Editing faster on smartphones and tablets than computers
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Chapter 12 - Servant of God Jeffery Preston Besos
THE STORY OF DEL - Delete
Chances are that if the motor had been running on fossil fuels, he might've heard something, turned, and seen it coming. But the damned car made about as much noise as a junkyard refrigerator.
It wasn’t fair! Un-doodoo! The impact on Del's body was catastrophic, like a meteor landing on a bag of potato chips. The only three parts of him miraculously left unscathed were his hands, eyes and iPhone.
For long months, the beeps on the life support systems attached to his splintered remains would abruptly flat-line and issue jarring acoustic alarms that had medics, nurses, and organ harvesters scrambling to his bedside.
But each time, with a rattle and a moan that stubborn clump of cells called Del would pull through. Father Oregano, who ran the hospital's Catholic chapel, was already calling it a miracle.
The only problem was finding the holy person responsible for Del's prodigious survival. What happens when major miracles - obvious miracles - take place, but are left unclaimed and/or unattributed? Father Oregano was granted permission to search through Del's personal effects for clues to the still anonymous benefactor and was pleased no end when he found the name of a certain Jeffery Preston Bezos who had promised to look after Del's future and cover all contingencies.
The good priest duly took note and sent the information to the Vatican Congregation for the Causes of Saints. 'Servant of God Jeff Bezos' had a nice ring to it!
THE STORY OF DEL - Delete Once upon a half-life ago, there was a guy called Del. That was his nickname, short for Delete. And he was a reliable, hard-working key on most of the world's computers. A straight-forward and regular sort of guy, he was never more prominent than any of the letters he had been charged to kill, no fatter than an 'i', no skinnier than a capital 'W' - unlike Backspace who was super-sized and flaunted a Nike-style arrow pointing hard-left ←. Some hardware companies, like Lord Macintosh, had refused Del right from the get-go, preferring to farm out his tasks to a combination of other workers like 'Function-Delete,' with 'Delete' on Sir Mac actually being Backspace ←. But then one day, for Del - the original Del - things took a bad turn, real bad! And it happened at the speed of a toilet flush vortex! Millions upon BILLIONS of small handheld flatscreen devices suddenly began to spill from the heavens - the 'STPs' - smartph...
THE STORY OF DEL - Delete "Hi Del, how are you feeling today?" "Still kicking, Juula." "Where were we?" "You were talking about the 4 main reasons for bothering to select text, which on handhelds, is mostly done by dragging mini-handles - a real bummer." "Right. For writers and scribes, it represents the biggest design fail of all times. Sadly foisted on humanity by the greatest design genius of all times." Minihandles! - Yecch! "All right, let's focus on deletion. Remember this?" Merry splinter Kleenex guardrail whippersnapper tear Boeing shoebox Christmas "Yes." In the preparatory "selection" phase, before effectuating the obvious deletion, it becomes this:" Merry splinter Kleenex guardrail whippersnapper tear Boeing shoebox →Christmas "What do you notice?! "For deletion, the only text I'm interested in is the one just beyond the end of the selected words!...
THE STORY OF DEL - Delete " Buongiorno Del! Come va ?" " Bene bellezza, mia . What do you have for me today?" "We're gonna reason a few things through regarding text editing on handhelds." "For instance? "Well, when discussing anything, it's always a good idea to provide some givens. For example:" 1) Compared to the ease of selection on regular computers, with their big physical keyboards, mice, shift-arrows and function keys, highlighting text on the flat screens (phones, tablets and phablets) is torture. "Definitely! But the problem is the handhelds are basically content-retrieval systems." "Maybe they are now, but they don't have to be. No, it's entirely a matter of poor design. Excuse the vulgarity, but piss-poor design!" "I have good reason to believe you, mi amor!" "The second given:" 2) When editing, the writing part can happen at the variable speeds of ins...
It wasn’t fair! Un-doodoo! The impact on Del's body was catastrophic, like a meteor landing on a bag of potato chips. The only three parts of him miraculously left unscathed were his hands, eyes and iPhone. 
For long months, the beeps on the life support systems attached to his splintered remains would abruptly flat-line and issue jarring acoustic alarms that had medics, nurses, and organ harvesters scrambling to his bedside.But each time, with a rattle and a moan that stubborn clump of cells called Del would pull through. Father Oregano, who ran the hospital's Catholic chapel, was already calling it a miracle.
The only problem was finding the holy person responsible for Del's prodigious survival. What happens when major miracles - obvious miracles - take place, but are left unclaimed and/or unattributed? Father Oregano was granted permission to search through Del's personal effects for clues to the still anonymous benefactor and was pleased no end when he found the name of a certain Jeffery Preston Bezos who had promised to look after Del's future and cover all contingencies. The good priest duly took note and sent the information to the Vatican Congregation for the Causes of Saints. 'Servant of God Jeff Bezos' had a nice ring to it! 
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