This morning on the train to work, I spotted a lady on her iPhone.
When I caught her, she was in the iPhone’s weather app, tapping around furiously, clearly trying to do something. Soon, her tapping focused on the small dot “tabs” along the bottom of the screen. I realized that she was tapping the dots to switch between Cupertino and New York weather predictions, though with limited success.
She returned to her furious tapping all over, eventually discovering the swipe feature. She swiped left and right for a bit, and I noticed that she would continually (and futilely) try to go to the right past New York. Obviously, she was unsatisfied with the limited locales the application gave weather predictions for. She resumed tapping around at random. After a few taps, her finger hit the “i” button. The weather app flipped to its back, where the settings are revealed.
The lady paused for a bit, obviously taking in this new and interesting menu. Not a few moments later, evidently having figured out the “+” button would allow her to add a new locale, she was typing in “San Francisco” into the iPhone keyboard. She fixed a typo once or twice before finishing and again started tapping away wildly. She tapped the blank white area, tapped the input area, tapped generally everywhere except for the big blue “Search” button on the bottom right. She accidentally cleared her search and had to once again type in “San Francisco.” She promptly resumed tapping around at random.
Suddenly she paused, perhaps fearful that her tapping might clear her search again. A few moments passed, and despite the “Search” button never being hit, the iPhone pulled up a few locations matching her search. She tapped the top result and the phone brought back in the settings menu of the weather app. Now things were going her way: the list, originally only showing Cupertino and New York, now included San Francisco. A bit more cautious now, her finger hovered over the screen hunting for what to do next.
She eventually found the “Done” button and lo’ and behold the app flipped back to its front. She now had weather predictions for San Francisco. 60 degrees today. A cloud signaling possible rain. She tossed her hair in triumph. Probably by now exhausted by her exploration of the new and strange, she turned her phone sideways and hit the home button. Still holding her phone sideways, she flipped through her apps and found what she was working for: Solitaire. Back to the familiar. A new game appeared, and within seconds she was lost in her own world stacking cards.
