Macopinion

Laptopless Traveling, Part 5

by Marc Zeedar macopinion@designwrite.com

[Earlier, Marc wrote about deciding to take week-long a cross-country trip with only his iPhone. At this point in his journey he's staying at his cousin's in Manhattan.]

Sunday Phil was busy babysitting his daughter so I headed off on my own. I needed breakfast and decided to head toward the Apple Store and find something on the way. I road the subway to 59th and then walked, passing landmarks like Tiffany's and FAO Shwartz, and I eventually found a nice place that makes omelets to order and had a good and healthy breakfast.

The Apple Store on Fifth Avenue was different than I expected. I'd always thought the glass cube you see in the pictures was merely an advertisement of a sort and that the actual entrance to the store was behind it. But no: you enter through the cube and descend spiral glass stairs into a huge cellar of Apple mania. The place is huge, and I mean huge. You could easily fit six or eight normal-size Apple Stores inside it. And at eleven o'clock on a Sunday morning it was packed with several hundred rabid Apple fans. I heard at least seven different languages being spoken by customers, so it was obviously a popular place for tourists visiting New York. One Apple rep was standing by a giant stack of iPod nanos and selling only them, saving you time if that's all you were buying. I watched him with his mobile credit card scanner and he was selling at least a nano a minute.

The place was really cool, with live demos going on in different parts of the room, tons of store reps there to assist people, and a lot more accessories than I'd seen at any other Apple Store. In addition to the normal genius bar they even had a bar just for iPod questions. But once again, I'd forgotten my iPhone's bad AC adapter, so I couldn't exchange it. But that was okay, since I already had a replacement.

After touring the Apple Store for nearly an hour, I headed toward Eighth and Broadway where I'd arrange to meet Peter. I walked along the south end of Central Park and passed Carnegie Hall (one of the cool things about walking around New York with no agenda is all the famous places you come upon without planning it). Eighth Avenue was closed off to vehicle traffic as they had some sort of street fair going on. It was crazy with food stalls and vendors selling just about anything you can imagine. (One guy impressed me: he had a giant pegboard rack that must have been thirty or forty feet long and it was covered with neckties! I swear I have never seen so many ties in my life. Hundreds and hundreds of them, all different colors and styles. I wondered how long it took him to erect up that display and hang all those ties!)

At the appointed time, Peter and I found each other via phone (he sent me several text messages), and then we went off for lunch and later Spamalot. In the afternoon I went off to his place in Brooklyn. We had supper and rented a DVD and talked. Phil had told me he'd be home any time after midnight, so I wasn't in a hurry, until I suddenly realized it was 12:30 a.m. and I was still in Brooklyn. It takes about 45 minutes to get to Phil's from there, so I needed to go. I was a bit nervous about riding the subway in the middle of the night, but Peter said it was fine and he was right.

(As a side note, before arriving in NYC I'd been worried about using my iPhone in public, wondering if that would make me a target for mugging. But it turns out practically everyone on the subway already has white earbuds! iPods and iPhones are everywhere there. Probably you stand out more not having one.)

I should have called Phil before I left Peter's, but I knew he had to get up early on Monday and thought he might already be asleep. What was the point in calling to tell him I'd be arriving in an hour? I'd just wake him up when I got there and let him sleep. Well, not so much. After I arrived at 1:30 a.m., in not the greatest part of Manhattan (near Spanish Harlem), Phil was not answering his phone. I was locked out!

I kept calling and wandering for 30 minutes or so, but got nothing. Every call just went straight to voice mail. I figured he was expecting me so surely he'd check his phone for messages after a while, but I got no call back. I racked my brain for a solution to this problem but could come up with nothing: the building's intercom system didn't work, no one was around, and I had no other way to get a hold of my cousin. He has a roommate but I didn't know how to call him (or even his last name). I could have called Peter, my cousin in Brooklyn, but I figured he was already asleep and he'd told me he always keeps his phone on vibrate. Besides, I didn't really relish another 45-minute subway ride back to Brooklyn.

In contrast to the weekend, when the neighborhood had been crowded and noisy until dawn, now it was nearly deserted, and I didn't feel too safe wandering around. I found some cops who were not very helpful, criticizing my "choice" to roam around Harlem at two in the morning. I asked about hotels, but they didn't know of any. One cop suggested I ask a cab, so that's what I did. The cabby was sympathetic and took me to a couple nearby places that had no vacancy (as I expected) and I was getting depressed. Even if we found a place with a room, what would be the astronomical price of a night in a Manhattan hotel?

