The iPhone and a History of Poor Life Choices

I bought my iPhone in the early summer of 2009. It was a standard 3G machine that was already pseudo-obsolete before I walked out the door, thanks to the brand new 3GS model that I had left behind on the shelf, just outside my price range. Along with the costly additional AppleCare coverage that I would end up never using, I exited the AT&T store stage right, and decidedly poorer.

As I drove home, I imagined the myriad things I could do with my fancy new future-brick: the games I would play, the apps I would use to improve every facet of my life, the exponential increase of efficiency I would enjoy. Perhaps my iPhone would help me learn guitar. Perhaps it could help me solve all those differential calculus problems I’d been putting off. Perhaps it could raise my children. These were the things that the advertising and enthusiastic associate had promised to me, and by “promised” I mean “implied.”

Over the coming months I mostly enjoyed my iPhone, but with constantly diminishing returns on the investment. The little things bothered me more and more by the day. The limited space and unexpandable memory. The dropped calls. The diminishing battery life. The constant upgrade of iPhone products that made my machine more and more antiquated. The simple sense that the day before I bought my 3G, people had basically stopped making apps and games that worked well on it. By the beginning of this year, I could have been convinced that my phone had been nicked from a history museum as an emblem of antiquated technology. I was using a phone designed perhaps by da Vinci—artistically sound but wholly impractical. I imagined wall paintings of cavemen glaring sternly under protruding, Cro-Magnon brows at their 3G iPhone, trying to reconnect a dropped call.

So, when it came time to finally upgrade my phone, I have to be honest. I never for a second considered buying an iPhone again. In fact, I seriously considered abandoning the smartphone revolution altogether.

I dimly recall my very first cell phone. It was relatively small, a dense piece of technology with plastic, squishy number buttons and all the functionality of your basic, modern, cordless phone. It basically did two things: send and receive phone calls. This was the best cell phone I have ever owned.

I was a grudging adopter of cellular technology. I barely answer my home phone as it is, perennial call screener that I am, so why on Earth would I want to make myself more available? To this day I don’t believe I’ve ever used anywhere near the minutes allotted me on a cell plan. If there was some kind of buyback policy for a phone provider, where they would refund a certain part of your bill if you didn’t use up their precious network, I would immediately sign up with that carrier and save up my savings to buy a boat or a small moon.

My biggest issue though, is that these devices seem to consistently encourage their owners to make terrible decisions. Setting aside the fact that I could have financed a used car with the money I’ve spent on the phones and subscriptions over the years, the more sophisticated the devices become the more I am encouraged to inconvenience or even openly endanger others to attend to its needy alerts. Worse yet, in the dazzling light of technological advancement, I was tricked—tricked, I tell you!—into believing that these annoying little machines had suddenly become an absolute necessity.

This is a lie!

First of all, at this point I’d like to thank you for sticking with my anecdotes as I toured a leisurely Sunday drive to the point, but I’m happy to report that we’ve finally arrived. I realize that I am positing a theory that’s probably more appropriate in Grizzled Grandparents Weekly between a review of the lunch buffet at Kountry Kitchen and an expose on the 14 Things Kids Want To Do on Your Lawn, and if I’m alone on the point that’s fine, but overall I have to say that my cell phones have almost universally been a negative impact on my life, and the more they do the more I think we’ve taking a horrible left at Albuquerque when we clearly should have taken a right.

But, before I lose you entirely, let me go ahead and say that I think the coming tablet revolution is where we should have been going this whole time. For all the negatives I can think of to say about my iPhone and other smart phones, on the flip side I completely get the value of the iPad, because all of that media consumption, all of that game playing and all of that browsing makes so much more sense in the context of where those machines can be used and what they can actually do.

I had the first niggling hint of this theory on the night I first owned my iPhone, called up a YouTube video and wondered when the hell I would ever try to watch a YouTube video on my phone again. Hey, that’s great that I can watch Iron Man 2 in line at the bank, but why the hell would I want to? I can’t even see it.

When it comes right down to it, I don’t need to check my Twitter feed while waiting for the red light to change, and damn you Steve Jobs, et al. for giving me the opportunity to do so. My smart phones have consistently given me the horrible and tempting freedom to make terrible life decisions. I have, on numerous occasions and completely without irony, driven past roadside accidents likely caused in whole or in part by irresponsible phone use, while irresponsibly using a phone myself. And, I don’t just mean moments where I’m asking my wife what she wants from the store, but times where I am trying for what may be minutes at a time to find the podcast I want to listen to from a list of a billion.

