iPhone fear and loathing
"The iPhone was charging. Refined, introverted, mysteriously chilled, my new $200 tile of technology lay supine on a side table, gulping power from the wall."
So begins an essay entitled "I Hate My iPhone," set to appear in Sunday's New York Times Magazine. Written by Virginia Heffernan — a former TV critic for Slate and a lovely stylist — it meanders for a bit before it gets to heart of the matter:
"At 4 in the morning, I was in bed, fighting rage. I couldn’t stop thinking about that device’s tarty little face and those yapping 'apps' you can download for it. The whole iPhone enterprise seemed to require so much attention, organization, explanation, praise, electricity. I know — I know: in the morning, Apple’s latest miracle machine would fill my palm with meaning and magic. So why couldn’t I contain my annoyance? I had no new-thing excitement. It dawned on me: I hated my iPhone." (link)
Heffernan and her editors probably thought she had hit on an original idea. But the "I hate the iPhone" theme is as old as the device itself. In fact, Tanner Godarzi published his "3 Reasons I Hate The iPhone" in Apple Matters on June 15, 2007 — two weeks before Apple (AAPL) released the first model. And CNet.com ran its video "Top 5 reasons to hate the iPhone 3G" two days before the iPhone 3G went on sale.
Other smartphones get their share of attention, but the iPhone seems to stir deeper emotions.
This being the Internet, the Top 10 List is the most popular form for expressing one's feelings — positive or negative — about anything. Run a Google search and you'll find pages and pages of Top 10 iPhone Hate lists. The No. 10 reason on one is "Stunning hypocrisy." No. 1 on another is "It's trying to kill me."
But there are other ways to let out your iPhone fear and loathing. Someone registered hateiphone.com and invited visitors to "join thousands of people just like you who want to discuss iPhone." More successful is ihatemyiphone.com, which presents visitors' iPhone stories in little cartoon bubbles, sorted by date, random, or "most hated."
"Hating your iPhone is normal," say the site's owners. "You are not alone. Telling us about your hate will make you feel better. That's a promise!"
Currently holding "most hated" honors among the sites' 51 pages of dread is this post by "Paddy":
"I loathe my iPhone. I left it in hotel rooms throughout Europe hoping someone from housekeeping would steal it because then I wouldn't feel as guilty as I would if I'd given it away, thrown it off a bridge or simply stopped using it … No-one would steal it." (link)
Virginia Heffernan found a better way to get rid of hers. By the end of her NYTimes Magazine piece, she has returned the dread device to the AT&T (T) store and left, to her evident satisfaction, with a new Research in Motion (RIMM) BlackBerry "and money to spare."
@Frank.
Who had ever taught you that email is workflow? A workflow is a depiction of a sequence of operations, declared as work of a person, work of a simple or complex mechanism, work of a group of persons, work of an organization of staff, or machines. Workflow engines allow an organization to define standard and custom tasks encompassing reporting structure, escalation mechanism, and a host of facilities for automating business processes. It is exactly this RIM spawn culture of 'email IS business' believing in using email to conduct their businesses and in doing so fall into working in a disorganized, incomplete, incoherent and dangerous workstyle. Many many made decisions from using email as the vehicle for business communication and decision making. Frank, you had demonstrated this kind of mentality very well. RIM is built on this mentality and the customers of RIM inherited this mentality, the results of this email driven mentality can be instrumental in bringing about the destruction of our ecosystem. By the way, how can you relate a mobile phone's sales figure to how well the mobile phone can help your company in doing business? I hope you are not performing any function within your company beyond being the BES support. By the way, I worked inside RIM in one of my previous jobs. I know RIM better than you do.
@James
You my friend are wrong and obviously have never support mobility or worked in enterprise for a day in your life.
e-mail IS business. If any company stopped using email they would effectively have such a screeching stop to all workflow / effectivness it would take meetings upon meetings to figure out how to conduct business sans e-mail. I know this as I support an exchange infrastructure for a Fortune 100 company and a 2 min outage causes half the company to wig out.
If you followed mobility you would know that workflow effiency actually increases for mobile enabled employees. Down time is converted into being productive time.
Now your whole BES rant is just iPhone fanboy drivel. BES is rock solid and in our case supports over 3,000 Blackberries. The only time it's down is for weekly reboots or maintenance (on the server side or a BES update). Our uptime is 99.98 which includes a host of business applications that utilize BES to extend our enterprise. Try that with an iPhone.
BES intergration with Exchange is so far ahead of what iPhone can do it's actually funny. If I had time I'd write down the full list. iPhone with Exchange ActiveSync is what Blackberry / BES was in 2006! Funny that there are now two enterprise solutions (Sybase / Good) for iPhone that will require the SAME amount of work and STILL won't equal what BES provides enterprise.
