Jaime Mac musings - smartphones should require exams

Cell phones are no longer just devices to talk on.  You can do practically anything on them now.  My very first cell phone had a bag it came in to hold the humongous battery.  It also came with an antenna as tall as me to put on the outside of your car with about 9 miles of coax to hook inside the bag.  (Remember that, Alicia?!)  We thought we were big stuff back then.  No ONE had cell phones back in 1994.  Of course, we all have them now & I don't know about you, but I have serious issues if my phone is not right next to me.  Sad?  UHM, yes...  But I'm nosey - I HAVE to stay connected!!!!

I have a super cool iPhone AND I know how to use it.  There are a lot of people in this world that have iPhones (or another brand of smartphone) & have NO clue how to use them.  Some of the guys I work with have them & they don't even know how to do the simplest functions.  (Nor do they use their phones to their fullest potential...as Steve Jobs intended...it is blasphemy...)  I get asked 9000 times a day how to send the same text to 2 people?  How do you email a picture?  Really?  I'm not really sure why they even bother to have them..unless they want to be cool & say they have an iPhone?  (You're not really cool though if you have to ask a chick you work with how to use everything...)

Mom recently needed a new phone & at first she wanted a Samsung Galaxy...(because she liked the name...she had no clue what the phone was all about...).  The dude at the AT&T store directed her to an iPhone instead.  I told her I could help her with an iPhone - I have no clue about a Droid.  We got mom a Kindle Fire for Christmas & it does most of what she wants:  read books, facebook & email.  Well, she also wants to be able to look at the weather on her phone & the quick messaging phones just don't cut it.  So - she got an iPhone...  God bless her - she's doing ok with it, but I try to show her how to do different things on it everyday when I'm there.  

Which leads me to my point;  some people have NO business with smart phones.  They just don't.  My mother sure as heck doesn't need one.  The guys I work with don't either.  

Smartphones are a privilege, not a right, people!  

I think with all this election talk going on, they need to be worried about really important stuff... like creating a standardized exam to see if you can operate the phone you want...