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Wednesday, July 21, 2010
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Avoiding Deer Farts. Don't Share This With Antoine.
| Apple released the new iPhone today and I'm quite certain I will be the proud owner of one in a few short weeks. I'm a big iPhone fan and since getting my first (the 3G) about 15 months ago I can't imaging going without it. It's far from perfect however. Case in point - the built in auto-correct predictive spelling function. I'm amazed that in 2010 Apple of all companies still struggles with this. It's not a new problem. When we still had the family company and I had just started (this is like 20 years ago) I found myself composing letters (real letters that were printed on paper and mailed) on the relatively new and ground breaking Word word processing software by Microsoft. It of course had a spell-check feature that all the lousy spellers in the world believed was a godsend. I knew better. | |
| I'm actually a pretty good speller and I found myself more often than not re-correcting Word's ill-conceived auto-corrections. There were some fun ones but my favorite was in a letter that was addressed to my sister (and co-worker) Amy. The body of the letter escapes me but it was somewhat confidential in nature as I intended to close with the directive, "Don't tell anyone about this." Word knew better and changed this apparently vague order to the much more precise: "Don't tell Antoine about this." It probably goes without saying that though neither of us knew Antoine he was not to be trusted with our secret. This remained a running inside joke between the two of us and became code for anything that was a secret but of no real consequence. Forward to 2010. I drive nearly 200 miles to a conference so that I can meet up with one particularly important customer. His name is Gary and it's my goal to see him and come to an agreement on an extension of a contract he has with my company. I get to the conference and Gary's nowhere to be found. Afraid that I might miss him altogether I start tapping out an e-mail message to him, reminding Gary that I am there and really want to get together. Important stuff. I begin the e-mail, old school: "Dear Gary," What I get is: "Deer farts," Now I take full responsibility for mis-tapping Dear as Deer (see photo above). Though you'd think that by now Apple would suggest the more conventional salutation, but again, my mistake. It's the next part that baffles me. farts. Really? Is Gary such an unusual name that when it shows up in an e-mail Apple assumes the writer is surely referring to flatulence? Luckily I don't put blind faith into all this automation and still proof my words before I hit send. Corrections to corrections made, message sent, meeting happened, happy ending. So my friends at Apple, here's a little secret: You can get a big jump on your competitors and save us iPhoners a little embarrassment by giving your spell checker some much needed horsepower. I won't tell Antoine. | |
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