There are many days when I find myself marveling about the world we live in and how much better it is now than when I was young. I find it funny that there are some people around that bemoan the loss of this or that and make a big deal about wanting things to go back to the way they were. I don’t mind a little wistfulness, but let’s face the facts that many of the bad things that can inflict themselves on us these days have been licked through technology and/or broader innovation. When I watch House Hunters International it gets driven home. I was an expat living in Venezuela and Costa Rica in the 1950s and then an expat living Rome in the late 1960s. Sure, it was exotic and there was plenty of La Dolce Vita, but if we just think about simple things like phones and television or kitchens and bathrooms, we see things in a very different perspective. Last night I saw a young woman moving to Chang Mai, Thailand who was looking at rental apartments in the $450 per month range. For that she was getting an entire house…furnished…with a pool. It had lots of very modern-looking, well-built space and a big kitchen and three bathrooms. The woman was unhappy that the stove only had two burners and that the en-suite bathroom for her room only had a shower and not a tub. Wow! I wish she could see the houses we lived in in that tropical valley in Costa Rica or even that apartment we lived in in Rome’s most modern neighborhood called EUR. Bathrooms and kitchens have gone through a revolutionary change globally. If you don’t get granite countertops, self-closing drawers and a built-in dishwasher in Chang Mai, you seem to have every right to complain. The fact that you get it for $450 per month is astounding as well. That’s the price I paid for my much less beautiful and less well-equipped
one-bedroom apartment in Queens fifty years ago.
I am also in awe of my technology tools. Since I’m typing on my iPad right now, I will spare you my monologue about that, but my iPhone is another subject entirely. I have a relatively new iPhone 15 Pro, which means its a bit bigger than a regular iPhone, but it is otherwise functionally the same as any other new iPhone. I used to get my iPhones with all the top of the line storage that was offered (I still get that on my iPad so I can travel with movies onboard), but even that has now gone away with ubiquitous iCloud and the automatic backup that goes on. The availability of WiFi is so great that between that and 5G, I can almost always access the cloud whenever I need to and the smaller storage on the device is plenty. But let’s face it, smartphones today can do just about anything a personal computer can do and they can do it all wirelessly from your pocket.
When I last upgraded my phone, it was when I changed my service from Spectrum to T-Mobile. I used to use T-Mobile for its stronger international network, but their NYC coverage was weak compared to Verizon (Spectrum uses the Verizon infrastructure). Now that I’m out here, T-Mobile coverage is as good as Verizon’s or better and we do find it useful to have when we travel internationally, but mostly its just cheaper. My cost guru, Mike, uses T-Mobile, so I knew I didn’t need to do too much cost due diligence since Mike is always on the best deals going on everything. When I upgraded my phone as part of the switchover (naturally, that was part of the come-on deal) I was asked by the sales representative if I wanted a screen protector. When I said no, he looked at me funny and paused. I don’t recall it being a cost issue, but I just found that I had never had a screen protector and had never needed a screen protector. But that look caused me to ask if thought that was important. He already knew that I said I never buy the extended warranty or product protection services since I prefer to self-insure wherever I can. But he said that he thought it was a really good idea to get a screen protector because people drop and break their screens all the time. I shrugged and said OK, do it. The main reason was that I had just gone through my first broken screen and had made the mistake of getting a fly-by-night local repair shop to replace it to no end of problems that I had never imagined could plague an iPhone user. I had sworn off non-Apple repair shops and so getting a screen protector made more sene to me.
In the past few months that I’ve had this phone I have not dropped it or had any bid accidents with it, but I apparently did drop it once and took a chunk out of the top edge of the screen. I worried about it, but it didn’t seem to be spreading until I recently notices in the sunlight a few spider-thin cracks starting to form and even a new hairline crack on the bottom of the iPhone. So, I finally relented and called the Apple Store for a Genius Bar appointment, which I set for earlier today. They told me it would take an hour to fix and that it would cost $379, which sounded high, but about right for an Apple repair. I have a few Apple gift cards which total about $200, and while I reminded myself to grab them this morning, naturally I forgot and was Hal;flay to the store when I realized I didn’t have them. Oh well, they don’t go bad.
Our local Apple Store is in the North County Mall, which has been hard hit by its loss of Nordstrom’s and then the whole COVID shutdown. It doesn’t seem to have recovered and the only thing I ever go there for is the Apple Store and maybe Cheesecake Factory, which happens to be nearby. So, I walked into the store a bout 10 minutes early and was surprised that it wasn’t more crowded. When have you ever seen an Apple Store not crowded? Trick question…at the North County failing mall, of course. Anyway, I walked right up to the Genius Bar and told them my name. They found my appointment and the representative took me right away. I had already backed-up my iPhone as they told me to and I ran the diagnostic program they asked me to at the door of the store, so i was all ready to hand over my phone. The guy took a look at the nick in the screen and said, this isn’t the screen, its the screen saver. I asked if he was sure and he said he was. He asked if I wanted him to take it off and I said please do. That took one fingernail and three seconds and he handed me the phone and said, “all fixed!” And sure enough, the screen was perfect. He said he could put another screen saver on it if I wanted. I looked at the old one and now, in the light, saw that it was cracked all over the place. He explained that that was not unusual. I asked if he recommended a screen saver, expecting the same answer I had gotten at T-Mobile, but he glanced around conspiratorially and said, “I wouldn’t”. He said he had never broken a screen but that he changes broken screen savers all the time. I shook his hand and thanked him and then walked out of the store about six minutes after having walked in and with no charge to me. It turns out that screen savers are not so genius a solution after all.