, as my wife started to call her after a couple of years, about ten years ago. She came into my life on a promise of making things easier, and to be fair, she’s probably done a reasonably good job of keeping me informed, letting me know when not to relax, when to go to meetings, when someone important was wanting to get hold of me, and the like.
It’s just that she was also, well, so very, very needy. I first realised there was some tension between myself, Mrs B and Mrs E, when I noticed that Mrs B was the last thing I looked at before I went to sleep, and the first thing that I looked at when I woke up in the morning. If it was late at night, I’d just be relaxing, perhaps with a cold drink or two, then Mrs B would be the first to bring me back to the realities of corporate stress by giving me some sort of special signal. And, like Audrey 2 in Little Shop Of Horrors, I’d have to indulge her with some sort of unpleasant interaction.
Every now and again, she’d wake me up in the middle of the night with some sort of urgent requirement. (She’d also wake most of the rest of the house up as well). And I kind of got used to being at her beck and call, so much so that Mrs E developed a resigned ‘eyebrows up’ approach to me breaking off conversations to attend to her. I really must thank her for that, some time soon.
So, it was with a heavy heart, in a sense, a couple of weeks ago, that I emailed our servicedesk team and reported that I’d just about had enough of the capabilities/ limitations of my latest Blackberry. Unfortunately, I made the schoolboy error of writing the note on said device, and as a result, the next few days were a disastrous series of dropped phone calls and random characters inserted into messages. I’m not kidding, the strangest things were happening, and all the while, Mrs B was doing whatever the Blackberry equivalent of a spurned lover would do. If I’d drawn arms and legs onto her, the arms would be folded and one leg would’ve been tapping, a bit like Andy Capp’s wife.
So, I’ve gone over to the dark side. I’m now the proud/curious owner of an iPhone. You can’t use the keyboard,and it takes about ten times as long as it ought to synch with your diary as it ought, but otherwise it’s ok, and it’s nice to be in the company of all those folk who’ve gone on and on and on and on about how wonderful the bloody things are, even if I’m about 5 years too late to join their special club.
Meanwhile, the two latest deliveries from Blackberry/RIM on the technology front have been, well, just embarrassing, and I can’t help but feel that if they don’t come up with something a bit better than a small tethered tablet or a substandard Samsung copy that there’s going to be a lot more voting with feet. A shame really, as most Blackberry users really just want their kit to reliably work. Like to be able to make and receive phone calls and messages, really…all the other stuff is just, well, fluff.
And as a result of all of the above, I’m looking for an iPhone app that gives me a reassuring red flashing light every time there’s something to worry about. If you see one, do let me know.
The Emu 