Low Beneath the Kaput Line

I’ve read articles about this.  I’ve considered this on my own “smart” phone before.   Today, I reached a bit of a breaking point.  My phone is all but obsolete.  I bought it, what, two years ago?  It must have been three.   It is, and iPhone 6.  Is that horribly old?   I don’t need it to do that much, but some things that it had done in the past it must continue do.  If it cannot, I am almost forced to consider a new phone. 

iPhones are packaged as, and indeed come to market as products of great quality.  But any device that isn’t functional after three years, designed with the assumption that it will be worthless after such a short time, suggests the workings of a rather maniacal craftsman or a rather disturbingly well-tuned business mind. 

I had a meeting today, to mentor students at a collective workspace in a location that was billed as “right near Shine City”, our newest, biggest, local mall.  I’m busy but I was looking forward to it.  I had done it last year with my younger daughter’s class.  Students were designing entrepreneurial businesses and wanted critique.  I threw the address in the Apple Maps function on my phone, which it seemed to identify right away.  Absorbed a quick glance and figured I roughly knew where it was. 

When we dream at night our mind searches for a particular tension to unwind to give the dream a palpable sense of urgency.  “The cops!”  “I need to get back to the boat!”  etc.  For this narrative, my five-minute drive over to the shared workspace, real life offered up a: ‘the car is dangerously low on gas” tension to color my 'where is this place?' effort.  And, driving over I checked my phone.  The destination was the same but I, the blue dot, was not moving.  I tried Baidu maps and it too had me still back where I started the journey at my home.  Without the ability to verify where I was, in relation to the destination, the whole effort with GPS mapping was pointless.

After a half dozen calls I reached the teacher who was organizing things.  Neither of us knew that I’d pulled over merely one hundred yards from where I was supposed to be.  “You see the series of squat red buildings with the slanted roofs?”  “No.”  He was patient and led me along a path that felt good and rational driving until it became clear that it was completely wrong.  “It’s not near the New Convention Center is it?”  “No.”  Well.  “Hey, look, I’ll figure it out.  You go be with the kids.  Explain to them I’m sorry and will be there ASAP.”  I considered the gas gauge.  I’m not sure I’d ever seen it so low beneath the kaput line before. The phone itself was swiftly running out of juice as well. 

I came upon an idea I thought slick, which was to reboot my phone and have the GPS identify me in an updated location.  I did this, going through all the delay involved only to see that my phone now showing me back at the convention center where I had turned it off a few minutes ago.  The GPS functionality, that is such a gee-wiz part of contemporary smart phone life, on my device, was now essentially useless.  This had happened to me last month back in the U.S. as well.  I know I could probably spend some time on line and try a few different diagnostic bits to improve things, but my working assumption is that this phone is no longer able to keep up with the demands of current versions of the apps I use.  It’s only going to get worse.  Reluctantly I am strongly inclined to just get a new phone, presumably, precisely as was intended.

Abandoning modernity I get a rough translation of the location in Chinese and ask two older women walking by if the center I’m looking for is anywhere near here?  They point across the street.  “It’s right up there.” I note the red building with the slanted roofs. I park the car and my worries about gas and try to adapt my posture on the walk over from frantic to mentor-like.

Wednesday 03/14/18