Skype is coming to Blackberry in May and guess what they recently saw the launch of Shazam and Pandora. Expect more and more apps to cross platform as mobility is larger then iPhone.
In case you missed it RIM's recent quarter saw larger then expected growth all while demand for iPhone is tanking. Part of the worls its not even selling (India, Germany) so you better PRAY the new model is really something great as right now it is Apple looking short.
BTW the best selling smartphone the past 3 months? Blackberry curve.
iPhone hate in the US, is this actually just proxy AT&T hate? This seems to be the bulk of the complaint and from the comments posted over at that site, this seems to be the biggest grumble.
I love my iPhone. Get over it.
RIM Blackberries promotes the use of email for running businesses. For years Blackberries rely on email in making business decisions. Email messages are independent, incomplete, quite often incoherent for supporting business decision making. This RIM email based culture is probably the major cause for so many corporations failing due to chaotic decisions RIM users made using the RIM Blackberries. For sound business decision support and operation, business applications and datawarehouses, workflow should be used instead of email. RIM is really a email phone. For consumer mobile phones Samsung, LG, Apple, Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Sharp, and many others are so much superior and lower in cost than RIM. For all those business people who suffer the Blackberries in their lives, let's all shout it out in earnest together: 'I HATE EMAIL'
RIM has the worst level of customer support in the industry. Corporates have to buy the proprietary Enterprise solution called BES from RIM which is a major cash cow for RIM. BES is very expensive, buggy, hard to learn to use, prone to crashes, very limited in functionalities, almost impossible to integrate, based on closed technologies and platform. RIM products and services are centered on BES. It would take a thick book to list all the problems and shortcomings of RIM, both in their offerings as well as being a badly designed and executed company. RIM is chaos internally, and ruthless, erratic externally. RIM is at the other extreme of Apple. Just look at how fast and furiously Apple iPhone blasts past RIM in almost all areas except the still declining business phone area in little less than 2 years, with momentum from the new 3G, iTune App store, Skype (brand new, just in, and RIM cannot run Skype today), global craving for the iPhone, the sky is the limit for Apple, whereas RIM is past the zenith, gasping its last breaths before its certain demise.
Look, she likes Blackberry, is used to it, and doesn't want to waste time getting used to a different, if not better, device. No big deal!
I have an iPhone. I got mine before the first generation went on sale.
I do hate it. Here's why.
I don't play games on my phones. I never have. The screen is too small and the controls to tedious. Most apps are some form of game. (I concede that it was nice to be able to read the news on my phone, before the app crashed the phone and I had to go without for two days before I could *find* an apple store to take it to for repairs.)
It gets hideously overheated when you talk on it. When your ear breaks a sweat and the temperature is hovering around 30, your phone is too hot.
The earbuds look "cool," or so I've been told. Yet there isn't much of a way to clean them, there are no alternatives to them, and that's a bit like shoving a dirty q-tip into your ear. Also, after having had my phone for two years, the neat cushion (which is really there to keep the earbud from falling out), has completely deteriorated. No, I did not buy new headphones. I had 4 months to my contract when they started breaking down.
It likes to turn itself off after the update that allowed first generation iPhones to use the "cool new apps."
Note to the world: "Being able to shake your phone and see the icons wiggle is only amusing a couple of times. Beyond that, if you're still amused, allow me to suggest the old stand-by called an Idiot Card."
So, here I am, a two year vet of the iPhone experience. Between the technological problems, the lack of real world application beyond anything else offered, and the proprietary traits of all macs, I gave up the iPhone and bought myself a blackberry-sort. I still have a full keyboard, I can still see a real view of web pages. I did drop the new phone once already. It was nice not to have a burst of adrenaline the instant I felt it slip, or the panic-striken examination of a phone saved from impact mere inches from the floor.
Keep your iPhones, they're oversold to people who aren't willing to hear anything but about how "cool" the phone is. As for those who go on about the customer satisfaction rate, go read the iPhone help boards and tell me how satisfied people are trying to find their own fixes.
lol@ Dave Small….
Elmer, why don't you balance the article with a little information on the customer satisfaction rate of the iphone and how it's beat the competiton…ALL….the competition, by a furlong? no one is close…yet the iphone gets more negative press than any other gadget in the history of the apple arsenal? now that's a topic for real story…or don't people write about it because it's already common knowledge?
There's no real reason for people to hate an iPhone more than any other device. This is a viral marketing campaign from a company that's losing out to Apple. Lame.
