Thursday, June 07, 2007

i often feel lonesome in my opinions, but rarely so much as regarding this

I look at the iPhone, and I see a $500 phone that looks like it would be incredibly tedious to do txt messaging on. Aren't people who buy $500 phones the kind of people who do a lot of txting? I suppose Apple is going to sell these to all sorts of people who would never otherwise buy a $500 phone and so won't mind if it's inferior to a $20 Virgin phone for txting on.

I think part of my confusion about all the iPhone enthusiasm is that I don't really understand what would be so great if the Treo I have now was a full featured music player, or if the iPod I have now was also my phone. I think if my iPod was my phone I'd still want to keep it in something like the blue rubberized sheath I keep my iPod in now, but I wouldn't be able to because of the touchscreen, so then after a few months it would end up looking as scratched up as my unsheathed Nano did. How hip can something be if it's all scratched up?

6 comments:

Derve Swanson said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
DogOnTheInternet said...

When Steve Jobs made the iPhone announcement earlier this year, it was hyped as being Apple's latest savior. I couldn't help but think that it was a bit ridiculous, seeing as the phone was invented 130 years ago and all.

Kieran said...

you know, apple doesn't really need a savior these days.

Ken Houghton said...

Apple, contra Kieran, desperately needs a savior--but that's from an investor point of view, looking at Jobs's options and MSFT's ownership.

That said, the iPhone isn't going to be it; thank you for pointing out what should be obvious, at a time when no one else is doing so.

Eszter said...

I'm with you on this and thanks for posting about it. What surprises me is that people would switch providers just for this.

It was one thing for so many iPods to wind up in the trash due to battery failure and such. People are going to be much less tolerant when it comes to their phones. Then again, who knows, Apple enthusiasts tend to stick their head in the sand when it comes to Apple product failures (and the ridiculous charges associated with fixing problems or getting yet another copy of the bad product).

When my Treo's touch screen went south it was not a huge deal, because I realized that you could do about 98% of the device's functionality through its keypad. What will happen with the iPhone in such a case? Well, you can either go a few weeks without your phone while it's being fixed for a minimum of $50 or you can buy another one for $500. How appealing. Not.

DogOnTheInternet said...

Phew - I'm glad I'm not the only one out there that thinks Apple has lost the plot.

I used to be a HUGE Apple enthusiast; for years I swore I'd never have anything other than a Mac.

And then people stopped developing software (And don't tell me about Quark and Illustrator, either. Seriously. How am I supposed to conquer Mongolia with Quark?) for it. And the prices kept going up while PCs kept dropping. And then Windows started being usable from time-to-time.

Apple is toast. But I still love my iPod.