Category Archives: gadgets

Since she got her 3GS about a month ago, my mother kept saying she wished she could return it and get an iPhone 4. She eventually decided to try to get the iPhone 4 and give me the 3GS (very generous!).

She was away in Canada when the iPhone 4 preorder fiasco happened. By the time she got back preorders were closed. She decided that she wanted to at least try going to the store on release day even though there was almost no chance of actually getting a phone that way.

As it turns out, we were just about the only people to show up at the Radio Shack we ended up going to, and they gave us the only iPhone 4 they’d gotten in stock that hadn’t already been reserved.

From time to time, the wildly improbable does happen.

As an aside, I wrote up a little article on the workings of iOS 4 / iPhone 4 Multitasking, partly in an effort to clarify it in my own head. It didn’t really end up feeling like it belonged on a blog, though. I ended up deciding to toss it up on an article site where it might be a little bit more helpful to the world.

I have to confess that I had actually been discouraging my mother from getting an iPhone, even though she’s been talking about wanting one for a while.

You see, when she bought herself an iPod Nano a while back, she played with it for a bit and then gave up. She just insisted it didn’t work properly, and even though I repeatedly offered to teach her how to use it she ended up telling me to keep it and going back to the (much simpler) iPod Shuffle.

To my surprise, the iPhone isn’t going down that same road. She’s actually so enamored with it that she’s taking the time to learn to use it, and she’s talking about upgrading to an iPhone 4.

In this case, I underestimated Apple’s ability to make an electronic device so compelling that nearly anyone would be willing to invest the time to figure it out.