Seven years ago, my husband’s co-worker stood in line on University Avenue in Palo Alto to be one of the first when the doors opened to buy the hottest new gadget: a cell phone that actually did web browsing, email, IM, calendar and calculator functions, and even had a camera. This was unheard of. He brought his prize into work to show off, with the upshot that my husband stood in line the second day the thing was out, after some discussion with me, and proudly brought one home too.
“You bought that for me, didn’t you.” It was not a question.
Well, no, not really…
“You’re going back to buy one for me, aren’t you.” Still not a question. Now, normally I don’t aspire to owning electronics, I really don’t. But a phone where someone could reach me where I didn’t have to hear it?! Honey, that was mine.
And it turned out to be a really good idea for both of us to have one, of course, because that way he could reach me from wherever he might be without having to have a computer at hand.
We went back together. What was really amusing was when the clerk handed me the box with mine in it: there were two young adults photo’d on it, Having Fun!
It was a ‘you know you live in Silicon Valley when…’ moment. I had a few years previously sat next to the mother of one of those two at his and my daughter’s high school graduation and had told the woman what a nice kid she had.
And the reason I mention all this. Those phones are Sidekicks. We still have them. (I’m on my second, Richard’s on his third; we’ve dropped them enough times, etc etc.) T-Mobile sells them; Danger manufactures them.
One of the selling points was always that all the information on your phone, your contacts, your emails, etc etc, is sustained offsite as well as in your phone, so that if you ever lose the thing, you haven’t lost all your information, it’s right there online ready to be tapped into again. Again, this was revolutionary at the time.
Danger sold out to Microsoft recently. Microsoft, whether as an act of deliberate sabotage or complete incompetence and indifference, did not support what it had just bought, and the end result is that all that online backup has suddenly and utterly vanished. If your phone battery dies before you recharge it, if you reboot your phone as their service people were completely wrong in advising when people first started having problems, EVER (or till further notice, as they frantically try to undo what they did)–poof: everything in your phone is gone. All your contacts information, sorry, you don’t have it anymore. It’s gone.
My stars. No more forgetting I’ve left my phone in my purse and not recharging it overnight. I can’t remember my own parents’ new phone number without that thing.
I guess the good part is, if we wanted I-Phones now instead, well, our contract’s been broken by them
But by golly I’m a bit antsy about my info. Enough to go blog about it to warn others with Sidekicks.
(Oh, and this shot is just to show that the leaves here are trying their best to turn while it’s actually Fall.)