#71 Ring & Ring

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Amper Fans meet Apple Fans

Today’s the day every­one’s been wait­ing for (unless you’re an Android or Win­dows fan — ha ha Win­dows fan sounds kin­da fun­ny, does­n’t it)…

THE OFFICIAL ANNOUNCEMENT OF iPHONE 6

No, that’s not an iPhone. It’s my cracked, scuffed, worn, tor­tured, bro­ken Black­ber­ry Curve 6310 that I’ve had for 8 or 9 years.  Think I’m ready for a new phone?

Believe it or not, it still works. (It has to, it’s the only phone I’ve got.) I’ll tell you more about this Badass­ber­ry — the phone that won’t quit — in my “chaz sez” col­umn below. It’s been a work­horse, but I am so ready for a brand new iPhone — & final­ly the iPhone 6 has the one fea­ture I’ve been hold­ing out for, a larg­er screen. (I’ve also been cross­ing my fin­gers it will come in grey or black, & sure enough it does.)

Remem­ber before answer­ing machines (remem­ber answer­ing machines, which were before voice­mail?) the phone used to ring & ring & ring & ring & ring, some­times 10 or 20 times? Real­ly annoy­ing if you had an annoy­ing friend (or worse yet, a bill collector…or worse yet, a tele­mar­keter) who kept call­ing & you did­n’t want to speak to them. At least with answer­ing machines you could fast-​forward to the next message.

Well, the iPhone 6 has been announced, but we’ll have to wait & wait & wait & wait & wait until it’s actu­al­ly avail­able. I’ve wait­ed 9 years for a new phone so I guess I can wait a few months longer.

UPDATE: I did get that iPhone 6 Plus, & enjoyed it very much…until the iPhone X was intro­duced. I jumped at that imme­di­ate­ly, main­ly because I like the let­ter (or numer­al) X & the num­ber 10. It’s a mile­stone. & I love the phone, with its edge-​to-​edge larg­er screen (retain­ing near­ly the same size body), face recog­ni­tion, & super-​duper cam­era. (I had way to much fun with the ani­mo­ji fea­ture at first, turn­ing myself into a robot, chick­en, & such…until that nov­el­ty wore off. It was fun send­ing my great-​niece a col­or­ful ani­mat­ed uni­corn, though, on her birthday.)

So, am I anx­ious to get my hands on the lat­est & great­est iPhone 10 XR, XS, XS Max, or any­thing else? NO! I love my X, the sim­plic­i­ty of the mod­el name, & don’t plan to upgrade (not that I con­sid­er the newest mod­els much of an upgrade) any­time soon…although I doubt I’ll wait anoth­er 8 or 9 years.

If you’re won­der­ing what all the col­ors are in this Amper­Art piece, “Ring & Ring,” those are the col­ors tele­phones came in while I was a kid in the 1950s & 60s. Up until then they came in any col­or, as Mr. Ford would say of the Mod­el T, as long as it was black. The new, mod­ern col­ors were excit­ing, instant­ly mod­ern­iz­ing & adding a touch of glam­our to any liv­ing room, bed­room or kitchen. This ad announces all the new phone colors.

Short­ly after the new col­ors, along came the Princess phone (that was in my mom’s or sis­ter’s bed­room, of course, although I don’t recall if it was pink or turquoise).

But the most rev­o­lu­tion­ary con­cept, that which changed the world of tele­pho­ny, was the push-​button phone. That allowed all sorts of won­der­ful new appli­ca­tions, includ­ing auto­mat­ed cus­tomer ser­vice depart­ment selec­tions that usu­al­ly dis­con­nect­ed the call. (I always just press 0 for a live oper­a­tor, although that usu­al­ly dis­con­nects the call as well or recy­cles back to the main menu). Then cord­less phones were the next big thing.

After that, of course, cel­lu­lar phones were all the rage, & any­one who owned one was an instant celebri­ty. For decades they were first nov­el­ties, then acces­sories, & today they have replaced the home phone alto­geth­er for sev­er­al house­holds. For many solo entre­pre­neurs such as myself, the cell phone is our main busi­ness phone, along with Skype.

Ah, the sim­pler days when all the instruc­tions for using your new phone were print­ed on a sin­gle sheet of paper…

If you hap­pen to have a Bell & How­ell 16-​mm sound pro­jec­tor sit­ting around, you could sim­ply learn from this high­ly edu­ca­tion­al film which shows you step-​by-​step how to place a call with the rev­o­lu­tion­ary new sys­tem. Is that an ear­ly portable cell phone she’s stand­ing next to?

I know, I know…this Amper­Art release coin­cides with the iPhone 6 release & it was planned that way, so why have I hard­ly even men­tioned the Shiny New Toy? Because you’ll be hear­ing enough about it on the on the news, on the Inter­net, at Star­bucks, & from your geek col­leagues. You might even be at an Apple store plac­ing your order right now.

Why do I still have a Black­ber­ry Curve where I can’t read half the screen; the ear­piece does­n’t work so I have to use it only on speak­er; the track­ball fell out once & until I found it weeks lat­er (right under my chair) I had to do every­thing with the key­pad, which meant no scrolling (now it’s taped in place); & I have to pull the bat­tery out to charge it because the usb jack is all screwed up? Oh yeah, & it’s held togeth­er with duct tape?

Because it still works—and I’ve been wait­ing for an iPhone that has all the fea­tures I want, includ­ing a nice big screen. Oh yeah, & the price. Oth­er bills came first. The new iPhone 6 Plus is exact­ly what I want, & the old Beast­ber­ry prob­a­bly won’t hold out much longer.

Which means I’m going to get the iPhone 6 Plus for sure (and all its 128g), so I bet­ter get back to work right now to afford it.

 PRODUCTION NOTES:
Original size: 20×30 inches
Program: Illustrator
Font: What font? This is hand-​lettered, just like ads were created back in the 1960’s (unless you could find a decent script in Fototype).
Colors: Sampled from period telephone ads & adjusted according to memory

CREDITS:
Ad: clas​si​cro​tary​phones​.com
Princess phone: playinginthe​worldgame​.files​.word​press​.com
Black pushbutton phone: unmesh​patil​.blogspot​.com/
Brick: bodyshapestyle​.com
Instructions: teach​inglit​er​a​cy​.tum​blr​.com
1954 film: YouTube /​ Bell System