The Old Man and the iPhone

screen of mobile apps

by Frank Bruni for the New York Times

Like many people I know, I decided about a month ago to get a new iPhone. President Trump’s tariff threats, tariff realities and tariff tempestuousness portended higher prices, and I was due anyway. My old iPhone’s bells and whistles were at this point whimpers and wheezes. Its battery was a joke. Off to the Verizon store I went. I’d made an appointment and was assured I’d be in and out in a jiff.

Some jiff. The sales rep’s explanation of pricing and plans lasted longer than many of my lectures. It was 10 times as hard to follow. I placed my order anyway, and when I returned three days later to swap my sputtering clunker for its shiny upgrade, a data-transfer process that was supposed to take 60 minutes crested three hours. Then there were days of text messages and emails with the sales rep to iron out all the kinks.

Ah, the paradoxes of progress. The ironies of efficiency. Multiplying conveniences come with metastasizing inconveniences. The very gizmos, gadgets, hacks and programs meant to simplify tasks also complicate them. You must download this. You must upload that. You must take a photo. You must digitize a blood oath. You must enable cookies. You must disable cookies. You must configure this setting and then that setting, and have you updated the app? Update the app! Because then you’ll be able to customize your experience even further, provided you have the time and patience to educate yourself on the infinite customizations.

And just when you fall in love with a new bit of technology, it betrays you. My Ring doorbell, for example. I relished how it permitted me a nanny-cam glimpse of whether a package had arrived, a service provider had shown up or my dog was staying put and behaving in the front yard. All this on my iPhone, wherever I was! My old iPhone, I mean, because my new one refused to accept my Ring password, even as my laptop validated its correctness. The app gave me inscrutable and contradictory reasons; several weeks elapsed before I summoned the fortitude and concentration to solve the riddle and set things right. Don’t get me started on my new app-controlled lightbulbs, whose setup consumed an entire afternoon.

Yes, I’m old, and younger sorts are more adept at the various facets of our wireless ways. Codgers and technology go together like peanut butter and sardines. But it’s also true that baby boomers, Gen X, millennials and Gen Z alike muddle through a morass of inputs, outputs, passwords, password validations, password resets, QR codes, notifications and nudges that didn’t exist a quarter-century ago. Those cyberannoyances accompany innovations that undeniably streamline a range of experiences — summoning a ride, plotting a route, buying a movie or concert ticket, changing the thermostat, checking in for a flight — to a degree that I wouldn’t be foolish enough to wish away. But the innovations seldom live up fully to their promises of ease and expedition, and they introduce intricacies and imperfections all their own. The troubleshooting accretes; for every three minutes you gain, you give one back. And your head fills with a kind of noise that can sap your energy with a special and sinister potency.

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