Shut Up About the Stupid iPhone Already


Within 2 minutes of Apple’s announcement of their iPhone, it immediately became the most popular tech discussion of 2007. Every other story (without exaggeration) on news sites such as digg.com is about this stupid phone. If you did not hear about the iPhone by now, you’re living in a fantasy bubble, but to clarify for some of our less technology inclined friends, Apple has introduced a phone that integrates touch controls, a widescreen video iPod and internet capabilities.

Here is why the iPhone sucks: Take into consideration the following question: What is the purpose of a cell phone? The proper answer is to make and receive calls. Studies have shown that people are not interested in streaming videos and extraneous features. Smartphones/PDAs such as Blackberry could be useful for business executives, but for the average person, a normal phone is sufficient. When released, the iPhone will only be available to Cingular customers, which is very disappointing. Also, Cisco owns currently holds the trademark for the name iPhone, so this should be an interesting legal battle. Apple thinks they can pretty much make any product with the name i_____, but there has to be a limit at some point. The only reason this phone is so popular is because of the Apple brand name. If LG or Sony were to release a similar device, it would probably fail, because few people have use for so many extra integrated features. The market hype and current consumer satisfaction with the company put it in an excellent position for future profit and growth. If Apple suddenly started making toilets, and called them iPots, within one week of hitting the market, they will become the fastest selling, most popular toilets on earth. Imagine one of those bad boys, with an iPod dock and integration…

So I’m listening to music and then a phone call comes in… It gets interrupted? A person defending the iPhone would argue that you can’t listen to an iPod and talks on a cell phone at the same time. But they are wrong. Suppose you get prank calls, or want to ignore the caller? If I want to listen to music, I’d rather have a dedicated MP3 player. This leads to the next feature – internet. This is actually a halfway decent idea. The only possibly downside to this is Cingular can charge a lot for internet access on these phones. Also, Cingulair doesn’t have the best network. Verizon’s EVDO is much faster for internet speeds.

Speaking of Verizon, their “Get It Now” video on demand service is the definition of failure. No one wants to pay $10 extra per month to see some pixelated, day old news video on a 2 inch screen. However, if iTunes is enabled on an iPhone, it is suddenly “well worth it” and people would be able to download music and videos right to their iPod/phone (whatever you want to call it).

I am sick and tired of hearing about this phone. Shut up already!!! Yes, Apple is creative and made an innovative new device, but they also have a blind, ignorant user base that supports them fully without much research. I am not saying Apple makes inferior products, but people should look beyond the Apple name. I am usually interested in the latest technology, but there has to be a dividing line somewhere between utility and “lets see how much crap we can pack in to this phone just to impress people.”

Eventually, Apple will run out of creative ideas and should quiet down for a while. Right now, they’re booming.