Help! Is there an iPhone owner on the bus?

Yet again the iPhone saves the day.

Did you read about the rather embarrassing farce that occurred with teams arriving for the Olympics today?

The US and Australian teams were unlucky enough to be picked up by bus drivers who didn’t quite know where they were going, or how to work their sat-nav devices… Gahhh!

Here’s what transpired:

The driver of the Australians’ bus admitted that he had never driven the route before and did not know how to work the vehicle’s satellite navigation.

As a result, he gave his passengers a roundabout tour of the capital, taking in Buckingham Palace and West Ham, until one Australian provided directions from a map on his mobile phone.

The Telegraph post goes on to explain that the mobile phone in question was an iPhone:

“One of the doctors on board got it working for him, but then the Olympic Village hadn’t been loaded into the system and everyone was trying to find the name of the street that the village was in. In the end another physio got out his iPhone and gave directions to the bus driver via his phone.”

Not a Smartphone. An iPhone.

I wonder if the Australian had brought out a Samsung Android phone if the person would have described the handset as ‘an Android phone’? Probably not.

Isn’t it fantastic that this technology has become so ubiquitous? And so accessible that a chap roaming from Australia (no doubt paying stupid data rates) can arrive off the plane and augment the bus driver’s transport deficiency with a few clicks?

Still. I hope the rest of the 200-odd teams arriving this week don’t have a similar experience…