The reality as far as I can tell, is that almost any time where it would have been appropriate for me to have the full benefit of my smart phone is a time I might have had a tablet with me anyway. An airplane, a trip, relaxing on the couch while my kids watch something offensively terrible on Nick Jr., these are all times I’d have been as likely to have a tablet as a phone. And, the fact is, the experience would probably be better as a whole.

All that said, I did still end up getting a new smart phone—a Motorolla Atrix—but that is because I am a weak minded consumerist. What I have tried to do, however, is change the way I am approaching the machine. It’s not a game machine, nor a visual media player, nor my alternative for getting online. It isn’t a book reader. It isn’t a toy. It isn’t a medium for entertainment.

It is, it turns out, a really fancy phone that can check my work e-mails and occasionally play a song. As long as I can hold the line on that front, I think my new phone and I are at the start of a beautiful friendship.

Comments

spider_j wrote:
NSMike wrote:
trueheart78 wrote:

Addendum: I'm an IT manager, so while it has great benefits for the home, I've found it becoming invaluable at work already. Spent a few bucks on apps and untethered myself from my development machine when I don't have to code.

I'm really curious as to how you're using the iPad in IT management.

I would have thought that having remote access to your machines on a 10" screen from anywhere with wireless access would be very useful.

I'm not implying that it's not useful! I wanted details.

I was talking about hardware, not software. Until quite recently, the best the competition had to offer was resistive touch technology, which just isn't as good as capacitive touch technology for a phone interface. The current SE resistive ones are still kind of janky.

Note: touch interface, not UI, not OS.

LarryC wrote:

Malor:

I might recommend looking into HTC and Samsumg devices as well. The iPhone's always been something of a pansy. Most of its functionality could have been performed with an equal generation SE smartphone. Its chief advantage was its revolutionarily excellent touch interface, and nearly all phone companies have caught up to that by now.

I adore Android, but this last bit is just plain wrong. Stock, plain 'ol vanilla android - which, by the way, you're virtually unable to find on any retail devices - yeah, that gets close to iOS. The current landscape, though, is over half a dozen manufacturers each pushing their own janky UI "value add" and carrier mandated shovelware into the mix. Unless you replace that junk with a more pure version of Android, you're setting yourself up for pain.

In fact, I wonder if part of Elysium's conclusions here are driven by his own poor choice in phones (sorry, Elysium - it's true). You're coming from the old, super-slow (by modern standards) iPhone 3G, and now you've picked up a fast device with terrible software to replace it. Motorola and AT&T is the one-two punch for providing a completely broken Android experience; despite its marvelous hardware specs, the Atrix is a massive, massive downgrade from iOS in terms of usability.

If I were forced to choose between an Atrix running MOTOBLUR or a crufty old iPhone 3G, then I might pine for the days of dumbphones too.

In a demonstration of how dependent I've become on my iphone; my phone is off for repair of a cracked screen, and this morning i missed a big meeting, the first time i can remember missing a meeting, EVER. I blame the fact that I've become so dependent on using the calendar/reminders and checking the damn thing at night to remind myself of things i need to do.

Damn technology. Akbar was right.

gore:

Ubiquitous? Certainly not, since I couldn't find an affordable one for exactly the year you mentioned. Perhaps they were common in your locale.

LarryC wrote:

I was talking about hardware, not software. Until quite recently, the best the competition had to offer was resistive touch technology, which just isn't as good as capacitive touch technology for a phone interface. The current SE resistive ones are still kind of janky.

Note: touch interface, not UI, not OS.

Capacitive touchscreen phones predate the iPhone and were ubiquitous within a year of its launch. If you imagine that to be its primary distinguishing feature then you're incorrect. It's the UI that won the day, and it's the UI that largely carries the devices even now.

If you're looking at the hardware in a vacuum, then sure, the iPhone has always been missing something important in every single iteration. But hardware on its own means nothing. It's the user experience; the iPhone was and is the real deal, the complete package.

LarryC wrote:

gore:

Ubiquitous? Certainly not, since I couldn't find an affordable one for exactly the year you mentioned. Perhaps they were common in your locale.

Fair enough - ubiquitous would be the wrong word, but they were definitely out in the market.

Edwin wrote:
rabbit wrote:

The virgin plans are crazy cheap. Anyone know anyone who has a smartphone on Virgin in the us>?

