posted 2007/06/24 at 17:03
Even if commercials for it didn't seem to pop up everywhere in what little television I watch these days, all of the news stories and such make it nearly impossible for me not to be aware of the iPhone's upcoming launch this week. Even in the context of today's gadget-driven, early-adopter, multi-tasking culture where every new product with even the smallest feature its creators believe to be revolutionary is given a product launch with more fanfare than the Beatles' first United States appearances, this is one of the most colossal launches I think it would be possible to conceive. Only if Congress passed an act to make Friday a national "iPhone Launch Day" holiday could the release of the iPhone possibly be a bigger event than Apple, news outlets, and the mass media are making it out to be.
Now, I've mentioned repeatedly that I've never been that big a fan of Apple's products over the years. I went to primarily Apple-dominated schools over the years (both my private school and Antioch were, at the time I went to those places, Apple-exclusive), but we always had PCs at home. I've used Macs when I've needed to and even messed around with them when I didn't particularly need to -- Bowling Green State University's public-use computers are all iMacs -- and although I can certainly see how Macs are better at certain tasks, PCs have always been far more intuitive for me to use. It's not that I have a problem with Apple's products, but to date they've just not produced anything that I felt I needed to have. (When I decided to finally get an MP3 player last year, for example, I wanted one that used regular store-bought batteries so I'd never have to worry about the hassle of getting an internal battery replaced, and I couldn't find an iPod that fitted my needs in that regard.)
That being said, I've seen the videos of Steve Jobs demonstrating all the iPhone's features, and as I've said it's hard to avoid all the iPhone commercials that have been on television, and yes, this thing certainly looks like the most revolutionary thing since sliced bread. That being said, even if I had the money to purchase an iPhone right now, or the patience to wait for through the inevitable market shortages that are going to pop up, I just can't see why I would actually need an iPhone. Yes, I have a cell phone, but I only really carry it around for emergency purchases, so my dinky little Virgin phone more than suits that need, and likely for a lot less money per month than an iPhone would cost out to. (I'm very weary of the fact that with less than a week to go Apple and AT&T haven't released pricing information beyond the unit's cost.) My little Sansa MP3 player gives me all I need from an MP3 player -- a nice randomized stream of music from my new age collection -- and if I really needed to use the Internet away from my computer, I'd just buy a laptop since most of the places I go to have free wireless Internet service through our home provider. At least with a laptop I'd have Word with me, which would be the main thing I'd need in any kind of huge device like that.
There are other things that are concerning me about the iPhone here. For one thing, that on-screen keyboard looks like the actual keys themselves are about the size of a small mosquito apiece, and I can't imagine that entering anything on them without lots of errors would be that easy. I can't possibly see the actual production displays being as vibrant as they appear on television, or at least for longer than about three months of life. I also imagine that it won't be long before people discover critical flaws in the product that inevitably force people to keep buying new iPhones or paying for costly repairs, although Apple loyalists will, I'm sure, try to deflect blame by pointing to all the flaws in PCs as if PC's flaws somehow, by some weird and warped act of making the comparison in the first place, somehow make Apple products flawless by comparison. (That is one thing about the Apple crowd that has always cheesed me, the fact that so many of them equate having fewer flaws with having no flaws at all.)
This may sound odd, but this whole iPhone hubbub is actually taking me back to all the hype last summer (and in the preceding months) leading up to the release of Snakes on a Plane. Even though Snakes on a Plane might have been an incredible film for what it was supposed to be, there was just so much hype and so many expectations placed on the film before its release that there was really no way for it to live up to what people expected of it. In a similar way, I just have the feeling that this so-called "God Machine" Apple is coming out with here is going to, in some way or another, wind up being a huge disappointment, and I wish people -- the news media, Apple loyalists, gadget enthusiasts, pretty much everyone -- would tone down the hype just a little. All that this hype is serving to do is make me even more weary of going to any electronics retailer over the next two to three months.
As an "Apple loyalist" myself, I felt obliged to say something in response.
First off, nobody actually "needs" an MP3 player, and very few people actually need a cell phone. But they make our lives more convenient, and one thing that almost every American likes is something that makes their perceived difficult life more convenient. Apple, in particular, has been at the forefront of several major technologies that have become second nature to us today. They adapted the Xerox WYSIWYG interface and made it available to the general consumer many years before the cludgy Windows 3.1 came out; they determined that the bulky floppy disc drive was no longer necessary years before the rest of the PC industry did. They brought about a portable music revolution by putting "a thousand songs in your pocket" rather than the tens of songs that other MP3 players were doing to that point, and the jog wheel is now the defacto standard interface for mobile devices.
So, it's logical to assume that there's a good chance that the iPhone is a window into what our future will be like five years from now. I believe that this "here is the future" aspect is the reason why the Nintendo Wii is kicking the PS3's ass in worldwide sales, and why the iPhone is worthy of the buzz it is getting.
And on the subject of batteries, while I think it is much more troubling to change batteries every couple weeks instead of worrying about possibly changing internal batteries every couple of years, there are plenty of products such as this one that give you the best of both worlds.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0007M2X9M/ref=dp_cp_ob_title_1/002-6280547-8575248
I don't doubt that Apple's been on the forefront of a lot of things, Joe, and certainly the technological world is a much better place thanks to all of the innovations that Apple has brought to the market over the years. The iPhone does look like a huge leap forward, and I can understand the hype to an extent, but the notion that some (certainly not all) loyalists put forward that Apple can do no wrong just kind of bothers me a bit, and it seems to be getting magnified by this notion that the iPhone is going to be some kind of "God machine" that will never have any flaws. I kind of wish that aspect of the pro-Apple rhetoric would get toned down just a bit.
You can refute the Apple loyalists who believe the company can do no wrong with one word: Newton. Or Lisa. Or, if you'd like to go into greater detail:
http://www.newlaunches.com/archives/top_10_apple_products_which_flopped.php
But I don't really know any other Apple afficionados who don't call a spade a spade. Apple has made some things that were too far ahead of their time to be useful, and even some things that well and truly sucked. But all in all, I think you'd be hard pressed to find a company that has done more to morph technology into a form that is accessable to the masses than Apple, and for that they will have my eternal respect.
copyright © 2008 Sean Shannon