Quite a few of my friends have bought iPhones. I don’t deny that they’re a great product. Touch screen contextual interfaces are definitely the future. The inclusion of an accelerometer and GPS was genious, potentially allowing so many awesome applications and new ways of interacting with devices and information.
I will not buy an iPhone. It isn’t the price. Sure they’re expensive, but the price will drop as soon as more companies start making devices with similar functionality and the price of the parts drop accordingly. Just look how cheap flash memory is these days :O
These are the reasons I won’t buy an iPhone:
1) There was a time when Apple products were geeky. They were niche. People bought them for their looks, sure, but also for their quirkiness, their hardware, their excellent applications, and their exclusivity. Some of these properties still apply today. More often however, I think most people buy them because people think they are cool. I’d hate to be associated with the Apple fanboys/girls, Apple’s devout followers who flame anyone who offers the slightest criticism towards the corporation they love. You know who I’m talking about, you probably know several. By buying Apple you become one of them, you become the stereotype.
2) Apple’s a dodgy company. Earlier this year it was revealed that Apple wants to lower the amount of cash music artists receive for digital downloads to a paltry 4%. The artists - you know, the people who actually create the product that everyone else is making the cash from? ‘Nuff said.
3) It isn’t cool. Apple has managed to fuse form with function to create something that’s relatively easy to use, but which can do a lot of stuff. But it isn’t cool. Whipping out your iPhone to look something up in the middle of a conversation with friends isn’t cool. Using your iPhone to check whether you have new email at wherever you are isn’t cool. Using your iPhone in the company of other people gives them the impression that you can’t bear to be away from the comfort of the internet for more than five minutes at a time, and that you find your present company boring. I see it as being similar to opening up a novel and reading it while people around you are having a conversation - it’s rude.
Until do-it-all devices like the iPhone become small and unobtrusive enough that they are invisible to use, using them will always make you look like stupid or like you are being rude to people around you.
Hrm, I disagree - It’ll still be rude, it just won’t be noticeable. There’s a difference there.
As you’re well aware, I also hate iPhones, but for more reasons then you’ve mentioned.
For a start, lets look at the flash debacle.
The what, you might say?
Well, for several years now, many fucking annoying sites have been made using flash. The main reason for this is the same reason people using fucking PDF’s; the web doesn’t have real standards, and flash offers a way of forcing the content to look the same.
So people make entire websites using it.
Of course, in Linux, this is a challenge, but some very smart people have come up with flash players which get at least part of the functionality.
Back to the point; the iPhone doesn’t have flash. Not at all. Why? Because adobe own flash, and they don’t give a shit, and the only free flash player out there is open-source.
And Apple hates open source. In fact, Apple hates developers in general. Real developers do whatever the hell they like with your hardware. Apple likes control, not developers.
Like Number 2: The blacklist
Apple hates developers SO MUCH that with a tiny update to your iPhone, they can turn off applications you’ve installed. As in, applications you might have paid money for.
Fuck Apple.
I agree that it’s rude when people check stuff while talking to others, but when I’m talking to people, I find it hard to resist checking my phone if someone messages me, or answering my phone when someone calls me - and isn’t that the point of a mobile phone anyway?
I think there is a line. For instance, if my mum was calling to tell me that my sister is hurt and in hospital, that’s something I’d want to know right away, but if it was just a friend messaging me to say that they read an awesome book, that is something that can be dealt with later. I think the right thing to do is to politely excuse yourself for a moment, check that it isn’t urgent, and then return to conversation.
I’m not going to buy an iPhone though, because of Nick’s second reason, which I guess is linked to the Apple hates developers thing. I love that I can download different apps for my phone that other people have written, things that someone thought, “Hey, maybe this would be useful!” but that Sony doesn’t feel requires them to add it as a default application.
Conspicuous consumption…
It’s Christmas, no better time for shopping. Charging my iPod is starting to not work properly, which I think means the battery is starting to die. It still charges, but takes a long time, about a day, to fully charge. I’ve already replaced…