Free Apps

Big fan of the movie Beautiful Girls. It's definitely in my Top 20.

Mid-movie, a group of high school buddies – played by the likes of Matt Dillon, Timothy Hudson, and Michael Rappaport -- reconvene at the Johnson Inn, a local watering hole which has been re-opened by an old classmate, Stinky Womack. In the scene Stinky, a newly minted proprietor, offers the group “free apps” in appreciation for their friendship and business. Only the gang doesn’t realize that “apps” is restaurant lingo for appetizers; they stare back at Stinky in a state of confusion.

I’ve been thinking about that scene a lot lately but in a different context. That’s because I recently bought a phone with a lot of free apps (even an app store where they churn out technological calamari), but similar to the gang from Beautiful Girls, after having the apps at my disposal, I’m left scratching my head.

The reality is this: you don’t go to the Johnson Inn for mini-burgers or potato skins. You go to the Johnson Inn for bourbon and Bud Heavies.

Similarly, when you go to the Apple Store for a new phone, the primary consideration shouldn’t be Shazaam (i.e. salmon tartare). It should be: “does this phone actually make/receive calls.”

And to that end, unfortunately, the answer is a definitive: “sometimes.”

I know this. I have an iPhone, and I drop calls all the time.

If the iPhone were a runner it would be a legless Kenyan. Only as consumers, we don’t know the Kenyan/iPhone is legless because he’s sitting at a table. We only see the majestic torso of his gazelle-like frame, his pearly whites, and his fourteen-inch totem-pole of a neck which is harpooned to a millennium-old head. He looks like he came out of the womb running a 4:00 minute-mile.

Only he can’t get off the starting line. He’s legless.

That’s me and my iPhone. From afar, it looks like a marvel of technology while I play the part of trend-setting maven. In reality, I’m a modern day Tweety Bird who’s left to mumble: “iTawt iBought aPhone Dat Worked.”

Not an ideal scenario. Especially when considering the beloved two-year contract which accompanied my functions-when-it-feels-like-it Graham Bell device (originally invented in 1876).

What’s more, I know that my willingness to follow the Jobs’ pied piper -- my ineptitude – is simultaneously making the old guard smile. When my generation pays $200 for a substandard device whose functionality could have been pilfered at a flea market for the same price as a lightly worn pair of socks, the golden guys and girls laughingly say: “You fool! You paid more for less (again)!”

And they’re mostly right. Like an everyday cold that you can't see coming, I got iFever. Only this time, OTC medication is inconveniently out-of-stock.

It happens. The platform for progress knocks on your door with a titanium briefcase and a marketing spin that foreshadows a new-world order. The next thing you know you’re waiting in a three-hour line on Michigan Ave.

Waiting for free apps.

It’s the innovation equation (inverted though it might read): a sea of hooplah + an ultra sleek design + a lot fine print = varying degrees of subjective advancement. Often times you don’t know what you’ve got until after the fact.

“What I know now” is everyday speak amongst first adopters.

But don't think for a second our song is about to change: we will adopt (and adopt and adopt). We are the spin generation. We are addicted to the glitz and the glitter. Give us a two-year overpriced contract; we’ll sign that too.

In election years we partition off the red states and the blue states. But every year – the odd ones and even ones and the leap years too -- all fifty states are packed with suckers. There are suckers on every paved and pot-holed road.

And I am one of them. I won't even try to deny it. I anted and signed the contract before testing out the scale. Without even sensing that my parcel's weight would read: "equivalent to slightly worn socks."

Yes, I waited in a 3-hour line, and then I overpaid.

For free apps.