All the cool people in the world use Macintoshes. If you use something other than a Macintosh you are, by definition, not cool. It goes without saying that the only real innovation that takes place in the world takes place on a Macintosh, and the greatest innovations that occur on Macintoshes occur within the Holy Shrine itself: Apple.
The iPod was developed by Apple using Macintoshes. Therefore people who use an iPod are, by association, also cool. If they don’t use a Macintosh when they use their iPod, they are less cool, but still at least somewhat cool. iPods are the source of all portable music player innovations: all other music players are simply poor, misguided attempts to replicate the purity and wisdom of the iPod.
The iPhone is being developed by Apple using Macintoshes, and its developers probably were listening to iPods at the time. It goes without saying that it will be the most supremely innovative portable phone ever invented. It will change everything we know, everything we have known, and everything we will know about personal communication. Truly, those who carry an iPhone will be blessed. Those who carry an iPhone while listening to an iPod on their way to or from working on a Macintosh will carry within them the genius of the ages. Their very breath will stir the soul and elevate the mind: their brilliance will be without peer.
For more clarification regarding the beginning of the new era of communications technology, see this article by some genius with a Macintosh named Toni Ahonen.
The really sad thing? This phone with batteries that can not be replaced, which will not be able to run third party software, and which will cost over $700 Canadian, will likely become some sort of cultural icon. Not because it really should, but because Toni is right in at least one respect: regardless how stupid some aspects of the iPhone may be, it is already focus of a near-religious fervor. When it ships, millions of latte-sipping Mac owners will race to slip on their Birkenstocks and slide behind the wheels of their BMWs, to roar down to their nearest iPhone store so that they, too, can be enlightened.
I think that the mentality that tries to define everything in the world in relation to a particular brand of device, be it car, computer, phone, or purse, dress and shoes is same narrow vision. And I think people that think the next “big thing” from some manufacterer will change the world are no different than those that thing the new fall line up from Versache “changes everything.”
It’s all about the style over the substance, about the fashion of the times, be it clothing, automobile or techno fashion.
And fashion is all about fitting in to the EXISTING social framework. Maybe changing position within it, but the framework stays the same
True revolutionary developments change the social framework. And usually therefore have no concern for the existing framework – good or bad. And that is why so many revolutionary develoments are not cool. They are made by geeks in garages, or ivory tower scientists in obscure labs, or socially unpleasant people that focus on brute practicalities, not social pleasantries.
Truly revolutionary developments are subversive. They change the existing heirarchy and thus threaten and challenge it. They are not always good things either. It is now “cool” to be a techie geek … and truly revolutionary developments don’t come from the “cool” Cool people are not social outsiders.
To a lot of people I guess fashion is a shorthand for some vast personal philosophy. Instead of spending years to figure out what you personally believe in, you buy a Macintosh and suddenly you have defined your world view.
I suppose in some ways the iPhone could be seen as a “subversive” change. Cell phones today are something you get for (almost) free when you sign up with a large, monolithic service provider like AT&T or Telus. Service providers then castrate the phones as they see fit, removing or crippling features in order to funnel users to their high-priced services and avoid capabilities the service provider doesn’t want to support. Generally, if you change your service contract or move to a new provider, you get a new/different phone.
The way I understand it, Apple specifically requires that the phone be sold on its own, for full price, not as part of any service package. Features can be neither added nor removed by the service provider. Fundamentally, they want the phone to be *your* phone, and the cellular service is something you can pick and choose based on your momentary whim. The providers will be required to support the features the iPhone has, not the other way around. This difference (phone as a service contract adjunct versus service contract as a phone adjunct) is probably the biggest “uniqueness” of the iPhone.
But the phone itself seems to me to be yet another one of these “its a camera! Its a music player! Its a personal email and web browser! Oh, yeah, and it sorta does phone calls, but not very well” gadgets. I don’t see anything about it that really makes me think it is worth getting even slightly excited about.