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Thursday
September 2, 2010
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I don’t need an iPhone, but I have one
Published August 1, 2010
Just a few weeks ago, my boss wrote a column touting his amazing satisfaction with the iPhone, the oft-touted wonder of a cell phone that he claims he couldn’t live without.
I scoffed at the notion. After all, it’s just a phone, right? A piece of plastic and glass that mainly exists as a way to instantly communicate with others via spoken communication. Handy, yes, but little different from any other cell phone. Everything else was just bells and whistles.
I didn’t need an iPhone, you see. I had a basic phone that did all right by me, and my long-simmering distaste for Apple products would ensure I would stay far from the device.
So, of course, in that time-honored tradition of the universe making me look like an idiot, somehow I’ve found myself the owner of an iPhone.
I didn’t want to do it, now. I looked at a variety of other smartphones. But I didn’t want to change providers, which eliminated most of the top-of-the-line competitors to the iPhone, and most of AT&T’s other smartphones moved like molasses and looked worse compared to the sleek and smooth performance of the iPhone.
So, despite my noblest intentions, I have an iPhone. In fact, even as you read this, I’m probably on the phone right now, checking my Facebook status or playing games via the 3G network or just looking for more apps to download onto the thing.
I can check my e-mail on it. I can look up a map in the midst of a trip, when I somehow took a wrong turn because somebody’s directions were inadequate. I can check movie times on the way to the theater and know exactly when the film will start. I can probably do things with it I haven’t figured out yet, or just haven’t downloaded the app to do it before now.
To be fair, before I had an iPhone, I didn’t miss any of these things. I didn’t need to check my personal e-mail more than once a day, on a desktop computer. I looked up proper directions before I left and followed them with excellent results on numerous trips. I kept an eye on movie times in the paper or looked online well before I actually took a jaunt to the theater.
The iPhone hasn’t given me access to anything I couldn’t do before. On the other hand, it can do all of these things on one device, and it fits in my pocket.
I don’t need an iPhone, you see. It’s a luxury, one I could drop at any time, if you could pry it out of my needy, vise-like grip.
Because I am nothing if not a hypocrite on these things, I still hate Apple. I still find it to be a vicious, monolithic company dedicated to an inexorable takeover of computing.
My growing dependence on the iPhone may be a testament to the design of the device, but it’s also a critique of the evil power of Apple to turn us all into mind-numbed slaves to its nefarious will.
Nonetheless, despite its triviality and my own ambivalent feelings on its source, I like my iPhone. It just feels ... right.
Now excuse me, I just got a message from a friend and I have to check my e-mail again.
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