While wandering through the IBM Dealers Room, I made eye contact with a dealer selling a few magic apps. He asked me if I had seen them. I said no and, in retrospect, should have said that I don’t like app magic.
He proceeded to go through his pitch, asking me to do one thing or another, demonstrating each app’s magic capabilities. I was polite, went along with the instructions and feigning interest in his wares with an occasional “huh” and “I’ll be darned.” I kept waiting for him to take a breath so that I could thank him and excuse myself, but that never happened until he finally ran out of pitch.
As a spectator, I felt trapped and now upon reflection, wonder if this is how some people feel when confronted by a magician who’s not picking up on clues?
My problem with app magic is that the vast majority of apps I have seen scream “it’s an app!” Any participant who isn’t being filmed for a magic trailer will know it’s not you doing the magic, it’s your phone. This is not what I want.
There’s the issue of reliability – whether the app will be supported long term or whether an operating system update will wipe out its usefulness.
Magic apps may appeal to some magicians but they’re not for me.
“But I find particularly with mentalism, everything sort of has moved towards electronics, which I mean, they’re fun, but they’re not of any practical use to someone that’s a touring performer because of a reliability, but also you want to take responsibility for your own miracles and you want to be able to move fluidly when things go wrong and not just be at the mercy of those things.” – Derren Brown, Penguin Magic Podcast, Jul 25, 2024
Side note: Early in his pitch, I was asked to launch the browser on my phone and search for a specific google site. I did but it didn’t show up. Looking at my phone, the dealer said, “Oh, you use Duck Duck Go. You need to use Google.” It felt like the trick failing was my fault for using a different search engine. I should have excused myself at that point.
