One small step for man … (Part III)
They say that in life that sometimes things have to get worse before they get better and but yesterday I think I just about held my own – which is a laidback way of reporting that I shall be on my way back to the phone shop as soon as it opens this morning to try and discover the answer to a conundrum that came to light as my new Huawei PC 30 and I continued getting to know each other yesterday.
I’m a simple man, me. In other words – one of my habits being quoting the US bard Bob Dylan – “I eat when I’m hungry, drink when I’m dry” and I follow all instructions to the letter, operate by logic and indeed take things as I find them. Except, of course, when things aren’t logical and/or don’t turn out to be as you find them.
At which point I tend to get exasperated.
Two days ago, as I collected my newspapers from the shop across the road, the proprietor’s wife announced that she had just begun studying on a computer course.
Since she takes responsibility for doing the establishment’s VAT returns, I said I assumed it was for some purpose to do with that but she replied in the negative: she was simply trying to understand why her spreadsheet software wouldn’t do what she asked or intended it to do.
I was onto this slow half-volley like Tom Graveney easing into an exquisite cover-drive.
Citing 25th October 1983, when Microsoft Word first came to market, as the day the human race lost control of its destiny, I began my often-aired rant against modern technology.
From that point onwards every time I set out to prepare a report with numbered paragraphs and sub-paragraphs, I had to spend at least half an hour wrestling with Mr Gates’ software which has always believed that it knew better than I did about how I wanted to lay out my work.
Prior to that – in the days of the sit-up-and-beg typewriter – one had been in total control of howsoever one committed thoughts or facts ultimately to paper for the simple reason that the typewriter only ever did what one wanted it to do.
But I digress – let’s get back to yesterday.
Over my time owning my new smartphone I have been working my way around its systems, sometimes by trial and error and sometimes by seeking assistance, in an effort to get to grips with how I shall go forward in my new circumstances.
At some point in the “system setting” function I came across a function whereby I could set my Apps to launch via various options. The phone’s default position was “automatically”, which I took to be a reference to the occasional “alerts’ I was receiving telling me that (e.g.) WhatsApp was “running in the background”.
I took that (logically) to mean that WhatsApp – and for all I knew all the other Apps I had pre-loaded or else downloaded for free – were designed to “run in the background”, thereby presumably contributing to the rate at which my phone was using up the battery life that it had been charged with.
And now I was being invited to change – if I should so desire – the setting on all my aforementioned Apps so that they didn’t constantly “run in the background”, but instead (presumably) would only be activated as and when I manually told them to, e.g. by going to any of them and manually “firing it up”, whereupon it would spring to life in its latest up-to-date form.
This sounded a positive thing to me.
Take my BBC News App as an example. If I only went to look at it once a week, or once a month, or even once every three months, wouldn’t it be more efficient – in terms of my phone’s battery life, the cost to my bank account and savings and (for all I know) quite probably also the globe’s climate change crisis – for it to “fire up” only when I went to it, i.e. rather than having the damned thing constantly upping itself automatically every hour in preparedness for the off-chance that I should ever want to look at it?
And thus it was that I went through every App in my phone, turning the setting from “automatic” to “manual” (so that it would only “fire up” only when I asked for it).
Then two things happened.
Firstly, I noted that – to take my example – that if I went to my BBC News App, it immediately came to life by showing the very latest news “updated to two minutes ago” (or whatever).
Secondly, when I proudly showed Her Indoors my App settings, detailing that all 67 of them were now “manually” launched when I went specifically to them – rather than constantly “running in the background” (as per the other “launched automatically “option), I found myself rapidly falling into a major argument.
I was told I was both completely wasting my time and not making best use of a smartphone.
How so? Well, apparently, all Apps constantly “run in the background” inside smartphones anyway – and, whether they were doing so, or alternatively (as I – probably erroneously – imagined) were only launching as and when (if ever) I went to them, the costs thereof, and indeed the amount of my data allowance I might or might not be using up, was already allowed for in my phone’s contracted rate of £42 per month.
Ergo, I was neither being more efficient, nor was I saving any money, by not having my 67 Apps constantly “running in the background”.
What’s more, every person in the world younger than my age (68) had no problem whatsoever with all their Apps constantly running in the background – in fact, that’s what smartphones were for.
My “push back” argument was simple and logical.
If, as I was now being told, all smartphones were designed so that their Apps constantly ran in the background, why on Earth would my Huawei offer me an option why I could disengage from that and only operate them manually and when I chose to?
There must be a reason for being given that option. Otherwise, why give a smartphone owner an option that in reality doesn’t exist? It would simpler to have the Apps just running permanently in the background and say nothing.
That’s why I shall be returning to the phone shop this morning.
As I went to bed last night I did so followed by a loud jibe that frankly, if I all I wanted my phone to be able to do was make telephone calls, send or receive texts, and maybe send a WhatsApp message once a month, why didn’t I forgo the delights of smartphones and simply buy a basic “pay as you go” phone instead?
The thought has occurred to me.
