The iPhone: Sometimes It Doesn't Pay To Be Contrarian

Like I wrote in the post about Facebook, there are times where I like to be contrarian just for the sake of being contrarian. Part of the fun for me in not having Facebook is that just about everyone else that I know has a Facebook account. But also in the case of Facebook, I actually have substantiated reasons for not wanting many of these things in my life as well, which brings me to the iPhone. iPhone users have no qualms about telling anybody and everybody that the iPhone is the greatest creation that man has ever conceived. There is a certain snootiness that all iPhone users have when it comes to their phones, and the ability to look down at owners of all other phone types is apparently part of any iPhone service plan. I know this because I am related to people both by blood and by marriage who have the iPhone and said accompanied snootiness. The iPhone is the perfect thing for a natural born contrarian like me to rail against. It’s trendy, it’s the “it” thing that everyone must have, and its users are generally really annoying when it comes to proclaiming their devotion to it. Most of the time, I treat overzealous iPhone enthusiasts in the same way that I treat pompous soccer fanatics. Their points of view regarding their greatest love are completely one-sided, and they aren’t even interested in opposing opinions at all…thus, it’s better to just ignore them all together (or hit them in the head with a snow shovel, as Tony Kornheiser would suggest).

All of you, just get out.

There’s also a part of me that just likes things to be simple, and sometimes I wish that my phone was just “a phone.” Being able to use the Internet anywhere is great, but paying for a data package is not, and I often wonder if my quality of life would suffer all that much if I just went back to an old-school regular cell phone. Maybe I’m at the point of no return already, but I truly like my trusty ol’ Blackberry. I like having a keyboard as opposed to a touch screen. I like the organizational and file storing features of it much better than my wife’s/brother’s/wife’s brothers’ iPhones. I guess it’s nice to have everything synced, but I don’t like the iPhone’s overreliance on iTunes to configure updates and organize different kinds of files. The iPhone also has a zillion apps that I can’t imagine ever using. When Krissy and her brothers all got the iPhone (her oldest brother had had it for a while), the “in” thing to do was to use one of the video chatting apps whenever they wanted to call one another. This wasn’t appealing to me because I am not a big phone-talker in the 1st place…why would I want someone to be able to look at me while they are talking to me too? The video chatting phase lasted for about a month (if that), but like most of those things that seem really awesome at 1st it died out pretty quickly. I don’t know that Krissy even has the app on her phone anymore at all. I realized though that in effect I had started to become the snooty one when it came to this stupid phone stuff. My holier than thou viewpoint had made me look down at iPhone users in a way not that different than iPhone users probably look at me. I had had an iPod Touch for a few years, but had never really used it all that much other than for music. For whatever reason (maybe I had secretly started to think some of Krissy’s iPhone apps were pretty cool), I started downloading and using some apps on there in addition to some of the features in comes with: games, fantasy sports trackers, email. The problem is that at some point I started to develop a liking for my enemy…like Stockholm Syndrome or something.

Sweet! Angry Birds!

My iPod isn’t exactly like an iPhone (you need WiFi to be able to use anything that requires an Internet connection for one), but it can do a lot of the things that an iPhone can do, so it at least gives me an idea of what it would be like to use one. First, the screen size blows my Blackberry out of the water, and the touch screen isn’t all that bad for typing, which I originally thought I would never get used to. Obviously, the touch screen makes gaming, viewing things online, and the use of most other apps easier. For the most part, Internet browsing seems faster than on my Blackberry, and maybe most importantly of all, getting an iPhone would consolidate some of my current devices. More and more often lately, I have found myself double-fisting my electronics when I get home from work: phone at my side in case anyone calls, iPod in my hand whenever I want to do anything else. It’s just so damn cool! What the hell do you want from me? My Blackberry looks like a dinosaur next to it. And iPhone and Android are killing Blackberry so much that Blackberry (much like dinosaurs) could become extinct. Blackberry's App World has become a barren wasteland on the same wavelength as MySpace, filled with sad little apps that no one could possibly ever want. Other people must have realized the same things I'm realizing. I used to have a decent amount of contacts for Blackberry Messenger...as of today, I have 3 (of which I'm not sure if any still have active BBM accounts, as I haven't used BBM in over a year). I could also trade-in/sell my iPod Touch and iPod Classic (which is sitting in a drawer somewhere), and just use my iPhone for my listening enjoyment as well. Krissy has a smaller iPod Nano for working out, and her reasoning for that is that she doesn’t like the clunkiness of the iPhone when she’s running and training, but if an iPod Touch doesn’t bother me I don’t see why an iPhone would. Anyway, what used to be utter defiance has now turned into resigned acceptance. It’s probably only a matter of time now before I join the rank and file now.