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iWantOne (or) Ten Minutes Spent with the iPhone: Simultaneously the World’s Most Perfect and Most Inefficient Gadget

6 July, 2007 (18:57) | Day in the Life

It’s not very often that you can believe the hype. The concept of hype is, after all, an organization trying to convince you that not only do you want something, you need that something. These organizations do not spend millions of dollars on advertising (the source of hype) altruistically. The goal of these organizations is to make money, of course, and so they are perfectly willing to convince you that such a nonsensical thing as a toothpick is the greatest thing since sliced bread. (What made sliced bread so great anyway? Is there a sliced bread conglomerate out there spending billions of dollars to subtly enforce the theory that sliced bread is the greatest thing ever? For that matter, what was the greatest thing before sliced bread?)

In fact, you can usually buy into the mindset that a product’s value is inversely proportionate to the amount of hype it receives. This is because, to use another tired cliché, the cream rises to the top. If a product is so perfect, you’ll hear about it and love it regardless of how much hype it receives. This is why the most brilliant bands tragically play to crowds of a dozen or so at small bars in the Midwest while Maroon 5 and Coldplay sell billions of CDs and t-shirts. Believe the hype, and you are one of the nameless masses willing to throw your every dollar and whim at the feet of advertisers who want to tell you what to believe. Then again, we are all part of the masses - except for yours truly, of course.

Broken Kid is above all that. Broken Kid is a trendsetter. You have heard of none of the bands Broken Kid loves. Broken Kid’s electronics come from obscure Japanese companies that went bankrupt years ago and that no repairman will touch. Broken Kid buys his cereal from stores you couldn’t find on a map and in brands that contain colors you’ve never seen and the perfect low-fat substitute for sugar that would revolutionize the food industry if anyone else, including the FDA, happened to hear of it. This is why Broken Kid is very, very alone.

Regardless, ten minutes spent with a mildly defective Apple iPhone (not to be confused with the easily forgotten Cisco iPhone that no one really wants anyway) hooked up by three-inch-thick cable to a wall display at an empty AT&T store convinced this cynic and trend-defier that this may be the perfect device everyone has been waiting for since, well, sliced bread. (Rumor has it, Apple is working on a new interface for sliced bread. Believe it.) The hype for the iPhone wasn’t merely right; an argument can be made that all the pretty commercials and front-page newspaper articles under-hyped the combination music player/cell phone/PDA.

Then again, Apple has made its rocky career on creating hype for products that defy what people think they actually want. In a world of satisfyingly tired clichés, Microsoft is the maker of sliced bread and the wheel and fire - the things everyone accepts as the epitome of greatness. Apple, on the other hand, creates the BetaMax, the laser disc, the New Coke - the things that are better than their predecessors but that no one will ever buy and thus are doomed to be inconsequential before even their inception. Broken Kid is convinced that the sole reason Apple Computers exists is to give Microsoft new ideas for its next operating system, always two or three years behind its Apple counterpart.

But somehow the brilliance of Apple’s iPod caught on, and people not only bought into the much ballyhoo’d hype but also the brilliance of the device. Ask an iPod fan why the device is so perfect, and they’ll stammer uncomfortably and describe the clickwheel and the navigation and the fact that holy crap you can put eight million albums on it. The non-iPod fan (who, these days, only resists the iPod as a counter-culture means of being ironically cool) will quickly point out any of a number of other devices (non-ironically labeled as iPod killers) that offer as much or more hard drive space, easy navigation, and functions beyond those available on the iPod. Still, the iPod owns a huge majority of the market share, and Microsoft’s Zune was irrelevant before it was even released, even to the twenty or so people that bought one.

It’s absolutely true: you can find a number of devices that offer more features than the iPod and have as much space for music, a better screen for photos and movies, and that are nowhere near as proprietary and self-contained as the iPod. But Apple, in all its brilliance, knows that you don’t really want those things. Apple has resisted the demand to unveil an iPod/phone device for years, and the video iPod, with its tiny screen, always felt a little behind the times. Because the folks who play poker with Steve Jobs know you don’t want a lot of things done well; you want a few things done perfectly. And you want to enjoy it.

That’s why the iPod has always been the brilliant device that it is, even if you’re one of the unlucky folks who never upgraded beyond your old 2G 20 Gig version. It doesn’t offer all the bells and whistles that sound great but that, honestly, you’ll never really use. It just perfectly does what it claims to do. And in doing so, it just feels good. It reduces the buttons to just a few. It keeps the form factor down to something that fits comfortably in your palm or pocket. It even adopted the clean and immaculate color of white as its perfect color, because electronics are supposed to be black or gray or silver or some cool color like cobalt blue, and white is somehow different and purer.

