How Apple can mess with your life
I had just been poured a drink at a bar Saturday night, when the man to my left tapped me on the shoulder.
"That's an 8," he said.
Unsure as to what he was evaluating--my beauty out of 100, perhaps?--I turned toward him very slowly.
"Er, excuse me?" I muttered, squinting at the man's long, straggly hair and rather kind-looking face.
"Your drink is an 8. Normally they pour you a 6," he said.
My silence must have appeared somewhat noisy to him, as Oliver (not his real name) picked up his iPhone and began to explain:
"You see, I'm running an app on my iPhone that tells me how much I can drink before I get into my car. And the lady behind the bar has poured you 8 ounces, not 6."
"So you trust your iPhone to tell you precisely when to stop?" I asked.
"Oh, yeah. I also run a calorie app," said Oliver, a little too enthusiastically.
"What's a calorie app?" I said, dumbly.
"It's an app that tells me exactly how much I should eat every day," he replied. "But it's a bit of a problem to be honest, because when it tells me I'm 300 calories under my limit, I then order a dessert, even though I don't actually feel like eating a dessert."
"So you let these apps tell you what to do and how to live?" I asked, feeling a weird frown forming above my shades. "Don't you realize that half of this techy stuff was designed by people who barely see the light of day, adore only numbers and secretly want you to be a little more like them?"
"Oh, yeah," he said. "I was one of them for 25 years. In fact, I hadn't been anywhere near a computer for a year until I got this iPhone."
(Credit:
CC Yutaka Tsutano/Flickr)
I grabbed at my now 6 ounces of pinot noir a little too hastily as I listened to him explain: "I worked at Apple for 25 years. Huge machines. Back end stuff. Loved working with those machines. Loved being able to tell them what to do."
"So what happened?" I asked, becoming increasingly fascinated by Oliver's openness.
"I just couldn't do it any more. All the things I really wanted to do, I couldn't. Because the machines always took priority. The machines always had to be looked after. Without the back end systems, nothing at Apple could have happened."
"So you were at the mercy of the machines?" I wondered.
"Yeah. I loved them. But I just couldn't take it any more. If I'd stayed another 5 years, I would never have had to work again. But I couldn't do it. So one day I just walked," he said, a curiously guilty joy in his eyes.
"So what are you doing now?" I asked.
"I'm trying to find a life beyond the one I used to have," said Oliver. "I'm traveling, seeing things, having new experiences, learning to play the guitar. I've got a great new business idea, too."
Oliver said he was heading up north because he'd never really been there.
As we said our good-byes I asked Oliver again whether he really needed those iPhone apps to tell him how much to eat and drink.
Still sober, at least according to his iPhone app, he said: "Information is fun, isn't it? But I guess I'm traveling to see what else is fun in this world."
As he thought about it, he told me that he had gone to a music school which, at the end of the course, gets its students to form a band and gets them to play live at a San Francisco venue.
"I love metal," he said. "And so for my song, I chose Sabbath's 'War Pigs'."
"How did it go?" I asked, three ounces in my hand.
"The best feeling I've ever had in my life," he said.
Chris Matyszczyk is an award-winning creative director who advises major corporations on content creation and marketing. He brings an irreverent, sarcastic, and sometimes ironic voice to the tech world. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. 
As for it messing with your life, that's only if you let it. If you let it do that, then you are the problem, not the app or the device. Personally, I need to eat more calories and so if my phone tells me that I haven't eaten enough (I don't have the app yet although now I'm considering it) I probably should find something else to eat.
does Apple pay c|net for this level of dribble?
It's true that the concern being brought up anecdotally here is a general technology one, yet Apple pretty much dominates this realm. They've become to mobile devices what the Microsoft is to home computers. ie: the only product in that field relevant to the average consumer.
How did you come by this interesting fact, cos I find that Apple only has about 10% of the global market share...so that is an interested analogy but next time do some research.
No doubt the iPhone is a popular subject but that dont mean everyone owns one or wants to own one
I also have similar story to his: I was in my bathroom and I run out of the toilet paper....thankfully there was my iPhone so I went online and I bought app for "that", I used the "app for that" and now my life is so much better! The only problem is my iPhone stinks now! upsss Got the picture?????
How many applications are built in with overnight processing? Can you say, "Batch Jobs" that run in the early wee morning hours to have data cleared so new events can happen on a second's notice? What about the stockmarket? Those backend systems need to be up and running 24/7, as with bank's and major conglomerates...
