Criticult.Com

So there's a new iPhone out, and within seconds of the official announcement hitting the internet the guy in the cubicle next to me at work was on his current cell phone gushing to someone about how wonderful it was.

Just because it was.

This is a friend of mine and although there's not much chance he'll ever read this I'll go ahead and point out that I bring this up just as a typical example of our culture's fascination with technology for technology's sake and not as anything personal. My friend has been trying to invent reasons to buy an iPhone since the day they came out, not necessarily because he needed one but because, well...you know...they're cool.

Yes they're cool all right but I can't help but notice the way people these days are in constant consumer mode, never happy with what they have and always fretting over the fact that there's a better, faster, shinier version of everything they own every time they turn around.

Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against the iPhone, or against Apple. Apple helped invent desktop publishing, redefined what a mainstream personal computer could be and transformed the wireless industry with the aforementioned iPhone. They've done a lot of good.

They also make slick, elegant, relatively easy to use devices that sell at boutique prices, are difficult or impossible to upgrade and they do their best to make you feel like an idiot for not replacing it every year with a new one. It's insidious, but it is also genius because they have legions of loyal fans who worship Steve Jobs like a sweater-wearing rock star. At his beck and call they throw away all their disposable income on expensive, shiny gear that will be sitting in a landfill 16 months from now, but they clearly feel that the whole convenience and ease of use issue is an acceptable trade off for all those shortcomings.

To each their own. I guess I see the drunken furor over the new iPhone as symptomatic of how people are fascinated by gadgets, and not necessarily the usefulness or immediate necessity of the technology behind them.

Recently I was in Las Vegas on vacation (which is a whole other entry), standing at the Hard Rock with a vodka tonic in hand when I spot some UFC guys in town for a pay per view event on the other side of the bar. I am texting someone back home about this when suddenly I find myself being taunted by all my friends, and for what?

My cell phone. Now, you know how it is these days. Every where you go socially people are walking around with their Blackberrys, Chocolates, iPhones and whatever other flavor-of-the-week phone that's out conspicuously in hand as though they must be tinkering with it at all times or they'll miss something critical out of life. You know, the way when you're at a restaurant everyone has to have their phones out on the table in a sort of subliminal, unspoken line-in-the-sand competition to see who has the most ostentatious piece of mobile bling in the joint.

Nobody's phone actually ever rings, no they're not expecting a call. They're just hoping for one so that everyone will see them using their new Palm Centro with smoke screen, oil slick and laser pointer.

So, I whip out my good old Samsung SPH-A680 (Awkward name circa 2003, before they started naming cell phones after foods) to send some text and next thing you know people are treating me like I am carrying around an abacus. For Christ's sake, this phone is by no means state of the art any more but it does have a color screen, internet, text, gaming and email capability - all novelties at the time I bought it.

I just never use any of that crap, save the texting. I don't even have any of that other stuff on my plan. I don't even have any of those stupid, annoying custom ring tones. When my phone rings it just rings. Call me insane but my cell phone's primary purpose is to place and receive phone calls. I don't need or want to surf the net, send emails or watch movies on it. And I only got the texting turned on because a girl I was dating was always bitching that she couldn't text me.

"It's a phone. Why don't you just call me, as long as you're holding it?" I'd ask.

"Because, sometimes you don't have enough to say for a phone call."

"Well if you don't have anything to say you probably don't really need a phone."

Well, nobody ever said logic works on everyone. So, in the interest of getting some I did what I was asked. It's handy sometimes but it's mainly it's just a silly trifle.

It's a god damn phone, and it works great, has survived two trips through the wash and several drops from heights greater than four feet so you know what? One day when it stops working I'll look into a Nakatomi Whizbang 5000, but not before. I don't give a shit about you and your fucking iPhone or whether you can get stock prices and access You Tube in the middle of dinner at the Olive Garden.

Congratu-fucking-lations. Can it make phone calls? Well so can mine.

I'm no luddite - I have no fewer than ten functional PC's in my home (including an Apple IIe, by the way), three of them in regular use. But that's the thing. I am surrounded by technology at work and at home. Even my fucking car talks to me. I do want there to be at least 30 minutes of my life every day where I am not tethered to the internet or having a conversation with some form of artificial intelligence.

Plus, I am just not the sort of person who has to have all the latest shit just to say I have it. When I need it, I'll get it. When my 32 inch color TV, circa 1998 finally explodes in the middle of the Super Bowl XLIX, trust me I'll be down at the Best Buy in a flash to watch the rest of the game and then price HDTV's.

But not before.

I have an MP3 player. It's not an iPod, and it only has 4GB of memory, two of which I installed myself. My iPod owning jackass friends scoff at me as they wave their shiny new $500 32 GB iPod Touch in my face. Why did I not buy the flashiest, most expensive device available?

Well, I'll give Apple credit for finally lowering their prices on much of their product line but at the time I bought my player I wasn't prepared to spend more than $150 and the comparable iPod Nano to the one I did buy was a piece of shit with no screen.

Yeah, I have yet to understand how an MP3 player with no display is useful.

Sure you can get a 1GB iPod Shuffle for $50. That's fine if it works for you. But I'd suggest that if you only have $50 to spend on an MP3 player, it's possible that you have better things to do with your time than listening to music. Like, getting a job. Save up and buy something useful, my friend.

I found 4GB to be more than sufficient, because 4GB will hold about a week's worth of music, give or take. I can't imagine being away from a computer long enough to run out of stuff to listen to before I can load up again and if I am I am probably lost in the desert and have bigger problems than not having the Foo Fighters around.

Besides, whether your player holds 4GB, 40GB or four hundred, you can only listen to one song at a time, right? Now aren't you glad you paid for all that fucking space? Hey, get what works for you, but don't wave it in my face or act like because less is more for me that I have a problem.


Well fuck you and your overpriced toy. My little Sansa holds way more songs than I could possibly listen to if I were stuck up to my waist in cement for five days, it can show movies but why I would want to watch movies on my MP3 player when I can watch them on my television is beyond me. It can hold photos, but I already have a three year old five megapixel camera with 2GB of storage that I have used on approximately five occasions, so who cares? It even has an FM radio tuner, which is ironic because FM radio is what drove me to buy an MP3 player in the first place.

I just want to listen to music. You can keep all that other crap.

So, now that Apple is only charging $200 for the entry level iPhone, I say good on them. All they have to do is un-tether themselves from Ma Bell and they'll have something. But they'll have to wait until my trusty Samsung dies and there's no indication that's going to happen before 2010.

And when I do finally buy one of those flashy new handsets, do you know what I am going to do with it?

Place and receive 150 minutes a month of phone calls, just like I do now.

Labels: Extra Stength Tylenol, Gadgets, iPhone, lemmings, Steve Jobs