This, then, should conflict with the Kid’s argument that the iPhone is the perfect device. But don’t think that. The Kid will never lead you astray. In fact, while the iPhone finally offers a multitude of features and seems to represent the Americanizing or dumbing down of the iPod theory presented above (more features, less storage space), there’s still something about it that seems more like the perfection of existing technology instead of pushing the envelope. The iPod was never about pushing the envelope either. Let the sliced bread manufacturers do that.

There have been phone/PDA combinations for years that combine cell phone, music player, Internet, and other functionality into one. Most of them run on some stripped-down version of Microsoft software, so you don’t have to feel that you’re leaving your precious computer at home. There have been other devices with larger screens or bigger hard drives or a few dozen more features that you’ll never use. The iPhone, on the other hand, has a handful of features, and it seems to get them all right.

The screen is beautiful, and it adjusts to vertical or horizontal positioning automatically in the same bewildering way that magic just works. It’s easy to forget for those with normal eyesight that you’re looking at photos or movies on such a small screen. The Internet access is simple and decidedly attractive. It incorporates everything together, so you can touch a contact’s address to get directions via Google Maps or tap a phone number on a website to call that number on the phone. And, of course, it’s tactile. No sterile third-party of a stylus here; you are forced to touch your iPhone, and various movements of your finger do different things, from resizing the screen effortlessly to switching between cover art of your music or the index of your photos.

Most of all, the folks at Apple want the iPhone to feel good to you. They could have made it thicker by adding a physical hard drive and allowing one hundred or more gigabytes of storage. But they used Flash memory and kept the shape thin and tight. It fits into your hand the way a loved one’s hand would, as if it were made for you alone. It’s no bigger and no smaller than it should be. It’s just right.

All this being said, Broken Kid does not own an iPhone. Sure, he could afford it; the monthly stipend paid by the Moravian government is more than enough to purchase the new device and continue the Kid’s lavish if unsatisfying lifestyle. But there’s something about the iPhone that screams inefficient and keeps the Kid relying on his completely separate and far less satisfying 3G iPod and blocky cell phone.

For one thing, Apple defied its own tried and true logic by forcing upon its followers faith and devotion to AT&T, which once owned all communications including The Spoken Word™, in the shape of a two-year commitment and a plan that starts, realistically, at $80 a month before taxes and typical phone surcharges. (With those things, you’ll be paying about $100 a month to use the iPhone, although a less realistic plan is $20 less.) In addition, you have to break your contract with whatever tyrannical cell phone dealer you use now, probably paying another $150 just for the right to sell your soul to AT&T. Then, of course, there’s the cost of the iPhone itself: $600 for the 8 Gig model, and why would anyone buy the 4 Gig one for a mere $100 less?

These costs, themselves, are not the crux of the issue. The Kid would happily slap down $600 for the perfect iThing and the joy of holding it just right. The problem is that Apple is forcing itself upon you, not merely in the form of all the iHype but in its iSynergy with iT&T, the only company Broken Kid would never want to invest in (other than all the other companies, that is). You’re not paying for just the iPhone itself, which is probably worth more than Apple is graciously willing to take for it, but for using the iPhone, for enjoying it. This feels dirty, even to the reliably cynical Broken Kid.

So yes, Apple has done it again. The iPhone, in and of itself, is the perfect device, if 10 minutes of play and tactile sensation is long enough to make such a claim. And the Kid wants one so bad that everything else seems pale and boring and Microsofty by comparison (even sliced bread, which tastes nearly the same as the non-sliced and far inferior variety). But owning the iPhone is owning a commitment to using the iPhone, and this the Kid can’t buy into. Maybe someday, when its cheaper and has more storage and companies like Virgin support it (the Kid likes the guts of naming your company Virgin), yours truly will plunk down his soul (if there’s any left) for the experience of using it and pleasuring himself to its perfection (and excellent music quality). But not yet. Not now, when the hype tells us “The Time is Right,” despite the fact that he wants to. More than anything.

« Number 2 on Google, sucker!

iWantOne (or) Ten Minutes Spent with the iPhone: Simultaneously the World’s Most Perfect and Most Inefficient Gadget

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