My wife’s birthday is coming up. And, my New-Every-2 discount recently matured affording me a sizable discount on a new cell phone, provided I sign over my soul for another 2 year stint on the Verizon wagon.
Now we have an iPhone in the house.
It arrived by FedEx Thursday afternoon. I wrapped it and handed it over that night, and let me tell you – I know how Samwise felt giving the Ring back to Frodo that time down in Mordor.
I say that, but the thing itself is like something straight out of Neuromancer. Sleek, seemless, with those oblong steel studs on the edges. It doesn’t strike me as something that was built so much as sliced from a loaf of solid technology. The feel of it only reinforces that sense – solid and heavy. No cavities for batteries or SIMM cards concealed behind flimsy plastic plates. A glass and steel brick of pure tech.
I find that disconcerting, unpleasant, and dissatisfying. Aesthetically, it’s beautiful, but at gut level it makes me suspicious. I like being able to open things up and see what’s going on inside. I don’t buy Apple computers for precisely that reason. I can open my Dell and see the pieces. Just like I can open the hood on my truck and take a poke at the engine, or my washing machine, or my toaster. I don’t very often, but I like to have the option. I like to know that if the world ended tomorrow and my technology failed, I could open it up and have some chance (miniscule would be a generously optimistic appraisal) of finding a miraculous solution.
But Apple doesn’t give me that. Apple says I can’t even change a battery. It makes me feel like Apple doesn’t just want me to believe the iPhone is a beautiful piece of amazing technology. They want me to believe it’s actually MAGIC.
I really don’t like that.
But sweet Jesus, Mary and Joseph – I WANT ONE.
Pray for me, my pretties. Pray that I have the strength to resist its power.
Signing off from the Land of Wantin-ain’t-Gettin’,
Your Friendly Neighborhood Cat Vacuumer. And if you don’t pray for me, then at the very least…
DON’T WRITE
Will you feel somehow less susceptible to evil if you get an Android? Smartphones are the bees’ knees.
I have a Crackberry now, but it really only serves to remind me of how NOT-Smart it is. And really, the strength I need is the strength to keep from thinking an iPhone is TOTALLY worth paying full price.
“Sliced from a loaf of solid technology”? Oh, that’s good. That’s very good.