iPhone, You Phone, Everybody Phones

Hello? Hello?

They're everwhere. iPhones. You can't get on a train, go to the cinema, run round the park, shuffle round Sainsburys or even visit the loo without bumping into someone staring cross-eyed and jabbing frantically at a greasy little screen. And I wouldn't mind so much but they're constantly trying to use it to impress.

In pubs people run a little doodad which, when you hold the iPhone to your mouth, and tip, shows a virtual beer emptying. This is truly hilarious the first twenty or so times you see it. There's an application which tells you which London Underground train carriage to choose, so you are closest to the exit at your destination¹. There used to be an entertaining if rude aplication called Wobble, but the stiff folks at Apple put paid to that by removing it from the app store. That's OK; there are 150,000 more.

My little bro' has one and let me try it out. Well, I'm not impressed. Is it a telephone? No! Where's the speaker? Where's the microphone? Which way up do you hold it?

Is it a computer? No! Where's the keyboard? Where's the dot-matrix printer? Where's the fire extinguisher? Where's the cupholder?²

Is it a games console? No! Where's the joystick? Where's the popcorn? Where's Mario?

So; it's just an expensive chunk of electronic bling. It's a make-up mirror with batteries. And if I invite you out to dinner, I didn't invite your iPhone, so switch the bloody thing off. No, not 'vibrate', 'off', you pervert. What do you mean there's no 'off' button?

If I'm honest I'm also starting from a poor vantage point because I loathe all mobile phones. That may sound strange from someone who's spent his working life welded to a computer, but for me, life took a turn for the worse when my job could follow me into the bathroom. Mobile phones are the worst invention since the internal combustion engine foisted pollution, furry dice, obesity and the M25 on the world.

I have one of course; Mrs G made me get it, so I bought the cheapest one I could find from one of the 42 phone shops that blight Winchester. It cost £2.88 provided I bought £10 of pay-as-you-go time. That was a year ago and I've still got £8 left, mainly because the battery only lasts long enough to dial about six digits³.

So I obviously don't want an iPhone. Those iPads look pretty sexy though. When they make one that fits in my pocket, I'll be first in line.

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1 - AnallyRetentive 1.0, from wwwwwwww.getalife.com. Probably
2 - My computers are quite old, admittedly
3 - I have fat fingers, so I have to dial with a Twiglet, which doesn't help