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The Rig Apple

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This alarmingly intimate sales letter arrived the other day from Wally, of Wally’s Intimida,   home of the Sherpa – the world’s biggest SUV.

My Dear Dream Customer,

I’m grateful for your business even though you’ve never bought anything from me!

Why?

Because I had a dream that you did!  And I believe in dreams because all salesmen are crazy optimists.  And that same crazy optimism  has me feeling very “up” about the car biz right now!

It’s no secret that all the world’s giant tech and communications companies are looking for the Next  Big Thing  – that “must have it” device or app or piece of software.

Well, it’s starting to look like the Next Big Thing is a Big Old Thing – the automobile!  Because one of Apple’s bigwigs said the other day that his company views the car as an ‘ultimate mobile device’.  

Small thinkers took that to mean Apple is going to develop a bunch of gizmos to go in the dashboard, but I immediately saw it as something bigger.

Yes!  iHere iComes the iRide!

In my dream, we were standing together in a vast parking lot.  I wore an iWatch, but the iRide wore you!

When you strapped yourself into it, the iRide had already guessed where you were going because it checked the time of day against its extensive records of everywhere you’d ever gone before.

You were headed to work, but when you got to work, you didn’t have to get out to work because the iRide  already had all the trappings of your office built into it!

And yes, it was a massive vehicle.  A Very Familiar and Famously Massive Vehicle.

I’m not saying I know for sure that the Apple designers are building their automotive masterpiece on the Intimida Sherpa platform, but I will say this – if I knew they were doing it, I wouldn’t be able to say!

Unless it was just a dream.  Draw your own conclusions.

One thing is surely for sure – if Apple built a car,  you would not be able to afford it.  Which is why there’s no better time to buy a new Sherpa from Wally’s Intimida.  Because a primal version of The Next Big Thing might only be within reach as The Right Now Big Thing!

Yes, you could own one tomorrow.  Think about it, but not too much.  Dreams come true for those who act!

The Sherpa – it’s a mighty big, mighty sleek, sophisticated, smart, intuitive, trendy, iconic, game-changing car!

Thanks for being in my dream!

Wally

I do think Wally’s desperation shows through here.  All the retail excitement these days is around electronic contraptions, and those enormous SUV’s like the Sherpa are no longer riding a sales bump from cheaper gas.  Long gone are the days when customers looked to the introduction of a new automotive model year with the same level of anticipation the bring to the unveiling of the latest iPhone.  

But it’s nice to have a dream. 

 When have you rushed to buy a newly introduced product?

58 thoughts on “The Rig Apple”

  1. Never.

    Heard an interview with some bright young thing who was going on about how whatever new algorithmic gee gaw (a word I have never heard spoken, but often read, so thought I’d throw it in here) was going to be oh so wonderful because it would more accurately predict “what people want”.

    I’m skeptical, because in my experience “what people want” is more time to enjoy what they already have and less time having to wade through another pitch.

    But maybe I just know the lunatic fringe and the majority of people really do want the perpetual discontent that comes with domething becoming worthless the moment you take ownership.

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  2. To be honest, I don’t recall that I ever have. This may be partly due to failing memory, but I’ve just never been a trend setter. Guess I don’t care enough about what other people think of me.

    Through a former employer, however, our household was among the first to have a Macintosh 512k computer. We still have it – although it has been relegated to our computer museum in the attic!

    Last week the battery in my watch ran out of juice. I opted to replace it for $10.96 and passed on the opportunity to upgrade to an Apple Watch. Knowing how much trouble we have keeping the various clocks we already own in sync and reasonably accurate, I don’t know that an Apple Watch would improve my ability to know what time it is. Besides, I’m retired; most of the time I don’t really care what time it is.

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  3. My last (only?) rush for a new product was for a Mac 512.

    On another topic, is it possible that an e-Sherpa is possible? It could have it’s own electrical generating plant on an extension of the rear bumper and space where the gas tank now is for a coal bin. And giant electric motors are already available.

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    2. Yes, Ken and tim, you’re on to something here. And just for fun, let’s add fracking to it somehow.

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      1. Since fracking rigs are not easily portable when working, maybe Sherpa could sponsor a fracking site hosting program, like the campground hosting programs run by the state parks, US Forest Service, and the US Park Service. Come, park your Sherpa at a fracking site and greet the workers and offer them treats at coffee break time (and maybe lots of beer after work).

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      2. We can do the Sherpa frack farm modeled after the ant farms of old set up card table chairs and let people see why the fish die and the earth shifts and the land dies. Very educational.

