Taken for granted....
Thursday, March 19, 2009 at 9:55AM As a father of a teenage daughter with an active social life and lots of activities, I spend more time than I ever thought possible sitting in my car waiting for her to finish said activities. Yes, if I could charge for it, I'd be running a very lucrative "Dads Taxi" service.
Luckily for me, my saviour since the summer of 2007 has been my constant companion, my iPhone.
I've listened to podcasts and music, I've watched movie and web clips, I've run my business answering emails and administering my website, I've conversed with friends via Twitter, I've browsed the web, I've read snippets I'd stashed away for later via Instapaper, .... actually I've communicated in so many different ways but the most infrequent being via the phone itself.
The iPhone has been a delight by being both a productivity tool and an entertainment device.
And then last night, to my horror, I left the house without checking it was fully charged. Now I usually place the iPhone in a charger overnight, next to my bed, as I use it as an alarm clock (and a damn fine alarm clock it is with different settings for different days) but, I'd not used the dock the night before. I also have a dock on my desk, but never thought to dock it, other than to sync my podcasts a few minutes before leaving the house.
And to make things even worse, that expensive Mophie JuicePack, my external battery for the iPhone, was fully charged up, but sitting on my desk.
D'oh!
After dropping my daughter off, my iPhone was down to 10% and I had an hour to kill in Liverpool. A trip to the Apple store and a Twitter session in Starbucks, but the iPhone kept going.
By the time I was sitting outside waiting for my daughter with 20 minutes to spare, the battery died, no further warning, it just shut down the phone.
20 minutes sitting in the car with no iPhone.
How the hell did we manage to keep ourselves entertained and informed pre-iPhone! I won't do that again.
Reader Comments (6)
Nice story - and I can completly agree ;-) ...
Why don't you have a carcharger? I have it always with me when in the car, you never know when the next traffic jam turns up ...
Cheers
Hi Don,
Well, I have to confess something ... I recently bought a new car, and I especially wanted one with an integrated iPod / iPhone system. I don't want this to happen to me :-)
Regards,
Stefaan
This is the stuff of nightmares ;) Great post!
I feel your pain, I'm LOST without my iPhone. Might I recommend a car charger? :)
I once complained about the iPhone battery life and finally solved the problem after going out and spending more than $100 or so on chargers. I now have one next to my bed, in my living room, in my home office, in my car, one at work, and a battery add on. I'm now broke, but very seldom left without a charge!
Yesterday, I temporarily bricked my BlackBerry while updating the OS. I had to run out for a client appointment so I left the non-functioning device in the office. I wondered when was the last time I was in the car without a cellphone. I could not remember.
I found it quite liberating knowing that I was out of touch. BTW, the BB is now working again. Whew!
Well I did the same as Stefaan when I purchased a new car in January and made sure it had an iPod connector. I think Mrs Don may say that that's a step to far.