I've got the LG Optimus V rooted and running Cyanogenmod 7. It's not as powerful as my old Nexus One, but at $25 a month, you can't beat it. Since the Optimus V is getting really long in tooth (Droid 1 specs), they just announced a new fancier phone for Virgin Mobile.

http://www.bgr.com/2011/06/09/motoro...

The Triumph is what I'm waiting for to pull the trigger. But again back on topic, even if it's not as good as the iPhone I don't really care anymore. I just want a few basic features to work well with a decent camera. For $25/mo no contract it's hard to get worked up about any minor shortcomings I find.

jonnypolite wrote:

In a demonstration of how dependent I've become on my iphone; my phone is off for repair of a cracked screen, and this morning i missed a big meeting, the first time i can remember missing a meeting, EVER. I blame the fact that I've become so dependent on using the calendar/reminders and checking the damn thing at night to remind myself of things i need to do.

Damn technology. Akbar was right.

I worry about this as well. I have been carrying around a PDA since 1997. I owned a Casio Cassiopeia Windows CE Handheld PC way back in the day. Black and white. (See picture below)

I liked having an address book, a calendar and a quick place to jot notes. Once it became easy to sync this with my desktop, especially my work desktop, it become completely indispensable. I had some variation of this a Palm OS device or a WinMo phone until I bought my iPhone 3GS a couple of years back. Always with a 64MB compact flash card or some other way to carry around some music and take notes.

There are definitely days where I worry that I've given myself over to technology too much. I've become too reliant on it. Partly because of the scenario you describe and partly because I find myself using the phone as a distraction too often when deep down I'd rather be reading a book. So I've tried to scale back. I've removed all but 6 or 7 games on the phone. I've gone through and weeded out the time-wasting apps that I really don't need. Facebook and Twitter are also on the chopping block. At this point I'd like to go back to using it as an iPod that happens to have a phone, map and calendar in it. How I used to use my Windows CE devices.

I hope I get there some day. I don't like being reliant on the tech. But more importantly I don't like the tech convincing me that Angry Birds is more worth my time than reading a book or listening to a good album or just enjoying the world.

IMAGE(http://i30.photobucket.com/albums/c340/batrimmer/100_0924.jpg?t=1242304761)

I hear ya. These 2 weeks without a phone have been eye opening.

I own a crappy Windows 6.something smartphone at the moment, and I'm due for an upgrade in a couple of weeks. I have considered an iPhone, but honestly I use my phone as a phone and an occasional internet device so the larcenous price of the iPhone contracts is off putting.

I'm several orders of magnitude more interested in an iPad, it's more cumbersome to carry, but the features that supposedly make an iPhone so appealing I'm not interested in in the normal course of my day. So I can game on the run, so what? I don't game on the run. Listen to music and bump into people in the street like all others walking around with earphones do? No thanks.

If I'm traveling or something I usually carry a laptop, so the iPad is a nice replacement for that for some sit down gaming or internet surfing. I'm probably going to get a cheapish Android or Blackberry for purely practical purposes and save for an iPad.

That's pretty much exactly what I did. My phone's a smartphone, but only because there isn't a decent nonsmartphone anymore.

NSMike wrote:
spider_j wrote:
NSMike wrote:
trueheart78 wrote:

Addendum: I'm an IT manager, so while it has great benefits for the home, I've found it becoming invaluable at work already. Spent a few bucks on apps and untethered myself from my development machine when I don't have to code.

I'm really curious as to how you're using the iPad in IT management.

I would have thought that having remote access to your machines on a 10" screen from anywhere with wireless access would be very useful.

I'm not implying that it's not useful! I wanted details.

Well, I work at a small company, so while I'm an IT Manager, I'm really more or less a sysadmin / senior developer that manages another developer. I've not actually setup any of the remote desktop features yet, but I've got myself grounded with the necessary apps for around the office. So it's more about being un-tethered (when not programming), so I can actually do work and reference the web anywhere in the facility without having to carry around a laptop or try and use my smartphone.

In the 12 days I've had the iPad 2, I've barely touched my Android phone. Aside from SMS, light email, and music, it get's very little use anymore. And my eyestrain has dropped considerably.

gore wrote:
LarryC wrote:

Malor:

I might recommend looking into HTC and Samsumg devices as well. The iPhone's always been something of a pansy. Most of its functionality could have been performed with an equal generation SE smartphone. Its chief advantage was its revolutionarily excellent touch interface, and nearly all phone companies have caught up to that by now.

