With iPhone All Things Are Possible

So, half the pop-culture obsessed world saw John Stewart playing on his iPhone last night at the Oscars. (You may remember, the first iPhone commercial ever debuted during last year's Oscars).

But John Stewart playing with an iPhone didn't surprise me. No, instead, it was my parents playing with my iPhone that shocked the hell out of me.

Full disclosure: both of my parents used to be drill instructors in the Marine Corps. This guy was also a drill instructor in the Marine Corps:



My parents are now in their 50's and 60's, living in Indiana, and enjoying a comfortably middle-class existence blissfully devoid of technological advancement. (For instance, my mother received notice from Verizon last year that the cell phone she purchased in 1998 for emergencies, was not going to work when the switch from analog to digital happened in 2007 and she finally had to upgrade.)

But this year has been different for my parents. They bought a new HD LCD TV. They switched to an HD cable box and some asshole salesman at Insight (the Cable company) talked them into DVR. I went home this weekend for the first time in 2008 and my dad, who has had DVR for 42 days now asked me, "So, what the heck is this D-V-R thing anyway?"

Now that the scene is set, enter iPhone. My parents think it's the coolest thing ever that I can get the internet on my phone. They love being able to access imdb to solve movie arguments, pinching the screen to zoom in, and really like googling their old friends to see if we can find them or their obituary. Sadly, they still have no idea what the internet is, or how it works.

What shocked me most was when my mom asked me if I could pull up YouTube because she wanted to see the Superbowl commercial my dad wouldn't stop talking about. (Bonus points for the reader that can guess which commercial was a big hit in my parents' house.) The creepy part is she knew what YouTube was and what we use it for.

It was interesting to see my parents getting so excited over the iPhone. My sister and I have been telling them to dump the 12 year old HP Pavillion in the basement for about 10 years now. Maybe they could upgrade to iPhones.

Serendipity is More Than Just a Tourist Trap

You should know the writer works at JetBlue. This typically wouldn't be brought up here at iPhone and the City, but, once again, within the same week I start my blog, worlds collide, and this happens:



It's a great commercial and all, and after watching this, I couldn't help but think about how much iPhone has really positioned itself to a mobile market:



Of course, paying attention to sexy news sources like The Consumerist, I found that stupid commericals like that one only yield the following results:

On one of the frequent-flier blogs, an airline pilot writes that only moments after informing his passengers of a weather-related ground hold affecting their flight to Memphis, Tenn., he and his captain received a call from one of the flight attendants. Seems an iPhone-wielding customer in the back had a challenge. "Some guy with an iPhone says the weather is good," the flight attendant says, "and wants to know what the real reason is for the delay. Is something wrong with the plane?

Reportedly, the captain responded with a public address announcement that was sharp enough to elicit audible laughter from the cabin.

"If the passenger with the iPhone would be kind enough," he began, "to use it to check the weather at our alternate airport, then calculate our revised fuel burn due to being rerouted, then call our dispatcher to arrange our amended release, then make a call to the nearest traffic control center to arrange a new slot time (among all the other aircraft carrying passengers with iPhones), we'll then be more than happy to depart. Please ring your call button to advise the flight attendant and your fellow passengers when you deem it ready and responsible for this multimillion-dollar aircraft and its 84 passengers to safely leave."

The full article is here.

At the end of the day, I couldn't help but wonder if the iPhone was making an already demanding and increasingly bitchy techno-fashionista even worse.