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  4. Morning all. I suspect that Baboons as a rule don’t hurry out for the latest and greatest. I am almost an anti-consumer. Don’t get me wrong – I have plenty of stuff/crap, but none of it is (or was) the newest gadget on the block. I don’t sit out overnight to get anything and like MiG and PJ, can’t remember ever waiting breathlessly for anything to hit the marketplace.

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    1. Didn’t you have the dancing flowers at your Christmas bash? I am pretty sure those were the latest in dancing flower technology.

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      1. Well, the dancing flowers were in my house, but I didn’t wrap bring them or end up with them. The flowers are still alive and dancing at Alan’s house – they were going strong this past Easter!

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  5. I want to get the new iPhone 16 or something whe one of the new ones came out
    My phones were fried and it was time to replace then and I had to wait a month or so waiting while I limped along with children’s phone that had alternative way to do everything from dial to text. I would look at it and say how did you do that and shake my head that’s when I realized that the geek part of techno life has been implanted into the kids by age 5 we got the phones for 3 or 4 of them and the back log made the non intent replacements wait. After a month I went in and raised hell and got phones that had reoccurring problems for the life of the interaction 2 years.
    I like the gizmos it’s the service people that drive me nuts. But I did have an excellent experience at the apple store in uptown last week. Thanks to mike and the manager for going above and beyond the call of duty. Broken screen fell in the bathtub the battery wouldn’t hold a charge and the downloads couldn’t be done because I couldn’t upload and delete the stuff already on there…… Whoops techno talk aain

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    2. Just last week, I bought a Iphone 6. I’d never even held a smart phone before and limped along for a decade on my flip top cell phone. Because it was an “upgrade” (any phone after 2 years), I got this $800 phone for only $117! The learning curve is agonizing, but I instituted a deadline for learning to use it by cutting off my land line the following week. Otherwise, any alternative would have seen me ignoring the new piece of tech.

      Last night with my grand kids, I was whining about how hard it is to adapt to new technology. They told me that’s because “Older folks have much more difficulty because young folks have grown up with it”. Then, a most perceptive comment came out of one of them: “We’d have a really difficult time, too, if we were suddenly cast back to the 50s”

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  6. “Be not the first by whom the new are tried, Nor yet the last to lay the old aside.” Alexander Pope “Essay on Criticism”

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    1. This is exactly what my father said when I pressed him to buy a newfangled color TV in 1965. He didn’t want to be among the first to own one. It took a few years of pleading before we were able to watch shows like this.

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      1. Wonderful World of Disney was a Sunday night staple at my house when I was growing up. Followed by Bonanza and then Mission Impossible!

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    2. I was the first to try new educational concepts,receiving heavy criticism from several colleagues, mostly the old social studies/shop teacher/coaches crowd. My fine colleague Winston would quote this. He was a good teacher and followed this quote. I would tell him that the quote obviated itself. If everyone followed it, there would be no “New.” The world needs us lunatic fringe.

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  7. I haven’t worn a watch for 40 years. Watches bug me. We rarely get new gizmos. I like to wait to see how well they will work before we invest.

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    1. I cannot wear a watch either. Tight things, like waytches, bother me too, can even cause a rash. It’s an FM thing. Had to give up wearing my wedding ring because psoriatic arthritis is misshaping my fingers and it just bugged me.

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    2. I quit wearing a watch a couple of years ago. There are so many other gadgets that tell time these days (car, pc, phone, wall of my office), it seemed a little overkill. So I tried leaving it off for a few days and never went back.

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        1. I can think of two other places, Clyde. Casinos are famous for not having clocks. They feel it is against their interests if customers are aware of passing time. And I was surprised to learn that hospitals (or at least the ones I know) don’t have visible clocks in areas where friends and family members hang out, although there will be clocks at the nurses’ stations.

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  8. I am drawn to all new things and ideas. Ideas I will explain under the quote I posted. Things, not all new things but new tools, new gizmos, new engineering concepts. But for my good fortune, and reduction of both joy and regret, I am also very pragmatic and have never had money to throw away.
    I was trying to only now get onboard the bluetooth concept. My wish is to have speakers in the living room behind the chair where Sandy sits much of the day reading. I ordered the bluetooth USB port antenna and a bluetooth set of speakers. Speakers came broken, plastic legs to hold up two of the speakers-stupid design. So ignored that and went tot he electronics. Both were working fine, but the two bluetooth parts could not find each other only three feet apart through a wood stud wall. Got the ipad to find it from four feet away in the same room. Turns out one speaker did not work. Sent the speakers back to Amazon. (Amazon deserves criticism, but on refunds and returns they are a class act.)
    Am now learning that there may be just too many signals around for bluetooth to work here.
    I want the bluetooth so there are no issues about having to deal with CDs or tuners. It could just do playlists or Internet radio off my computer. Sandra loves a radio station I found for her Lutheran soul–Lutheran Public radio that plays hhyms and the like most of the time.