I adore Android, but this last bit is just plain wrong. Stock, plain 'ol vanilla android - which, by the way, you're virtually unable to find on any retail devices - yeah, that gets close to iOS. The current landscape, though, is over half a dozen manufacturers each pushing their own janky UI "value add" and carrier mandated shovelware into the mix. Unless you replace that junk with a more pure version of Android, you're setting yourself up for pain.

This post contains much wisdom. Even on the Moto Droid, one of the purest phones out there, CyanogenMod is amazing. I feel like my phone is new and shiny again after installing it last month.

I'd like to install CyanogenMod, but it doesn't guarantee working on a Galaxy Mini last I heard, and I'm carrying too much important information on my phone right now to futz with it.

NSMike wrote:

I'm not implying that it's not useful! I wanted details.

Sorry, I assumed that you were being like Francis in L4D!

I find it great for keeping organised at work. I am very rarely at a desk, so remote access aside, having a complete suite of office products, planners, reference tools etc is incredibly useful. You can set it up as you like, depending on your needs. Between the app store and cydia, I have always been able to meet my needs quickly with the iPad.

The obvious retort would be that all of this can be done on a laptop or netbook, which is true, but the 10 hour battery life, "always on" nature and portability make it far more useful at work than my 13.1" laptop ever was.

You can get into a used iphone for under $500 without data, compared the about $1800 price tag of a three year data plan.

Check out some of the prepaid providers. In Canada PetroCanada minutes don't expire as quickly as Virgin Mobile. Seven Eleven, you buy minutes, they last a year (except they pulled out of our area). I dropped Virgin the first time I bought a months worth of minutes, used none, and couldn't make a phone call when I needed to on the second of the month.

Check out which piggy back providers are cheaper than your big few.

I am in a situation where I don't use data much, I'm in wifi range almost all of the time. The only time I want data is when I'm out at meetings and I forgot to take screenies of the maps before leaving the office, or I get a surprise call and I'd like to look up directions.

I posted my numbers in Tech and Help, under strangeblades buy an itouch thread. Not much more info than here, but I'm happy with my smartphone without the payout. Remember it's not $40 or $80 a month. They're getting the whole 2G out of you no matter what.

My biggest issue though, is that these devices seem to consistently encourage their owners to make terrible decisions.

So true. It brings to mind an incident earlier this month. I was driving home following a kid with hands on the wheel at 11 and 1 o'clock, texting on his smart phone. My initial reaction was a desire to capture evidence of his wrong doing so I could show the officer writing up the inevitable accident report.

As I reached for my phone/camera/widow maker the irony hit me before I hit anyone else. I would have to enter a PIN, tap the camera icon, aim and shoot in order to be the citizen/vigilante I envisioned. I settled for pulling along side, tapping the horn, and pointing two fingers at my eyes then one straight ahead at the road. He shrugged and returned to his driving and texting. I was relieved to take the next exit and arrive home safe, grumpy and old-ish.

If there was some kind of buyback policy for a phone provider, where they would refund a certain part of your bill if you didn’t use up their precious network, I would immediately sign up with that carrier and save up my savings to buy a boat or a small moon.

Let me know when you find one. We can go halfsies on some of the promising earth-like planets they're cataloging around the Milky Way.

It's not just driving, either, and not just iPhones. I see runners with noise-insulating earphones in their ears using iDevices of their choice. That might be a good way to ignore the beauty of nature in natural surroundings; but in urban areas, that's just a good way to block out the sounds of an oncoming vehicle.

And die.

LarryC wrote:

And die.

OHHHhh!

Roadkill, man. And you can't even shout to warn them. Well, you can, but it won't do any good. Game over, man! Game over! Those things are a jogger's Device of Death.

LarryC wrote:

Roadkill, man. And you can't even shout to warn them. Well, you can, but it won't do any good. Game over, man! Game over! Those things are a jogger's Device of Death.

You leave those potential young, healthy (and viable) organ donors alone...

iPod

i'm a Potential organ donor.

LarryC wrote:

iPod

i'm a Potential organ donor.

Apple should offer to 'laser engrave' people's blood type and donor status on the back of the cases for free.

Last week I decided to take a holiday from my Smart phone for a week. Bliss. it was the best 6 hours of my life!