iPhone

My old mobile didn’t survive Federation at New Year. I pulled it out of my pocket at about 1.00am and it had gone bonkers; it was just flashing numbers up on the screen and the keypad wasn’t responding. Removing the battery and restarting it dealt with the crazy numbers, but didn’t do anything for the keypad. I don’t remember getting it wet or bumping it into anything, but nonetheless, it was fucked.

I’d been holding off getting an Apple iPhone until the New Year anyway and the death of my old phone combined with the death of my last iPod in October left few excuses not to then get one, so I did. I absolutely love it; principally because it combines an iPod and a phone into one single device that’s 100% compatible in every way with my Mac computers, rather than some sort of third party bodged compatibility as provided by other manufacturers. It’s a total dream to use and allows me not only to make phone calls, listen to music and send texts but also read and write e-mail in a way that’s actually easy and works properly, and also to surf the web using what’s stops very very short of being a proper web browser.

Of course, I’ve had derision from many people for buying it, whose complaints tend to be centred around the same few issues:

1. You can’t send picture messages.
2. You can’t text more than one person at the same time.
3. It’s too expensive.
4. You can’t record videos.
5. It doesn’t have 3G.
6. You have to use O2.

I’d like to officially submit the following responses to these points so that people can shut the fuck up about them once and for all:

1. I’ve never sent a picture message in my entire fucking life.
2. Incorrect. Firmware 1.1.3 allows multiple text recipients.
3. I could have easily spent more on an iPod Touch and a separate phone of similar quality. I’d also have ended up with two devices in my pocket.
4. Oh noes! How will I fill up YouTube with meaningless rubbish now?!
5. It connects to your wireless network at home and the EDGE data connection is plenty fast enough for what you need it to do when you’re not at home.
6. Frankly, anything’s better than the utter piece of shit that it’s T-Mobile’s awful cellular network. I can now make phone calls from inside my Dad’s house.

Any perceived compromises made are outweighed by its clear and irrefutable benefits. It’s great, for example, being able to listen to music and then have a phone call put through directly to your headphones without having to change devices or have a second device embarrassingly ring away in your pocket because you can’t fucking hear it. The iChat-style text messaging system is splendid, taking what Blackberrys do to a more logical conclusion. Google Maps works exactly how you would expect it to. It’s also frighteningly easy to download music off iTunes with it, although whether or not that’s a benefit is subjective of course.

If I had any complaints about it it would be that the camera isn’t particularly good and that they’ve been a bit slow in opening it up to third party developers. The former I can’t do anything about, but the latter will be resolved in February, apparently. I want an SSH client, an IRC client and an iChat client without having to use some sort of web application bodge. I expect my wishes will be granted relatively quickly.

So no, it’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but then nobody is being forced to buy it. Indeed, because of its price many people are being forced not to buy it, which I suspect is more of a motive to pick holes in it than people will admit to. It reminds me of those pricks who bray “oh yeah, well, I could have got a BMW but I got something much better instead“, whilst driving a fucking Passat or something.