But then the cabby hit on an excellent solution: a hostel! I'd never stayed in such a place before, but it wasn't bad: $35 for the night in a room shared by a three other guys (mostly young students stay at hostels). That was fine for me since I had no change of clothes and it was just for a few hours until morning. Anything was better than being on the street all night!

(I did have a funny experience arriving at the room. It was 2:30 a.m. by this time and the room was pitch dark. I could see others sleeping and didn't want to wake them by turning on the light. I saw a lower bunk was empty and took it, but found an awkward brick in my back. I picked it up and it had a cord attached, making me think of an electric blanket control box. Except this one was detached. The cord came free in my hand and split into two tails with tiny knobs at the end. Suddenly I knew what I had: an iPod with headphones! Sure enough, when I pressed the middle of the brick the screen lit up. At first I was astonished, wondering why someone would abandon an iPod. Then it hit me that the bunk wasn't empty: someone had just left it temporarily to use the bathroom or something. I moved to an empty top bunk and minutes later someone came in and got into the other bed and began playing with the iPod. Strangely, this event comforted me: the place couldn't be too dangerous if someone felt comfortable leaving an iPod while they went away for a while.)

Early in the morning, I checked my iPhone but there was still no message from Phil, which greatly puzzled me. Surely by now he would have noticed my voicemails! I wondered if something had happened to his phone. I sent him another text message, and just to be redundant, a "call me" email as well. Minutes later I got a call.

Phil had not received any of my voicemails! His phone had not even indicated I'd called. He'd thought it had gotten late and I'd decided to stay at Peter's for the night.

It turned out that AT&T in Manhattan had a problem with their network. I don't know if it just hurt iPhone owners, but we later found out Phil's bosses, who also have iPhones, didn't get any calls either. He could call me just fine, and email worked, but incoming text messages and phone calls disappeared. Phil restarted his iPhone and the voicemails showed up (the text messages never did), but missed calls were not indicated and new calls still would not go through. For the rest of the day he had to reboot his phone every hour or so and see if anyone had called. (Unfortunately, this was not reliable, since many did not leave a message, assuming he'd see the missed call and call them back.)

Oddly, my iPhone was unaffected, presumably because I was from out of town. (Phil also missed calls from others, so it wasn't just my calls.)

We met for breakfast and soon were laughing about the whole thing, but it was a good lesson in the over-reliance on technology. It was a weird, fluke event that just happened at the worst possible time. If we'd expected that something like that might occur we could have set up contingency plans. Phil could have made a duplicate of his apartment key or figured out another way for me to contact him (perhaps given me his roommate's number). But cell technology's usually so reliable we just don't think about such things. My cousin says hardly anyone in Manhattan has a land line any more: everyone just uses cell phones. It makes sense, but you should have a backup plan in case of problems.

Conclusion
Fortunately, getting stranded in New York was the only "bad" thing that happened on my trip (and it was really a mild adventure that makes a great story). For the most part, I was blown away by how well the iPhone worked. Google Maps' search ability needs a bit of work, I'd like to see more consistent speeds out of Edge, and New York needs to cellularize their subways, but other than that, the iPhone worked great. I used it even more than I expected. Battery life, which had worried me, was awesome: despite my best efforts to exhaust it, I always had enough (though it did get tight a couple of times). I used email to keep up with my business, which worked fine, and I had plenty of entertainment with my music, audiobooks, TV shows, and the Worldwide Web. Pictures from my trip came out great. I took over 100, but wish I'd taken even more -- they have the raw candor of Polaroids and are great for capturing the feel of an event.

So, would I take another "laptopless" trip? You bet! I really relaxed and felt free. It was so nice to be able to walk around without a lot of stuff to carry, and I liked not being constantly paranoid about someone walking off with my laptop.

I even managed to get some work done -- having my Alphasmart Neo helped -- though I will stress that this wasn't a work trip. If you're the kind of person who always lugs your laptop with you on vacation "just in case," you might find than an iPhone would do you just fine.

Of course this is today's iPhone. Tomorrow's iPhone, with real third-party applications coming next year, will really change things. Right now there are still many things that require a full computer, but the future's bright for turning the iPhone into the ultimate handheld. (Even the limitations of the virtual keyboard can be bypassed with an external Bluetooth keyboard, so the iPhone could be used for just about anything.) You might even find you don't need a laptop at all, ever!

macopinion@designwrite.com