Erik MH:

Hey, Siri! Pause!

“Hey, Siri! Pause!” I called, beladen as I was with a dish tray, an iPad, my cased Air­Pods, socks, and oth­er paraphernalia as I tried to nego­ti­ate the screen- and French- doors from our deck into the liv­ing room. (Yes, Dr. F., car­ry­ing far less than 10 pounds!)

On the iPhone in my shirt pock­et, the ball game paused. Then it resumed.

“Hey, Siri! Pause!”

The ball game paused, and then resumed.

Hav­ing entered, I closed the screen and French doors as I took my garden­ing shoes off using my feet.

“Hey, Siri! Pause!”

On the iPhone in my shirt pock­et, the ball game paused, and dimly from the HomePods at the oth­er end of the room I heard her respond:

There’s noth­ing play­ing here.

In my pock­et, the ball game resumed.

I risked a look down at my Apple Watch. As I sus­pec­ted, it says “Red Sox @ Blue Jays,” and there’s a nice pause but­ton centered at the bot­tom. Sigh. I hoped the game was dis­turb­ing Kanie.

I left the liv­ing room with my dishes and socks and entered the kitchen.

“Hey, Siri! Pause!”

On the iPhone in my shirt pock­et, the ball game paused, and dimly from the HomePods back in the oth­er room I heard her respond:

There’s noth­ing play­ing here.

In my pock­et, the ball game resumed.

I walked to the sink and placed my dishes on the counter. I crossed the room and depos­ited my meds tin on the oppos­ite counter. Now bear­ing only my iPad and socks, I con­tin­ued into the playroom.

“Hey, Siri! Pause!”

On the iPhone in my shirt pock­et, the ball game paused, and dimly from the HomePods back in the kit­chen I heard her respond:

There’s noth­ing play­ing here.

In my pock­et, the ball game resumed.

Leav­ing my socks at the base of the stairs for later depos­it­ing in the laun­dry, I walked into my study and placed my iPad on the counter next to my Mac.

“Hey, Siri! Pause!”

On the iPhone in my shirt pock­et, the ball game paused. On my iPad, I see Siri’s icon and my tran­scribed instructions.

In my pock­et, the ball game remained paused.

With a sigh of relief and a shake of my head, I sat down at my com­puter to write this post.

It’s almost enough to make you give up baseball.

Addendum

When I come to the pas­sage about the Apple Watch, I look down again at my watch to see that I was describ­ing the situ­ation prop­erly. No ball game. Fair enough, I’d paused it a full three or four minutes earlier.

So I look at my iPhone. No “Now Play­ing” wid­get on the lock screen. Funny.

I unlock the iPhone. The MLB app is no longer show­ing the Sox game in Gameday Audio. In fact, it’s at their land­ing page.

I bring up Gameday. It’s dis­play­ing today’s games, which haven’t yet begun. Since I was just in the hos­pit­al, I’m a couple of days behind, so I nav­ig­ate back to the prop­er date . They used to list the Red Sox (my only favor­ited team in the MLB app) games at the top of each day’s list. Not this year. I find the Sox game, tap on it.

It begins at the begin­ning of the game, not in the bot­tom of the 7^th. And they’re play­ing me the opponent’s stream, not Joe Cas­tigli­one and Will Flem­ming on the Shaw’s and Star Mar­ket WEEI Red Sox Radio Network.

I tap on WEEI and press play. It (lit­er­ally) counts to four and starts play­ing. (In pre­vi­ous years, it just star­ted without count­ing up. Not this year.)

I scrub the play­head off to the right, try­ing to guess where the 7^th inning is, without sub­ject­ing myself to too much repe­ti­tion or — worse! — spoil­ers!.

Noth­ing. It keeps playing.

I scrub the play­head off to the right, try­ing to guess where the 7^th inning is, without sub­ject­ing myself to too much repe­ti­tion or — worse! — spoil­ers!.

Noth­ing. It keeps playing.

I scrub the play­head off to the right, try­ing to guess where the 7^th inning is, without sub­ject­ing myself to too much repe­ti­tion or — worse! — spoil­ers!.

Noth­ing. It keeps playing.

I scrub the play­head off to the right, try­ing to guess where the 7^th inning is, without sub­ject­ing myself to too much repe­ti­tion or — worse! — spoil­ers!.

It works.

When I inten­tion­ally pause a game, I try to make a note of the hours/​minutes/​seconds so that I can get back to the same spot in case the app loses track of my place, which it nev­er used to do. But it does this year.

But it doesn’t actu­ally help much to know the num­bers, since they don’t update when you scrub: you have to let go of the play­head to see where you are.

I’m in the fifth inning.

I scrub the play­head off to the right, try­ing to guess where the 7^th inning is, without sub­ject­ing myself to too much repe­ti­tion or — worse! — spoil­ers!.

Noth­ing. It keeps playing.

I scrub the play­head off to the right, try­ing to guess where the 7^th inning is, without sub­ject­ing myself to too much repe­ti­tion or — worse! — spoil­ers!.

It works.

Ads.

Since the app’s skip-for­ward and skip-back­ward con­trols will only go 10 seconds at a time (and since they’re now stuff­ing more than two minutes of ads into even the 60-second pitch­er changes), I usu­ally go to the phone’s lock screen, where the same con­trols magic­ally go 30 seconds instead.

I back out to the lock screen.

No con­trols in the wid­get. No title or icon, either — just an enabled “pause” but­ton, and everything else is disabled/​grayed out. Sigh.

In my hands, the Kars4Kids jingle begins.

It’s almost enough to make you give up baseball.

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  2024-06-30