BREAKING NEWS: LIFE CANNOT POSSIBLY BE LIVED WITHOUT AN iPHONE

noiphone I’ve always been a vibrate guy when it comes to cell phones. I hate having a ringer on my phone and I hate other people’s ringers too. Only once, in pre-Razr days of portable phone technology—remember when they were the coolest thing ever?—back when popular songs were first being re-imagined as ringtones, I had a crush on a girl who had “Big Pimpin’” as the ringer on her cell and I thought it was awesome and adorable and it made me feel all gushy inside when I heard the tinny beeps of the song coming from her purse. She switched it over to “So Fresh, So Clean” later, which elicited a similar response from the butterflies in my stomach. But I was 16! So we can write that off to romanticism and teen angst. It’s the one blip in my steadfast opposition to cell phone ringtones.

And my general attitude towards phones isn’t much more positive, preferring the cheap, Internet and app-free models that, you know, make phone calls, as phones are want to do. But as I’ve watched friends increasingly fetishize their iPhones—all smoothly rounded corners and shiny surfaces, their fingers gradually exaggerating the sliding motion required for unlocking the screen or picking up calls until their whole body seems to be pushing that little switch, as if it had the reassuring weight of a physical object—a desire to own one myself has crept up on me at times.

But I refuse to be seduced any longer. Not after Apple’s latest iPhone commercial.

Sure, the commercial is about “family travel” and it’s perfectly believable that a handful of apps would offer some stress relief while being in transit with kids, baggage, etc. But how hard is it to find a snack next to the gate in the airport? YOU DO NOT NEED AN APP FOR THAT. Simply walk to your gate, take note of the last snack-selling business you pass before arriving then WALK BACK TO IT. Revolutionary! 99 cents worth of information, direction and logic! (I accept checks, cash, credit and money orders) And the lights. How can anyone live without an iPhone app for turning off the lights remotely? The mind reels . . .

The ad seems to be a shift in messaging by Steve Jobs and Co. Rather than framing the smart phone as the cool, sexy, fashionable device-to-have, it has become indispensible! Impossible to live without!

An insightful article by Abe Sauers just ran on The Awl about Mac’s excessive amount of product placements in major films. The gist of the article (which you should really read: http://www.theawl.com/2010/03/why-apple-deserves-an-oscar-too) is that the make of computer technology in films hugely misrepresents what actual office, police station, FBI headquarters and the Oval Office computers look like. In Hollywood, they’re Macs. In the real world, not so much. Since the launch of the iPod, Mac has managed to do the same thing with their music players and smart phones, convincing consumers with their flashy, hip advertising that everyone else has one, leaving the iPod and iPhone-less to ask: Why not me? Where’s my iPod, my iPhone? Just as films misrepresent the market share of Apple products, these commercials are a bunch of spin too: smart phones users make up a very small percentage of overall cell phone market. Your flip phone is actually the norm—not a technological fossil. And all you need is a simple SMS plan to use Twitter on-the-go, so a slice of the zeitgeist can still be had. And to make phone calls, all you need is, you know, a cell phone.

Bookmark to: