The winners of this season's The Amazing Race know where to go when they need help … an iPhone. Brent Ridge and Josh Kilmer-Purcell were minutes away from winning the show and knew it. They needed help, and they needed it now. What did they do? They took to the streets shouting, asking if anyone had an iPhone.
Josh and Brent, known on the show as The Beekman Boys because of their farm and business, were underdogs the entire race, usually coming in last in every leg, if not close to last, yet somehow found a way to make it into the final three. They picked it up when they needed to and were the first team to finish the last task.
The team needed to get to Gotham Hall in New York City. If they were the first to arrive, they'd win a million dollars. While they're New Yorkers themselves, they either didn't know where Gotham Hall was or didn't know how to get there from the United Nations building where they were.
This is what led Josh and Brent to stand in the streets shouting and asking if anyone had an iPhone. They found the location and directions they needed and were the first team to arrive at the finish line, winning season 21. Truth be told, a closeup of them finding the directions shows that it wasn't an iPhone that gave them their directions and instead was another unknown cell phone.
Regardless, Josh and Brent knew what they needed when they needed quick, accurate information in a hurry. They needed an iPhone. This was of course filmed before the Maps app snafu. I'm not sure if anyone would be trusting the Maps app right now if a million dollars was riding on it. But hopefully with the promised adjustments to the app, it will soon be just as trusted as the Google Maps app was.
It also shows how much technology is changing our lives. When the couple needed this quick information, their first thought wasn't to find directions at a gas station or get out the city map from the glovebox. Their first thought was to look it up on an iPhone, something that wasn't an option in many of the places around the world that they raced.
