I was in the work restroom today.  There are 3 urinals right next to each other, there was 1 person in the whole restroom other than me, and he had decided to use the center urinal.  As I walked in, I noticed the dude was holding his iPhone in one hand as he was peeing…

So I settle in, right next to him, (obviously this man has no regards for maniquite with being in the center stall) and start doing my business, the whole while, this dude is using his iPhone and peeing.   The whole time, I’m desperately fighting the urge to punch the guy in the face.  The only thing that stopped me was the fact that I didn’t want to get piss on my pants.

He finishes up his business, zips up (single handed), washes his single hand with 1 hand, gets paper towel with his non-iPhone hand and dries off.. the whole time, I don’t think he actually took his eye off of his iPhone the whole time.  I’m not sure if I should be impressed by the fact that this dude could do this, or annoyed because this dude can’t stop smsing or surfing the web long enough to take a piss.

I don’t understand this.  Why is it that every technology company, ESPECIALLY Microsoft, gets thrown under the bus if some device they release has a minor bug in it, or if their upgrade doesn’t include every new feature under the sun.  That is, except for one company… Apple.

Lets recap shall we.  The new version of the iPhone is coming out in the US soon, already out elsewhere now.  Keep in mind, this is the 3rd rev of the iPhone in a year (give or take) (I shall hence forth call it The Jesus Phone), and I actually know people that will have purchased all three revs of the device, and EVEN stood in line for all of them.. 

I don’t understand why Apple gets a pass on this.  The first rev didn’t do 3g, no MMS, no copy/paste, can’t install any applications, cost an arm & a leg and STILL required a 2 year contract.  Didn’t get Push mail, didn’t do video, doesn’t take flash memory, etc.  Second rev, they change very little, upgrade the memory on the phone and call it a day… Now, the 3rd rev is out.  it gets 3G FINALLY, you can buy applications (only via iTunes through the iStore), it gets push mail, bla bla bla.. not that great really, yet everyone gobbles it up.  I get it… The Jesus Phone has a fantastic interface, it does.  it has a really nice form factor, it does.  It’s sleek and sexy, but it’s NOT THAT GREAT.

Another observation, and this is really what drives me nuts, are the tech reviews.  How every new feature is looked at and drooled over.  Features that most devices from the simplest cell phone up to existing smart phones already out on the market have been doing for some time.  The Jesus Phone has GPS.. EVERYONE REJOICE!!!  Yeah.. my phone had GPS last year.  The Jesus Phone has PUSH MAIL!!!! EVERYONE REJOICE.  Yeah, my phone has had push mail for 3 years now, blackberry’s been doing it, and doing it WELL for about 5 years now.  Thank you Apple for stepping up on that one.

Here is how a typical technology blog reviews a normal device:

The GPS on my xPhone is passable.  It took an appalling 30 seconds to nail down my location and *gasp* it put me 5 feet from my actual location, obviously it still needs some work.

And then The Jesus Phone review

Well I got my hands on The Jesus Phone and all I can say is WOW!!!!  I ran outside and waited for it to tell me my location.  It only took about 3 minutes to pull up where I was standing, but I noticed that it placed me at a Starbucks about 3 blocks down the road.  That’s Ok though.  I wanted coffee anyway.

The article would then go on to describe how the Jesus Phone must have been listening to the conversation between him and his buddy while they were trying on moc turtlenecks at the j Crew and it decided that they needed a grande half caf non fat skinny soy caramel late’ with no foam and some nutmeg sprinkled on the top extra hot and that’s why it put their location at Starbucks.  GODDAMN THIS DEVICE IS AMAZING.

Anyway, it’s late, I need to go home and play with the kids.

I’m currently in the market for a new mobile device.  I need something that is capable of receiving email and other things from our central email servers.  Blackberries, Windows Smart Phones, and the iPhone are a few of the devices that come to mind…  I would jump up and buy an iPhone right away if it wasn’t so laden with bullshit software restrictions/requirements and wasn’t tied to ATT.  I can get over the ATT part.. I’m currently with them, it’s OK, not great, but none of the cell providers are great.

The iPhone is a very sexy device.  That is the love I have for it.  It is, bar none, the best looking cell phone on the market (my opinion).  It definitely does some nifty tricks, it’s sexy, and has the features I want in a phone, for the most part.

It also has the aura of douchebaggery tied to it (see photo on left to see representation of both the iPhone and of a typical douchebag)

The iPhone is a typical representation of Apple creating a beautiful device and then crippling it horribly with software(see Apple TV, Apple Newton, iPod, Pippin).  I can actually live with the fact that the iPhone is locked down with what you can install on it and such, it essentially does whatever I want it to do so I’m fine with that (for the most part, I would love GPS), my problem is with the huge hunk of crap that they like to call iTunes.

I have an 60GB iPod currently.  I hate having to use iTunes for anything at all.  It cripples the device so badly.  You can’t 2-way sync your music, iTunes (you can not get any music off of an iPod by default when using iTunes) will try to wipe your device if you try to sync it.  I only purchased an iPod because, at the time, it was the only device that was both small and had a 60GB storage capacity so I could port all of my music around with me and still have some room for shuttling some data too.

The other thing about iTunes is it tries to take control of ALL of your media.  It installs quicktime, it tries to take all of your preferences for media playback by default.  Say you like to use Windows Media Player for watching videos.. install iTunes, by default Quicktime will take that preference from you.  Never mind what happens when you try to listen to a MP3 within a web browser, quicktime launches embeded in your browser and it runs it.  You change your preferences back to your desired behavior, and the next time Quicktime or iTunes comes out with an update, even a .0.0.0.0.1 update (which, by the way, almost always requires a full reinstall of iTunes) then Quicktime/iTunes will take the file preferences over again.

The other thing is, when you install iTunes on a windows computer, it installs 2 or 3 services that run all the time on your computer when you start the computer.  Why does it need to do this?  Normal plug-and-play should be enough to detect when the ipod is plugged in and should then launch iTunes for you.

Why all the bitching about iTunes when I’m talking about an iPhone?  Because in order to do ANYTHING with your iPhone (and make no mistake, it is YOUR device, you should be able to use it as you please) you MUST install and USE iTunes.  You have to have iTunes to activate your phone initially, you have to have iTunes to get any firmware updates to it, you have to have iTunes to put any music on it, you have to have iTunes to put wallpapers on it.  Never mind if you want to use a custom ringtone.  You can’t.  You have to buy it from Apple (the iTunes store).  On my current phone, and many previous phones, I could take any MP3 I wanted and make it into a ringtone — the way it should be (yes I know that there are ways around that, but that’s not the point).

I guess all I’m saying is, I sure wish the iPhone wasn’t tied down to so much crap…  it’d be a no-brainer for me to buy it.  Now I don’t know what to do.  I wish there was a windows mobile device that was as sexy as the iPhone.  Blah.