(Tim Wu provides an excellent write-up of everything that I say when someone asks me what I think about the iPhone: Why the iPhone isn’t really revolutionary.)
My three observations about the iPhone:
- It’s not an open platform and there’s no development kit (yet). For now, Apple is the only company that can make applications for the iPhone, apart from what developers can make work from a web browser. But what makes a computer great is the ability to freely utilize its storage ability and processing power to solve problems. In general, Apple can be trusted to provide good, flexible solutions (You can customize fields in Address Book, for example), but how much can Apple afford to program to the idiosyncratic needs of bloggers, photographers, DJs, stock traders, teachers, and students? An open platform is the way to allow unique solutions and people-powered innovation to come to light. Solutions require innovation, innovation demands creativity, and creativity is fostered by openness. Apple is enlightened enough to know this, but they unfortunately realize that they would be undercutting their own short-term revenue potential and business relationships with the wireless carriers if they opened the iPhone up for public development.
- No tactile feedback. I’m sure you can eventually learn how to type without looking at the “screenboard,” but please don’t argue that the learning curve isn’t going to be significantly higher than a device with a dedicated, physical input component.
- AT&T? For now, you can only get the iPhone by signing up with one carrier for two freakin’ years. And have you seen any of this or that?
Meanwhile, the leading-edge of the revolution in phones is quietly bubbling up in the shadow of the almighty iPhone. Nokia recently announced the stateside availability of the E61i, a open-platform phone running on Symbian. You can buy it unlocked from Dell. And then there’s the Neo1973, being offered via Internet order on July 9th, running the open-source, Linux-based OpenMoko.
Computers got “big” when everyone had a chance to play. Isn’t it time we got to have the same fun over our handheld devices?
Ars Technica dropped an update on the “Family and Consumer Choice Act of 2007,” (press release) cosponsored by Rep. Daniel Lipinski (D-IL) and Rep. Jeff Fortenberry (R-NE). The bill proposes to give subscribers options for more “family-friendly” programming in two ways: (1) forcing cable providers to follow FCC broadcast indecency standards related to the scheduling of programming and the self-defined show rating, and (2) offering consumers an a la carte option to opt-out of particular channels.
Without making a moral judgment, I will say that if the bill passes, I can see it pushing consumers to the Internet in droves. People are curious—the youth especially. When TV ceases to bring life to the world that exists on the boundaries of their experiences, the consumers will lose interest and new generations will cease to pick up the TV habit. (Perhaps better said as, “The consumers have already lost interest and new generations haven’t picked up the TV habit.”)
At this juncture, the “consumer choice” that the bill proposes is the choice to narrow programming, rather than expand it. Unfortunately, in an age of unprecedented choice in entertainment, I can’t see it providing many long-term benefits to consumers, other than hastening their collective migration to other entertainment options.
Published on
June 3, 2007 in
Society.
An Adbusters article titled “Generation F*cked: How Britain is Eating Its Young” confirmed some of my recently surfaced fears about growing up in the new millennium. I worry that “depth” is slowly disappearing as a cultural value—that we’re experiencing a “mass shallowing” of our cultural experience. This shallowing comes courtesy of a slew of minute, myriad erosions to meaningfulness: like overpowering consumerism, standards-based achievement measures, or the decline of public value (like public spaces or the public domain). The Adbusters article describes the outlook for youth in Britain, and in doing so, chronicles a future look at how things already seem to be for some kids in the United States:
The first stirrings of major intergenerational conflict are already being noted. The basic rights of the recent past – a safe job, free education and healthcare, secure homes to raise a family, a modest but comfortable old age – have slipped quietly away, all to be replaced by a myriad of vapid lifestyle choices and glittery consumer trinkets. Excluded from a national social housing scheme sold off by their parents, unwilling to give birth in the UK’s draconian new system of rental accommodation which gives tenants no more than six months grace from eviction, and unable to afford homes of their own in 85 percent of the country, today’s iPod generation is stunted: trapped halfway between childhood and adulthood. It now takes them until 34, on average, before they can afford a house, let alone have a family of their own. Little surprise that they are such a woeful models of grown-up responsibility for their younger siblings to emulate. Mom and Dad aren’t much better. By blowing their children’s inheritance on 80 percent of the UK’s luxury good purchases, from SUVs to cruises and antiwrinkle creams, Britain’s baby-boomers seem hell bent on ensuring that, even without coming resource shortages such as Peak Oil, their offspring will be the first generation in living memory to have a lowered standard of living.
Honk if you felt a pang of déjà vu. Take a look at the article and feel free to hit me up with some comments.
tech activist, nerd, gamer