Newborn Baby App — Buyer Beware!

They first hook you in with how cute they are. And they are cute, do not get me wrong. I'm not, nor have I ever been, fundamentally against babies—until now. As the first reviewer of this oh-so-wonderful app, my intention is not to denigrate other couples that choose to go down this route, but I just want to make sure that if this is you, if you are considering buying this app—and it is not cheap!—then you absolutely must understand the full extent of what that means. I also want to make it clear that, to be fair, if this site allowed half-ratings, I would give it a 1.5, and not strictly a 1, but basically this is what happened.

I got the baby app (Newborn 101), and it pooped in my phone. When I took the phone back to the manufacturer for repair (I was still under warranty), they asked me if I had done anything to tamper with the phone. 

“Like what do you mean?”

“Did you yourself shit into this phone?”

“For what reason would I do that?”

“I don't know, like maybe for a practical joke?”

“No, I did not shit into my phone. I got the new baby app, this is what I'm telling you, and as soon as I downloaded it, it screamed once and crapped, I kid you not.”

When I returned later, they said that they could not help me. The customer service fellow in blue polo shirt said that when the service department opened it up to start working on my phone, the smell was not only like poop, which could have been endurable, as at least something on the continuum of what they might have experienced smelling once or twice in their lifetimes. But it was frankly more like poop mixed with throw-up and the rotten carcasses of a thousand rats at the height of decomposition.

“Come on,” I said. “Nothing can smell that bad.”

“Seriously,” he said. “If you could imagine what I just explained to you as a smell, then you might approximate the point-oh-oh-oh-oh one percent of the actual terribleness of this Newborn 101 stuff.”

“Oh-oh,” I said.

“Not funny,” he said.

“Sorry,” I said.

“Two of the technicians had to go home with migraines. It was that toxic, possibly carcinogenic.”

“But what can be done?”

“What can be done? This is the question. You're the one who bought it, and now you've got to clean it up.”