The Blackberry Storm Virginia probably got looks suspiciously like an………..iPhone !!! Would Virginia get a old black Bell line phone that won't anger her at precisely 4 am in the morning? That old black line phone is perhaps better made than her Blackberry.
Sipping my Capuccino while my eyes glanced over Virginia's sweaty brows and saucer-like teary eyes my heart almost stopped for a moment that seemed frozen in time…..and then suddenly the whole thing dawned on me…..ok, let me unveil this whole mystery…….watch Virginia's right hand, the one that's holding the BlackBerry Storm (a iPhone clone), and what? $12000 in her left hand??? must be the blood money that RIM paid Virginia for this fantastically tantallizing article of Apple-bashing for a fee, I can't help but think beyond her batting eye lashes. Underneath her silky smooth teflon skin she's as cool as the New York City sidewalk under her Prada heels.
Ah, once more, Virginia……..Virginia Heffernan found a better way to get rid of hers. By the end of her NYTimes Magazine piece, she has returned the dread device to the AT&T (T) store and left, to her evident satisfaction, with a new Research in Motion (RIMM) BlackBerry Storm “and money (from RIM) to spare.”
P.S. where is she hiding the other BB Storm that came from her Buy 1 Blackberry Get 1 Blackberry Free deal? She will never ever get any such deal from a good name brand like Apple…..Prada neither, I guess. Does Virginia know how to use a phone?
They need to get rid of these dumb commentators that are technophobes. Clearly, they have no place writing commentaries about technology. Bashing the iphone is getting old fast. If a phone doesn't work for you after a few days, just return it to AT&T and shut up already. No need for Drama Queens.
It's funny, when I read Virginia's op piece, I too, was wondering, don't they know this is already considered a bit trite?
On the bright side, Virginia's piece is slightly better than the nonsensical piece written just a couple days earlier in Forbes by Ann Marlowe. She spends a long intro bashing the iPhone as style over substance, all the while exposing herself as a technophobe, and then leading into why President Obama is like the iPhone! Worst writing ever. Here's a link if you want to torture yourself:
http://www.forbes.com/2009/04/01/style-over-substance-opinions-contributors-barack-obama.html
Yeah, well I love my iPhone, and so does everyone who sees it. Take that for a rebutal as unsupported and anecdotal as your article!
The iPhone is an addiction. It's a feeling of power, information at your fingertips. I had a blackberry for years and the iPhone is nothing short of a handheld laptop, whereas the Blackberry is a handheld e-mail machine.
I want my 2 minutes back, what a complete wast of time. I hope the author is shorting aapl and losing all her money.
The ultimate test whether you hate your Iphone: Go buy a "smartphone" running Windows Mobile…. NOW YOU KNOW HATE!!!
Doesn't surprise me. Where I live, I don't get cable anything, no cell phone service, no blackberry service, one television station, and when Iphones were released, they specifically weren't released in our state. My high pressure friends and corporate execs love to come here for a weekend and be able to say truthfully, I will be out of touch. Watching their faces relax within a day is priceless. As to us, we have a cell phone when we go on the road and get in range and take our wifi laptops with us but who needs a phone that won't work at home?
She got ONE thing right: Any headline with the word "iPhone" is irresistible. Internet reporters have obviously known this for quite a while. To paraphrase an old rock'n'roll proverb, "If you hate your iPhone, you're too old."
Cheeze and Rice…what an absurd waste of time for this woman to rant about hating her iPhone.
Tin cans and string for her…get some therapy. Write something sensible.
Presumably she must also hate the Prozac she is mandated by her shrink to take each morning to mitigate her self loathing. What a complete and utter nutcase!
Damn, I left out the "near-" from "corpse", but you get the idea. And unlike that trudging vestige of paper journalism, my corrections appear quickly!
How apropriate this appears in the New York Times, that vanguard of the new media hemorrhaging oceans of red ink, its corpse painfully twitching toward death. "Refined and introverted" indeed. Maybe she can use that BlackBerry windfall to buy a clue.
The IPhone is a superb combo of a phone, computer, personal assistant, and entertainment center. If all you do is worry about things and send text messages, then you might be happier with a Blackberry.
It sounds like your the person who can't stand using email and doesn't actively use email so to YOU email is not a workflow. Likely your in sales and I can understand that but to anyone working in any large company. Email is how most things are done – collobrated and indeed are part of a workflow. Sharepoint is the extension of that at the workgroup level and yes intergrates nicely with email.
RIM feed this and that is why they are the gold standard for email and almost every major company uses Blackberry. So cry all you want how email isn't relevant but it is reality my friend.