The thing I remember most from Steve Jobs presentation of the iPhone ten years ago wasn’t the device itself. No. The thing I remember most were three words that he said: “Internet Communication Device.” Nothing else in that iconic corporate presentation remains with me. I don’t care how the thing looks, what colours it comes in, how the edges are designed or how they put the on/off switch exactly opposite of the volume switch (on the iPhone 6s) which means every time you try to adjust volume with one hand you also turn it off.
The concept of an internet communication device is as profound now as it was then. The difference being, Apple missed the boat on making it. With that in mind, I’m still waiting for an Internet Communication Device. I’m still yearning for it, too. I’m still dreaming, like in Star Trek, all I gotta do is tap my chest and I can place a call to anyone simply by saying their name. Put another way: building an internet communication device is as far off now as it was ten years ago. Put yet another way: we should be over and done with words like cellphone, phone network, AT&T, Verizon, GSM, signal strength, etc., etc. Yet we’re not. Instead we’re still stuck and hung out to dry by the old economy that has won the battle. The iPhone is the device that proves: old beats new. The new bows its head in submission. Old farts rule the world. Gee. Turning over in your grave, yet, Steve? No. Of course you’re not. You didn’t really know what you were doing when you claimed that the iPhone was something more than just an old economy toy. Or?
Was Jobs and his über arrogant company fully aware of the significance of the third denominator they/he had put into their gadget but have long since abandoned? It was a phone, it was an iPod–or a music player–and it was an internet communication device. The phone meant nothing to me. Since the advent of carry-around phones only one thing stands out about them (all). The cellular networks that they depend on are shit because they are ALL run by dinosaur companies that should die. Talk about a chain only being as strong as it weakest link!
As far as carry-around music players go, even though I have an extensive digital music library at home, the idear of lugging thousands of songs around with me is just stupid. Alone the misery of music through headphones–an extra frivolous cost to an already frivolously priced gadget–should motivate people to curb their music listening habits. Music, like wine, shouldn’t be consumed in a plastic cup at a baseball game in order to wash down a krappy hotdog. (Or should it?)
At the least, the phone and the iPod aspect of the iPhone should not be celebrated after an initial decade of extravagant nothingness. Like everything else in the tech industry iPhones are nothing more than widgets in the vastness of monopolies and corporate do-nothing humdrum of an old economy that won’t die. So little is innovation in a world where screens get smaller, cameras get fantastic-er and computing capabilities in handheld devices get super-er. Seriously. What is there to celebrate when, even after all the pageantry of gadgetry, we’re still stuck like a crumb in an old man’s beard that is being eyed by a distant seagull?
I got my first iPhone at the end of 2012. Even though I admired the look and design of the device from afar, the cost of it is just stupid. How much does stamped-out, glued components, made by slave hands in Asia cost! As far as cellphone usage goes, I used to buy cheap, regular cell phones (where the f’n battery lasted a week) and even today my new iPhone isn’t any better. And with that same iPhone I still use prepaid phone service–because of how much I hate cell phone providers. The contracts one has to sign with old economy corporations in order to afford a new-fangled, fancy smart phone is at best a cruel joke. Why do people put up with this shit? But that’s neither here nor there. My wife likes iPhones. When she gets one, she’s nice enough to buy one for me, too. Who am I deny her that pleasure?
But get this. Even though I can afford to pay around seven hundred dollars for a phone every few years, I still think they are frivolous, extremely overpriced, and have yet to meet my expectations of what/how technology should be. Indeed. There should be no celebration of the iPhone because its invention has only lead to convention. Fcuk Steve Jobs! Fcuk the iPhone! Fcuk closed eco-systems. Fcuk iTunes. Fcuk app developers. Fcuk all you well paid useless corporate minions that keep dinosaurs alive.
As usual, I’m off subject. My point of this post is to simply state that Apple has missed the boat when it comes to technology. We see this in 2016 and how the company is regressing with its products. The new MacBook Pro line of laptops is a joke. The AppleTV, probably the first product they’ve ever made where it got bigger instead of smaller, is also a joke. iPad sales are down because the iPad Pro creates an unnecessary product line in an already overpriced product line. The Apple Watch… Oh, the Apple Watch. You’ve got to be kidding me. Should I even mention the headphone jack issue in a device that was initially brought to market as a music device? Apple is not a technology company as much as it is a smart-ass, sell shit to suckers, fashion-marketing company–designed in superficial California. Btw, when is that earthquake gonna finally sink California?
What is an internet communication device? Simply put, it is a device that is not the iPhone, Apple and an eco-system that locks one into nothingness. At the time Jobs said those words while introducing the world to his new gadget, he was deep inside his distortion field. Either that or he was tripping on acid. Wait. Are they both the same thing? Nomatter. Obviously I can’t criticise the iPhone too much. It is part of the gazillions of dollars that Apple has in offshore accounts and lots of people use the device for crazy things like making films and taking pictures and and and. And that’s the only thing that matters anymore. I guess. But then again, like the Swedish pop band Abba once said: money money money in a rich man’s world.
Fail upwards.
Rant on.
-t
worstwriter 