A tale of two devices…

Last week, I had the opportunity to interview designer Michael Kors about his eyewear collection, luxury, and the joys of Internet shopping for my day job. Chances like that don’t come up every day, and I was nervous about testing my shorthand speed in that situation.

Instead, I ran out to Staples and picked up the latest in digital recorders, tested it out, and prepared my questions. The night before, I was playing with my iPhone and its Voice Memo recorder. Tried a couple of brief interviews with the pets (very non-responsive) and recorded the TV for about 20 minutes at various distances. Being the paranoid former Girl Scout that I am, the iPhone seemed like a good backup.

Although he was a little surprised to see two recorders, Kors did say it was a good decision because he was a fast talker. The interview went very well. What initially was supposed to be a 30-minute sitdown stretched to almost an hour and Mr. Kors was happy to share his thoughts on Project Runway, his latest collection, and this darn economy in speedy, savvy, New Yorker’s voice that would have tilted out my speedwriting skills.

The next morning, it was time to work on the story. Press play on the digital recorder…nothing. Go through its files. No observations. No pithy insights. No Michael Kors.

Panic.

Thank goodness for the iPhone. The Voice Memo function worked like a charm for over 55 minutes and the interview in its entirety is stored safely on the phone. Guess which of the recording devices will be returned to the store tomorrow?

One disappointment on the iPhone: the file was too large to email to my computer. There’s an option to send a portion of the memo, but am nervous about doing any editing since it’s now my only version of the interview.  So now all I need to do is figure out how to get the file over to my Mac!

Any thoughts on downloading a huge memo to a MacBook Pro from the iPhone?