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    1. I have a Bose sound link that plays whatever I am streaming off my phone using bluetooth. I got it at the Verizon store. It is small and has a huge sound and works really well.

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      1. I cannot afford a Bose System. They are excellent but beyond my comfort range for money. Also, I do not have that good an ear, never did. Sandy wears very expensive hearing aids, amazing things, worth the $5000. But she does not have the acuity for music she once had. I could be using the hearing ads, but $5000 is not going to happen We paid for hers from the small inheritance we got from an aunt of mine.
        A techie explained to me all the things in my house that could interfere with bluetooth, like a wireless phone system. wireless mouse, and the almost 20 networks that my Ipad can find in this apartment building, with many high-tech driven young people.
        I got our Ipad to facetime with our CA grandson, but I love it–books, movies, jigsaw puzzles.
        I wonder about my grandson and his age level. At first he would look on the back of the Ipad to try to find us back there. He was doing this at less than a year, which I think would be typical. Now nearing two he accepts us as people on a screen. Talks to us, tries to kiss us on the screen. He will be here in two months. Will he recognize us? How does and will he think of us when he sees for real?

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        1. I accidentally opened “Photo booth” on my Mac last year and was mortified by my own face. I vowed never to face time on any device again! Now then, I obviously look like I look to every one around me, but I don’t look like that face I saw on the inside.

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        2. FaceTime teaches you to accept truth.
          But what a boon it is for distant grandparents.
          Our son only wants to show him at his best, but we want to see his bratty moments, too.

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        3. There is something weird about how that iPad camera sees my face.
          It deepens shadows, adds wrinkles, and tops it off with a hint of desperation.

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    2. I don’t mind new technologies – at work I am usually the first one to volunteer to try a new program or process. Probably how I ended up in charge of several “technology” things in my division. At home a gadget has to prove it’s usefulness first!

      Cell phones were already very popular by the time I finally got one. I just didn’t feel the need for it. Then late one cold winter night, Baby and I were coming home from Coon Rapids; we passed a car w/ it’s hazard lights blinking on the side of the road. Nobody was in the car and I suddenly thought “What if that were me with a flat tire late at night in the cold and dark?” I got a cell phone the next day. I still don’t use my phone much (especially compared to Young Adult) but when I need it, I have it.

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  9. I’m a pretty anti-hype person. I think it goes with being a card-carrying cynic. Waiting to pull the trigger on some things has cost me in the past. But I also tend to avoid getting taken on bad purchases too.

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  10. Until recently I just giggled at the notion that computers would take over control of the world. It seemed a bit of sci-fi paranoia. I was jolted, though, to read recently that many of the greater minds of our times are terrified that ai and information sharing by our machines will end with machines dominating mankind.

    Then I read that smart machines are already muttering to each other about what we do, sharing information that allows others to get a pattern on us that can be exploited to control us. Smart thermostats are already noticing when we are at home or away, smart phones understand their owners in many deep ways, smart TVs already can tell what we watch or don’t watch and smart watches know us so intimately that we’d blush to learn what they watch us do.

    Suddenly I have a whole new set of things to worry about. Suddenly I am determined to buy “stupid” products that do a simple job without becoming spies on my life. Suddenly I am thrilled that my telephone is not whispering about my intimate life to my refrigerator or to Comcast or to anyone. As stupid as I am–a big topic, but not one for here–I am smarter than my appliances. My watch barely knows one thing (what time it is), not when I go to the bathroom, and I’m determined to keep it that way.

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    1. nah, they are still just algorithmic idiots.

      Back when we tried to foster a dog and I was googling for ideas on how to not lose my mind with a beagle/bassett puppy with no manners, the internet suddenly started marketting new baby products to me.

      and our all time favorite, when the s&h needs to order new blades, the internet suddenly starts marketting chain link, privacy and picket type items to us. It’s right up there with the uber-conservative stuff I get on the screen after I have checked out the latest whack-doodle bit of “news”. Sell me something useful, like maybe a tin-foil hat.

      and no matter how many ways I try to make it clear that I do not even see the ads they litter my screen with, they still waste their precious dollars trying to sell me stuff that only irritates me by slowing the computer down, thereby burning into my mind which goods and services I will not be spending the hard-earned on.

      Oh yeah, and I still can pull the plug.

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      1. Including the ads on the trail which are becoming increasingly intrusive. I hate those moving images! Probably suffering from “old fart syndrome.”

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  11. Good morning. I am generally slow at getting new technology. I was fairly early at buying a computer and had one in the “old” days s when they were much slower and not as easy to operate. Currently I will very occasionally buy a book I want as soon as it is available.

