Is There An App For The Inept?

In-appt: /i’ napt – having or showing no patience with technology.

There are, as far as I can determine, something over two million apps one can download onto one’s phone. Google says one thing, Apple says another – but there are a LOT of apps out there. I know people who seem to have most of them. I have sixteen. Most of the ones I have were installed by the Apple people and thus may not be un-installed (so I just let them sit there and entertain each other.)

I actually use a couple of apps. My Routesy app, for example, can magically, immediately determine exactly where I am standing in downtown San Francisco, and tell me how soon the #2 Clement or the #3 Jackson outbound will be arriving. Or where’s the closest BART station and when the next train to El Cerrito will be departing. I love the Routesy people. Because I choose to believe that somewhere, somehow, there are real people who sit around programming my Routesy app to the most intimate degrees. I also occasionally use my Maps app. But the time it was telling me to turn left onto Laguna in 400 feet, and my Apple Watch buzzed my wrist when I got to Laguna – that was a bit much. I mean, who told my watch? I find this almost as spooky as the occasional Dick Tracy-type conversations I have with my wrist because I can’t reach my cellphone.

My question is: who is the App Director of the Universe? And with more than two million of them out there, why hasn’t she created any app for me?

Here are the only apps I would ever need, please:

The Find-It App. It wouldn’t actually have to find stuff. It would just cause the designated item to beep until I got there. The item which has vanished: book, keys, wallet, checkbook – all those things I would like to find. I don’t need that Find-My-Phone thing; I’m sitting here holding the phone, for heaven’s sake, with all these superfluous apps staring at me.

The Cancel-It App. It would quietly reach out to everyone scheduled to attend that meeting, webinar, Zoom conference or other tedious event on my calendar and inform everyone of its cancellation. If something were really important it could be re-scheduled for next week, but my guess is 90% of the time nobody would notice.

The Stifle App (named in honor of Archie Bunker. If you’re too young to know who Archie Bunker is you don’t need this app anyway; you are inured to excess ambient noise. This app would infiltrate all news channels and stifle every politician who adversely affects my blood pressure. Thus I could still check what’s going on – I balance my PBS/MSNBC intake with occasional Fox News programs in a generally vain attempt to understand my country and my fellow citizens – without putting my health at risk.

This is all I’m asking. You can keep the whole two million apps (minus Routesy and Maps) if I could just have those three. Is this asking too much?