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
12 comments:
That's hilarious. Just the kind of blog post guaranteed to put a smile on my face on a very grey Thursday!
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?! ;-)
I'm impressed with 'rhapsodical'. Now there is a word you don't encounter too often.
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.
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!
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.
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.
That's so funny. My boy is an arsenal supporter so that's probbly the first thing he would have picked up on too!
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
That's funny!
LOL. Things to keep in mind for when I get my iPhone.
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.
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