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    2. OK, you’re right on this. But I bet all of us ran out and bought them not because they were the newest fangled product on the market but because we couldn’t bear the thought of no Dale every morning!!

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      1. I didn’t, I listened via my computer. But the writing was clearly on the wall. The Current’s programming was – deliberate or not – seeping into our beloved Morning Show. Every Morning Show listener that I knew at the time, saw it’s demise coming.

        With regard to Bill Kling, am I the only baboon who gives him credit for his very capable stewardship of MPR for a very long time – despite what he ended up doing to TLGMS and Dale’s career? It’s one of those damned-if-you-do, and damned-if-you-don’t situations.

        I don’t listen to The Current – never liked it, too damned noisy – but clearly that was a very smart business decision in order to attract younger listeners and new supporters of MPR, a strategy that has obviously paid off.

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        1. I listen to a little of the Current sometimes. I catch Bill DeVille when I can. He’s pretty good. When the service was launched, though, they implied that they were going to be playing an eclectic mix including a lot of old stuff like Ray Charles and Aretha Franklin and Hank Williams. They seemed to be aiming for the audience that Rev 105 served with shows like Shakin’ Street and Kevin Cole’s show. The reality has been much different, in my opinion. The Current seldom plays anything over two years old and the focus is very narrow. It mostly bores me to tears.

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        2. I would love to see the numbers as to how much the college kids are contributing. Listening numbers are measurable but are they contributing to the mpr wallet or just making it look like the listeners are there?
          Bill Klingon didn’t like had because it wasn’t measurable and the shows could be great but who cares if you can’t tell if anyone is listening. Analytic geek he is he had no time for dales show if the best 24/7 jukebox on the planet is all that was achieved. He required numbers to be tracked. An illness that made mpr a growing entity but missed the beauty along the way. There are uses for bill Kling. Making wonderful radio shows isn’t in the matrix of how to for him making measurable followings is. Bless his pin head

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  13. I don’t reject new technology out-if-hand, but it seems like all the latest and greatest incarnations are extremely expensive and “buggy”.

    If someone wants me to be the test market, they are going to have to pay me, not the other way around. Besides not having that kind of dosh, I’m just not that much of an enthusist. That kind of thing takes more time and passion for the widget than I can find.

    I love the portability of my smartphone, but cannot think why strapping it on my wrist or wearing it on my face would be a plus.

    I leave my glasses laying around and have my hands in way too much stuff an iWatch would not like.

    Happily do not seem to lose the phone.

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  14. I have an honest to God anxiety disorder around ANY new tech device, and each time I try again, my certainty that I’ll be unable to master it adds to the last time and all the other times before it.

    I got a GPS; it’s still sitting in its box 6 years later. I got a new router and paid 3X normal because the rep insisted that a first grader could easily hook it up; it took five hours on the phone with three techs. I got a simple sound bar which had only 2 receptacles for two prongs; after three hours and no success, they suggested I should exchange the damn thing. My grandson walked in and immediately hooked the prongs into the cable box – it worked! I recently got a new printer; four hours with four different techs; it didn’t work so they sent me a new one. Again, three hours with techs to get it to work.

    By the umpteenth time of efforts to join the 21st century, I wound up cussing and crying to the unfortunate final tech. I’m scared to death that my new iphone will quit working, leaving me functionally cut off from the whole world and having to go to a pay phone (do they even have those anymore???). That’s why I kept my land line all these years as an emergency back up. Having two kinds of phones to use made me secure; now I’ve lost that security, all to save a mere $20/month.

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  15. There was a story on NPR this morning about “robots” moving into the service sector and there was a chain restaurant using tech to serve more customers with fewer wait staff.

    They mentioned customers being amused and kidding that soon no waitstaff would be needed at all, the food would just come out on a conveyer belt.

    My thought was that these must be urbanites. Livestock have been fed that way for years.

    And seriously, isn’t most of the experience of going to the Cafe Boeuf putting up with Maurice, the waiter?

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      1. Well, I tend to not frequent places where the wait staff detracts from my dining experience. Any place that involves automated food delivery will be a step below a drive-through window on my Michelin Star rating service ;).

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  16. I used to work in an office with a Mac network. Always loved getting the latest upgrade and trying it out. Each new Mac looked more stylish and performed ever more amazing feats. I only use the latest technology, though, if someone else pays for me to use it. Otherwise I will buy the 5-year-old used Mac to have at home, and use a vintage paper map in the car.

    Many years ago, I had a pager for purposes of being in touch with my workplace. Do they even make those anymore? They seem rather quaint now.

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