iPhone again
As the resident Apple-monger at work I fended off a dozen or so “so did you get an iPhone?” questions this morning. I didn’t. No reverse-snobbery on my part, I just have a couple months to go on my T-Mobile contract and I’m not in any particular hurry to get mixed up with Cingular/AT&T again. I did drop by an Apple store today and played around with one for awhile. It’s certainly a cool little device, but I think there’s more of a fundamental shift going on here, one that I haven’t noticed since the first time I used a DVR-equipped television. For once I feel like there’s a small bit of the future leaking into the present day. The iPhone certainly isn’t perfect, but eventually all small devices like this are going to work this way. Anything else is a retarded step backwards.
There’s one feature about the iPhone that makes it superior to any other small phone I’ve used and ironically, it’s the physical control for the volume. The method to change the speaker volume on my Nokia is simply broken - you have to use the circular arrow key in the middle of the phone and you can only do so in the middle of a call.
Also, anyone else notice that with all the lines and hundreds of thousands of iPhone sales there wasn’t a single fight? Compare/contrast with the free-floating anarchy in the wake of the PS3 release. Maybe, just maybe, that a better computer attracts better users. My favorite schadenfreude moment comes from Dallas, where a woman wants to buy out the entire iPhone stock in a AT&T store (to sell at a markup on eBay), pays $800 to go to the front of the line, but didn’t realize that the purchase limit is one phone per customer.
Guy basically got his phone for free. Way to go!
July 4th, 2007 at 1:23 pm
The PS3 consumer lines (I speak from a position of experience) were largely populated by scammers wanting to make an eBay profit. Since that same situation wasn’t likely with the iPhone, the lines were filled with iPhone customers, which cuts down on the fighting & criminal activity.
It’s funny you should mention the TiVo analogy. When I first heard about the Tivo, I got on a waiting list six months in advance & purchased the first available model. That’s only happened one other time for me, and that time was last weekend for the iPhone.
July 4th, 2007 at 10:13 pm
Aye, the TiVo was a no-brainer purchase, especially the DirecTiVo model with DirectTV (though we’re on Dish Network now with their own DVR software). It’s impossible for me to watch regular neo-Stalinist televsion broadcasting now. I’d rather leave it off unless it’s time-shifted.
July 5th, 2007 at 8:54 am
By the way, you should copyright that “small bit of the future leaking into the present day” phrase, it’s the most brilliant description for the sort of “quantum leap” forward some products pose over others.