“Don’t believe the hype!”
Public Enemy 1988
“Hic Rhodus, hic salta”
Geog W. F. Hegel, 1821 (meaning: “Enough hot air, show us now.”)
The iPhone hype is obvious and everywhere. And the results are predictable: far too many people are lining up to buy a device that very few have seen. (See the picture, right, of a line forming in New York City four days before the product went on sale.)
It’s a buy-wave for a phone whose troubling issues and real costs were kept secret to almost the last moment.
Now, some self-disclosure: I haven’t touched the iPhone yet. I haven’t sniffed it, stroked it, slipped it in my pocket, or tried to download anything over its very slow Internet connection. I also haven’t tried to thumb-type yet on its slippery little glass face.
But that is precisely my point. Call me a skeptic or a realist: but I don’t intend to get swept along by any stampede or by the false logic that “lightening will strike twice.”
The iPod (it is said) remade the mobile music world (by advanced design and by transforming how music is bought). And so -- it is predicted -- the iPhone will do the same for portable phones.
Yeah? Don’t you have to prove that? Last season’s victories belongs to the last season.
Isn’t the ground littered with “paradigm-makers” that no one bought?
Do you remember Apple’s disastrous 1993 Newton handheld (right)? Probably not!
We are clearly at a moment of techno-fusion. All our new means of communications and entertainment will now cram into one meta-devices. Some clever gadget will merge phone, voicemail, mp3 player, video display, internet surfing, email, Instant Messaging, texting, document reading, and calendar. It will happen.
And the immediate question (for me, and for millions of other people) is “Who will get it right?”
In other words, this is not mainly about “technosexy,” “techno-cool” or the wow-factor of sophisticated software design. And it isn’t about the dubious privilege of slapping a $500 phone into a holster. (Is that status “chic” or “sucker”?)
I am not trying to repeat Sansa’s corporate “iSheep” campaign of a few years ago. But I do think there are other products and concepts worth considering – even in they don’t get much press. I think the Sansa Connect (for example) has done something radically new using WiFi that really should be included in the fusion mix. If new devices don’t smoothly tap into Internet radio, are they really getting the big picture?
Apple was once a hungry contender running on raw creative juice. It now looks more like “the next Microsoft” – a corporate juggernaut able to crank up massive ink and hype before the game even starts.
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