27 thoughts on “Obama’s iPhone Flub”

  1. Stop me if I’ve told you this before. Okay. Last Christmas, my family gave me a Droid to replace my iPhone, because I had complained about the lack of Flash on the iPhone.

    Before I could commit by starting service, I noticed that there was a manual in the box. I pulled it out, and saw that it was thicker than the phone, just as wide and long, and printed in microscopic type.

    I politely returned the phone. The iPhone has no manual, and needs none. An idiot can master the whole thing in thirty seconds.

    An idiot can. How brain dead is the oaf who can’t.

    1. I use macbook pros, but I’ve never picked up an iphone. Don’t you need at least a few minutes to acclimate to the touch screen? Certainly, my first day with a macbook, I thought I’d be using a separate mouse for precision drawing, but I got sufficiently precise with the trackpad much quicker than I expected.

      The other aspect to this: I saw criticism of Obama for not keeping up with the times, and trading in his blackberry for an iphone. I recall the big to-do that the secret service and blackberry made over modifying Obama’s blackberry to make it (at least somewhat) secure. It may be that developing a secure iphone wasn’t seen as worth the hassle.

      googling: here it is — the National Security Agency was involved.
      http://tech.slashdot.org/story/09/04/24/0428235/obama-to-get-secure-blackberry-8830

      1. No, if it’s on, there’s almost no way to not understand it. Apple is unmatched in designing intuitive interfaces. One can certainly figure out how to dial it within a few seconds.

        1. I’m sure the interface design is fantastic, and that anyone could see what they ought to be doing. I’m just suggesting that fine tuning your fine motor control in your fingers so that you can get the touch screen to respond the way you want probably requires a short learning process the first time you pick it up. If not, I’m going to be pleasantly amazed. Sigh. Now I’ll have to go try it. Which means it is going to be even harder to resist buying one.

    2. I bought a Droid tablet not long ago and it had the user manual loaded on the tablet itself. It took all of about 10 minutes to read through. I really don’t see how difficult that is.

      1. I’d still be reading that phone’s manual if I did nothing else (including use the phone). Did I mention that they threw in free copies of War and Peace and Encyclopedia Britannica printed in the same format, and it was a thinner booklet?

  2. I don’t think this would be worth noting *except* for the fact that media went out of their way to portray Obama as a “techie” in 2008, based solely on the fact that he knew how to use a Blackberry. (The bar for being a techie was set about as low as you can get.)

    Amazingly, many people in the tech community (programmers and engineers, not just people who know how to use a Blackberry) fell for that and said, “Obama is one of us.”

    So, when it turns out he doesn’t know how to use an iPhone, it’s newsworthy.

  3. For me it wasn’t so much that he didn’t know how to use the phone but the snide comment about it being the service providers fault that it wasn’t working right.

  4. Karma for making fun of John McCain in 2008 for not using email, which as it turns out was because of the pain he suffers from treatment he endured as a POW in North Vietnam.

  5. I wonder if he’ll start practicing his iPhone skills. A recent NYT piece included the tidbit that he took to the White House lanes to practice his bowling after his humiliating outing in the 2008 race. Politicians and actors may the only people who work hard to pass as regular humans.

  6. Come on guys, give Obama a break. iPhone skills are not that critical in the big scheme of things.

    He is so much better at handling all the really important stuff like budgeting, reducing government waste, providing a coherent solution to runaway healthcare entitlements, saving the auto industry, keeping the blindfold on Lady Justice, you know, leadership stuff, I could go on for days…

    1. Don’t forget healing the planet and lowering the seas… oh, and walking on water, I always forget that one about the one. Is Keanu Reeves going to play him in the movie adaption of his greatness?

    1. Well, he gave his iPod to the Queen of England filled with his speeches. As for the iPad, he may own one but not know how to use it. He could just look at it like a pig watching TV.

    2. He probably knows how to touch a button on a touchscreen (infants and cats seem to get that). But he might not get the idea that you launch an app to make phone calls; I don’t think you do that on a Blackberry.

      iPhones and Android touchscreen phones are so commonplace now that it’s hard to remember what it was like to switch from a phone with a physical keypad. Obama’s mobile phone experience is frozen in 2008.

      1. On a blackberry, you just push the green phone button on the lower right of the phone to put it in call mode.

        I really don’t wish ill on TIM and their employees but if they go tits-up, work will replace my Blackberry with an Iphone.

        There is stuff that is icatually useful to my work app-wise like WISER (Wireless Internet System for Emergency Responders) that let me calculate an exclusion zone for a disaster or nasty spill and another containg the latest version of the DOT-Emergency Response Guidebook. Also a nice free shot-timer app from Surefire! I normally don’t take my laptop in the field as I don’t want to risk it and it is rarely of use there. Something else hosting these apps would be sweet!

        I wanted to ‘accidentally’ drop it in the Atlantic when I crossed the Hampton Roads bridge but they assured me that in the event of a loss, it would be replaced by another Blackberry! Only the death of RIM Corp can free me!

        Thanks work!

  9. Rand wrote:

    “Again, I have no idea why people find him “likable.” I never have, except in that one speech in 2004.”

    I saw all I needed to know about that clown when he responded to Sarah Palin’s “..difference between a hockey mom/pit bull…” line at the GOP convention.

    Obama’s response, at a campaign event a day or so later, was to the effect “if you put lipstick on a pig…it’s still a pig.”

    That’s all I needed to hear. The man is a right bastard. I know politics ain’t beanbag, but that’s an ungentlemanly way to treat a lady – even if she is a political opponent. That one line presages every other negative attribute of that Neo-Marxist, Soccie clown.

    1. I always remember one of the late 2007 / early 2008 Dem debates: Obama made a remark about football, followed with one of those “heh, heh, heh” wink-nudge-it’s-a-guy-thing laughs that was obviously calculated to put Hillary Clinton down for, you know, being female. How the hell women can vote for him when he is clearly a misogynist is beyond me.

  10. I had a iPhone for a few months, gave it away and got an android phone a long time ago. Whenever someone hands me the iThing now to look at their photos or take a picture i have a hard time navigating it.

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