Thursday 29 May 2014

Technology fail

I love my iphone.  Don't get me wrong, I find it so useful and easy to work and I love that it links to my ipad and it's like having a mini computer in my handbag.  But I do have to accept it's limitations.  I thought my most major issue with it was autotext.  Or rather, me being too lazy to fully check a message before sending it, so 'if' becomes 'of', 'love' becomes 'live' and on one strange occasion our friend Richard became 'Shagsy'.
 
But, oh dear iphone, I have discovered something far worse than autotext.  Voice recognition.  I first realised it was unreliable when out on a dog walk one day.  I'd gone out without my glasses, after all, I was on a walk, I don't need glasses to see where I'm going.  But I received a message while I was out and with very squintly eyes and holding the phone at extreme arms length I could work out what it said.  It was a question that needed answering but without glasses, I couldn't trust myself and autotext to be accurate.  So I pressed and held the microphone button and spoke the reply.  A sentance came up on the screen and with those same squinty eyes and extreme arms length I could see that it wasn't right so I had to wait until I got home.  Clearly this is a feature that needs double checking too.
 
But this is nothing compared to what happened a week or so back.  See, my daughter was going to stay at my sister's holiday home in Portugal and I was pretty sure that the house was full of English-Portuguese plug adaptors and she wouldn't need to take any of her own.  But I thought I ought to check.  So I sent my sister a text.  About plug adaptors.  I typed it with my own fingers.  Autotext did not kick in.  Fine.  But while waiting for her reply, I must have accidentally pressed that microphone button again.  I must have been having a very random conversation with my husband.  And clearly iphone language is very different to mine.  Because this is what I saw it had picked up when I next looked at my phone
I laughed and showed it to him.  And you know what he picked up on first?  Arsenal.  He's a Spurs fan - why would we have been talking about buying Arsenal?

12 comments:

Sian said...

That's hilarious. Just the kind of blog post guaranteed to put a smile on my face on a very grey Thursday!

Julie Kirk said...

That's terrifying ... imagine the things you could be unknowingly sending? Could be worse even than bum-dialling someone!

And I know you're playing it coy but ... Arsenal? What *were* you *actually* talking about?! ;-)

ComfyMom~Stacey said...

I'm impressed with 'rhapsodical'. Now there is a word you don't encounter too often.

Deb @ PaperTurtle said...

LOL - this is awesome, Deb. I have auto-correct turned off on my iPhone just because I don't want to end up in one of those Facebook-funny-feeds after using a completely unintended word. And I'll admit to never using the voice recognition feature. I do have my text changed to be LARGE though, just so I'm able to see it without squinting if I don't have my glasses on.

Anonymous said...

Love this post and it reminded me about when David first got his i-phone it would randomly dial me on a regular basis and we finally worked out that it was when he said my name - now why was he talking about me so often - in a good way I hope!

Sandie said...

LOL!! Someone at work keeps putting predictive text on the mobile and it makes me scream with frustration! Bet that did make you smile and it made a great post.

Susanne said...

What babble! I keep hitting the voice button on my new phone by mistake, and backing out of it without trying. I think I'll continue that.

Fiona@Staring at the Sea said...

That's so funny. My boy is an arsenal supporter so that's probbly the first thing he would have picked up on too!

Maria Ontiveros said...

What a great iphone story! I think this feature gets better over time, as mine has become pretty accurate. Love the idea of buying Arsenal (as a Man Utd. family).
Rinda

Ruth said...

That's funny!

Anonymous said...

LOL. Things to keep in mind for when I get my iPhone.

alexa said...

I have really smiled at this - a great piece of 'found' poetry. I am frequently about to press 'Publish' on my iPad when commenting on a blog post and realising at the last minute that Auto Correct has completely transformed what I wanted to say! I was thinking about collecting up some of my own but yours would top it easily :). Thank you for such a great post.