1234 It's a Conspiracy!

1234 It’s a Conspiracy!

Yes, it is.  The impending death of the Blackberry smartphone resulted from a conspiracy, make no mistake about it.

The fact that their systems went down more often than your elevator had nothing to do with their financial troubles.  Neither did their lame efforts at keeping up with the iPhone and Android, met with a yawn by even their most die-hard fans.

It was none of that.

The damage was done by a secret cabal of people with nimble fingers, fingers that can type on those on-screen “keyboards” and not have their messages come out in no recognizable language.

You’d think people who finger pick guitars and banjos and who type with ten fingers could adapt to the on-screenies. But most of us haven’t.  We need actual keys to press.  Yes, they make the phones heavier and take a lot of getting used to but eventually, we can type without too many mistakes.

“Why don’t you just suck it up and get used to the screens?” the conspirators ask.  That’s not always possible.  The Americans with Disabilities folks should look into this.

Digressions:

1. Ten finger typing is a misnomer.  It’s really nine finger typing because generally you use only one thumb.  But it’s really really eight finger typing because your thumbs are not fingers.

2. Being bad-fingered is not really a disability.  But classifying it thus would bring less shame to the stricken than the kind of typing we do on screen.  If it were really a disability, the pharmaceutical companies would by now have come up with a drug to cure it, advertise it direct to users who would be prompted to “ask your doctor if AccuFinger is right for you,” followed by a list of side effects, outcue: “may result in serious illness or death.”

Okay, you can’t type on screen.  What about voice commands.  At this, iPhone’s Siri is a bit more accurate than Android’s un-named synthesized female-ish voice.  But as often as not, speaking into your phone turns “Dear Aunt Lovina” into “Deer and the Antelope.”

Blackberry keyboards are squinty little things that force you to hit the wrong key often.  But at least they are physical keyboards. And if this company goes belly up -- and “any day now” is a better bet than “never” -- our choices will be few and will subject us to laughter from both the conspirators and the salespeople at the cell phone stores.

It looks like BlackB will go private.  The people planning to buy it don’t care about your fingers.  They care about the billions worth of patents the company owns.

And watch the prices on eBay skyrocket.

Shrapnel:

--Although WestraDamus generally only antedicts the past, he certainly was right in predicting the first day’s activity at the Health Insurance online Marketplace.  It was swamped and overloaded and probably will be for awhile.  After the traffic jam, you’ll have no trouble getting through.

I’m Wes Richards.  My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2013