When Barack Obama first made his run at the United States presidency way back in 2008, much fuss was made about how this politician was so cool, he used a BlackBerry.
Seems laughable now, doesn’t it? Yet at the time, Obama was considered so technologically hip for using a BlackBerry that he once laughingly said that if the Secret Service wanted to take it from him, they’d have to pry it from his hands.
Flash forward five years, and President Obama’s BlackBerry doesn’t seem so cool anymore. In fact, it seems ridiculous. So why isn’t he using an iPhone?
During a speech yesterday promoting Obamacare to a youth audience attending a White House summit, Obama meekly admitted that his days ordering the Secret Service and other national security agencies that watch over his safety to get with the tech times or else are over now.
“I’m not allowed for security reasons to have an iPhone,” he admitted.
It’s honestly pretty absurd. Here Obama is, communicating by e-mail on a BlackBerry, a device made by Canadians for god’s sake. Early in his presidency, when he had political capital to burn, Obama went head-to-head with the National Security Administration to make sure they let him use it for his job. Unfortunately, what that meant is he had no political capital left to make the switch to the American-made iPhone when BlackBerry became an obsolete joke.
It’s not all bad for Obama, though. He is allowed to own both an iPad and a MacBook.
