There’s a Mr. Gullible on the phone for you.
I have no problem with the iPhone itself, I’ve had a tinker with a couple of them and thought it quite intuitive. and to be honest a good product. I mention this in case you find yourself forgetting this later on. Several of my friends own them and rate them highly. I trust the opinion of these people. In fact one of my favourite gadgets for over 3 years was my 60GB Classic Photo iPod. It would still be my favourite gadget had the hard disk in it not died. I am not comfortable with the idea that the iPhone seems to be regarded as an exciting revolutionary device, even if the components that people seem to believe are so wonderful, are in my view rather basic and have been available for a few years on other phones even before the iPhone came along.
Applications for phones are nothing new, I remember downloading Puzzlebobble on my Nokia 3100. We’ve all suffered the Crazy Frog thanks to Jamster, who have been hawking, games, ringtones and text sounds for years. I used to have a Nokia 9500 Communicator jam packed with software including emulators for the ZX Spectrum and C64 along with and many other distractions. They were never used than a handful of times, so Apple’s ‘App Store’, a repository of similar software, for me, holds the same kind of appeal as a Pot Noodle. You buy one, take it home, and devour it, only to find it rather unsatisfying and not the tasty treat you were expecting and decide you’ll probably not have another one, or if you do it’ll be a different flavour and when you do you find it’s just as unsatisfying. The App Store gives off the impression that is crammed full of pieces of software that once you download them will be unable to think anything other than “WOW! I can’t believe no one thought of this before!” While nifty apps are a good thing, but what worries me is that there are hoardes of halfwits out there who lap up this kind of marketing bullshit. The kind of people think the iPhone itself is responsible for apparent wave of creative software when such handy pieces of software along with free clones of commercial products for computers for years as quick look though download.com or sourceforge.net will prove. Anyone with half a brain and any degree of problem solving ability can write a program. I’ve written apps to make my life easier at work or to get round problems, it’s not fucking rocket science or a spectacular explosion of my talents, it’s the simple task of sitting down pulling your finger out of your arse and applying yourself to the task for a few hours/days/weeks.
Why should people shell out money for an application that costs around 4 or 5 quid that coughs up train times, when the National Rail Enquiries website does the same thing for nothing. There’s a lot of apps out there that will be bought with the intention of being used then used once or twice, decide there is no real need for the app and then it will be forgotten about. On my N96 I have a couple of apps installed, one is PacMan, which I never bother playing the other is Mobbler, that I actually use quite frequently which reports what tunes I listen to back to my Last.fm profile. I never have any need for any other custom app. Though I might go for a decent Twitter app if there’s one kicking about. I have no need of any other apps or games really on my phone. I don’t feel there is need to try and drown my phone in pointless applications. If I want to be entertained when I’m out and about I’ll either use the Internet, listen to some music or watch whatever comedy series I’ve copied on to my phone for a long journey.
Touchscreens are nothing new either, I work for a company that has been building touchscreen products for many years, even our products from 11 years ago, look far superior to the very outdated, gaudy Windows 3.11 looking software that kicks about on some of our rivals products even now. The iPhone may have made good use of the touch screen using two fingered movements, but how exactly is this an exciting change? It’s not. Innovative? Maybe a little.
I’ll let you in on a little secret, I owned a Nokia N95 for 18 months, I loved it. So when it came round so contact renewal time, I looked at both the Nokia N96 and the Apple iPhone. With the Nokia I knew I was getting a phone that functioned well as an actual phone. The design I thought was a nifty update that makes the N95 look outdated. It still used the Symbian operating system which I find superior to the operating systems of other manufacturers phones. A five megapixel camera that not only takes good photograph when you’re out and about but also records a decent quality video. * Now how could I go from having a decent camera to having a phone that didn’t (at the time – if my memory serves me correctly) support bluetooth or downgrade to a camera that was mince by comparisson? 1.3 Megapixels? Let’s face it we don’t always carry a digital camera around with us to be able to capture those shots that amuse or inspire us. The N96 would allow me to do it at a decent quality, so the answer was simple really. The N96 won, and even now I still think I made the right decision.
The iPhone may well be a good innovative product, bringing together elements which alone aren’t much but coupled together along with an intuitive interface, something that I know from experience with my iPod, Apple do well. What I don’t like about the iPhone is that it appears to rely on marketing hype and people being amazed by a slightly new version of somewhat old technology. Is there anyone you’ve met who has just got an iPhone who has tried to show you how great they think it is, on the basis of some app they’ve bought? Nope I didn’t think there was. I get quite fucked off with the “LOOK! Buy Shiny phone! Fill with great apps! OOOOH!!! EXCITING!!! You are now cool!!!” advertising. It’s the kind of thing that most of the population inhale deeply and seem to enjoy, while the rest of us find it a rather unpleasant stench and are slowly choking to death on it. I’ll stick to judging phones on how well they suit me, rather than how fancy it looks and what pointless cool things it’s capable of.
* ok that wasn’t my N96, I just wanted to use that version of Use My Arse, here’s one off the N96 and here’s another example me arsing around in the office at lunchtime with my N95, which I believe has the same camera as the N96.