As for the "Applications running our lives," Yep, you can be 'dependent' or 'independent' its up to you and how you choose your freedom from "Tools" created to help you make better choices with your life. ie: 300+ needed calories?
I'm guessing the only fault there, is that the application didn't offer pictures of the food groups to choose from to choose your Next 300 Calorie expenditure.
iPhone is more of a toy than anything I can't keep a straight face calling it a business phone. I think WinMo Blackberry and Android have that market.
And from what I see around here people are getting bored of the design.
I own one of the nutrition apps above, I don't use it to watch calories, I use it mostly for fat and protein content of foods, mostly as a look-up tool. If I did use it to keep track of what I eat and I was short calories but fll or its to late to eat 300 calories, I wouldn't follow what it said. I do however use a program like cychosis (a cycling journal) and ifitness but last time I checked they dont tell me what to do.
I'm sorry but the whole time I was reading this my reaction was "Who cares?"
If you can't turn off the iphone, computer or anything else it is your problem [who cares?]. It is rather boring. If you can, it is still rather boring [who cares?]. Almost as boring as people who think every little detail needs to be posted on boring websites about their boring little lives. [Really who cares?]
NEXT.
P.S. Learn how to punctuate correctly.
irony is delicious isn't it? you silly person you.
@ckh1272
irony is delicious isn't it? you silly person you."
@fortyonejb--Look up "sarcasm".
Instead, it may have been a better idea to get his contact information, dig deeper into where he had been and where he was going. You know....conduct an interview when you're not drunk. How journalists used to conduct business.
Wait, wasn't that what the article was about? Because I'm pretty sure Apple didn't write either application this guy was using to ruin his life...
Who needs a glass when you can just drink out of the bottle?
Counting glasses only gives you a ballpark estimate. You need to know how alcohol effects you and make a sensible decision accordingly.
Until there are a host of mindless, Smartphone-controlled Zombies (Call them Phombies) staggering around (or jumping, running, stretching or whatever other action their omnipotent Smartphone is telling them they must do at that moment), such instances of techno-addiction are little more than a harmless curiosity: an insignificant eddy in the flow of daily life.
Call this a fluff piece (and in my opinion, unworthy of publication) and move on.
Part of me wants to say this story is made up, but another part actually thinks this is real and happens in some people's lives. Wow.
this article has the air of a really touching interesting story about someones decisions and transformation through the medium of an interesting conversation, and you certainly did all you could to make the article into just that. But when you get right down to it, theres just nothing there. We never got a real explanation of why he hadn't touched a computer for a year, or more importantly how he justified letting a computer (iphone) run/ruin his whole life after having the epiphany that that's exactly what was happening before and what he made a big decision to change. So there's really just no real point
and on top of that most of the conversation doesn't follow itself (typical with alcohol) and the whole thing feels kinda dry
and I also agree that that title was ********
Thanks Chris. Good perspective check.
I'm almost done with personal computing myself. I expect to be done well before America goes SAAS.
American culture is beginning to atrophe. Every movie's a remake, music's in similar shape and personalities are really starting to suck. (Run down the violent responses to this short blog post =\)
I'm thinking seriously about getting rid of my mobile. My mom used to remember all her friend's phone numbers. PSSSHHH. I won't even finish that thought. Besides, when I'm not home, I'm not home because, presumably, I'm out doing something. I'm --> busy <--. I don't think I want to be so accessible that I can be reached anywhere at any time. I don't need to be able to take stupid, low-res pics everywhere I go and I don't need to play games everytime I stand still.
The iphone app angle was thought provoking because it seemed like "Oliver" needed the app to be able to open a dialogue with another person. An addictive personality. Addicted to computer technology.
But he may have the right idea. I think I'm going to buy a mtn bike.
Eventually it comes to a point when completely unique ideas run out.
- by danielj1987 August 2, 2009 3:40 PM PDT
- you know, maybe he just wanted to write a fluff piece as someone called it. i think this is more along the lines of sharing thoughts more than being a full fledge news story. this article is to get you to think, to get you to read it and say "hmmm". it isn't to be a ground breaking discovery, it's to think. and honestly, those of you saying it's smartphones in general, not just iphones. think for a second, are there any app stores nearly big enough to DENT apple's app store? you say palm pre, some will know, you say iphone, only third world's won't know. think for a minute. iphone is where the app market is, and that is what most are using, hence the name.
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