I have to admit, I really did not 'lust' for an Apple iPhone until someone came by my house and casually took one out of his pocket and flashed it around in the mid-say sun. It is truly an awesome and incredible device - especially when you become adept enough to flip through all of its features like that disembodied person in the Apple television ads. It is like an iPod on steroids!
Despite this infatuation and iPhone envy, however, I have decided that I can quite nicely live without Apple's answer to "What next, after the market is saturated with iPods?" In fact, the following are five reasons why I will not be buying an iPhone any time soon - at least not the first iteration of the product:
1. My departed father always told me never to buy the first version of a product, whether it be a washing machine or an automobile, since everyone knows that a initial products are full of bugs and problems and early adopters are noting more than cash-carrying beta users (my words, since my father was an old-world Irishman who preferred a room-temperature pint over anything electronic). He also refused to buy any kind of entry-level or top-of-the-line products, opting instead for middle-of the-road dependability (which is why he always shopped at Sears).
2. The New AT&T, formerly Cingular and not to be confused with the Old AT&T (before Cingular) is truly the slowest data network on the planet. The voice network may be passable, but I can only believe that AT&T paid a bundle and sold its soul to the devil (and Steve Jobs) for the right to exclusively marketing the iPhone. Like hundreds of thousands of others, my teenage son rushed down to the Apple store to check out the iPhone when it finally leaped beyond the hype and tried to call me on the device to tell me he actually had it in his hands. Sadly, I could hear the background noise in the store, but he couldn't hear me over the AT&T network. A new technology is only as good and strong as it's weakest link, and AT&T is a weak link.
3. I am a bit put off by the initial numbers surrounding the iPhone. AT&T claims 146,000 activations in the first two days of its introduction, while Apple is tossing around 240,000 as a comfortable number. That's quite a gap. This discrepancy dredges up memories of Apple's ill-fated Newton mobile device unveiled many, many years ago. This was a very slick piece of equipment that also rode a heady wave of initial anticipation. When it was finally unveiled at a MacWorld event in Boston, hundreds of people jumped all over themselves to shell out $1000 for this neat device. They quickly discovered, however, that hype form just didn't meet the system's promised function, and the next day The Boston Globe was filled with ads for "slightly used" Newtons. Call me a skeptic, but I an happy I still have my $599 iPhone money in my pocket.
4. There are just too many problems surfacing related to the device. These range from some very real concerns about the security of data and its compatibility with industry-standard email environments like Microsoft Exchange, to complaints about the touch screen and durability of the system. I don't have a habit of dropping and banging around my current cell phone, but I certainly don't want a device that requires special care and is unduly fragile.
5. Okay, I have been a PC user for decades and have only recently come over from the 'dark side' and now use a MacBook as my primary PC. I made the jump because many people told me how reliable and dependable the system and Mac OS is as compared to the PC and Microsoft Windows. I'll admit the experience is different and maybe a little more fun, but I have just about had it with the eccentricities and flakiness of the Safari OS and the MacBook's habit of stalling between applications and annoying me with that damn spinning wheel icon. It makes me yearn again for that little hourglass icon from the PC world. Clearly, Apple has its own issues to resolve, despite what those PC-Guy Apple-Guy commercials present to the public.
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