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No, Apple, phones can't solve all parenting problems

Thai phone provider DTAC shows that sometimes you can't use your phone to stop a kid crying. Sometimes, you just have to be human.

Chris Matyszczyk

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The phone can't solve this? What to do? MakaStory/YouTube screenshot by Chris Matyszczyk/CNET

Your fifth limb isn't as useful as Apple would have you think.

I know, I know, it seems as if you're lost without your little hand-held helper. It does have its limits, though. It's just a machine.

Which, in the current constitution of genetic formulation, still doesn't make it human.

Lately, though, Apple has been suggesting that your iPhone is deeply indispensable. You need it to create your meaning of life. You need it to not get fat. And in its latest self-serving public service message, you need it to make parenting easier.

Along comes Thai phone provider DTAC to say: "Oh, come on. Get a life."

Instead of peddling the notion that you're not human without your phone, it offers the opposite: there are times when technology is useless.

In this new DTAC ad, we see a father desperately trying to calm his weeping baby. Mom is out shopping. Dad is incompetent.

She suggests he tries to show baby a cartoon on his phone and then even mom's face from far away by a FaceTime equivalent.

Nothing works. Baby wails.

What do you do when your phone can't help you? Why, you try something far more scary: human contact.

There's something refreshing about a technology company actually admitting: "Technology will never replace love."

It's almost as radical as the idea that you can have a nice day out in nature without having to take a hundred pictures on your iPhone.