Predictable iStories
NOW: iPhone-friendly pages!
All entries will be added in black text below. As soon as it comes true, the text will be turned into dark red. Added ideas in blue.
It's inevitable that people will have opinions about the thing. When have they never not?
Idea: It's Great.
Many early adopters will be satisfied. How did i ever live without it will pour from the lips of some.
Remember empowerment? Geeze, those were the Good Old Days. You didn't just acquire an ability through a device, tool or software program. Suddenly you were empowered to schedule your dentist appointment in blue text on an electronic calendar. Hot dawg.
You didn't hear empowerment negatives. My secretary fell into the computer was not empowerment talk in the sloganeering sense, but it was a truth. My video edit bay, darkroom, writing desk, drawing table, grand piano and record collection all fell into there--made much more powerful as 1s and 0s.
Early predictions that the box containing the 3 x 5 card collection of recipes would burrow into my hard drive were greatly exaggerated. "Um, what else could it do, Bill?" "Dunno. Play solitaire?"
Complexity at a level only computation could provide was born with the Spreadsheet. With the Internet, the Killer App reached out to the masses.
Remember convergence? Everything was supposed to be gobbled up by everything else. Trends moving East were supposed to merge with trends moving North and somehow the combination of the two moving North East was going to be a Good Thing.
How many lives has the cell phone preserved? People have been able to call for help from under avalanches, after accidents and immediately as crimes initiated. Our level of readiness to reach out for help is greatly enhanced. But then, how many car crashes and deaths from inappropriate cell phone use have occurred?
The iPhone represents a new combination. Surely it will cause a lot of HSOD behavior. (Head Slap Of Discovery.) And the idea that in-your-pocket connection is a Good Thing will sink in.
6/9/08: This notion has gone hog wild. Here come the 3G speed, games, apps, enterprise solutions and GPS receivers in iPhone Gen 2.
In the abstract, where prior cell phones gave us Speak-Linking and short Write-Linking, the iPhone adds Observe-Linking in a new level of converged complexity. It definitely converges these elements into a new molecule and some will find out how that lifts their horizons.
See also:
- Reviewers rave. People who are good at analyzing tech go ga ga.
- oPrah's iPhone. Gives one away to each audience member.
- iBush. Why would you want a phone for your eye?
- Celebs drown in giveaway iPhones at award shows.
- Gary Kaparov plays chess with 100 iPhone users interactively.
- iPhone connection becomes requirement for Beta Theta Pi.
- First prize: iPhone. Second prize: iPod. Third prize: Zune. Fourth prize: two Zunes.
- TiffaniPhone 18 kt gold. Tasteful, elegant. Also available in platinum.
- New teen flash mob: the 'iphone-in.
- August 1. One million iPhones sold. (inital stocks sold out in seven HOURs)
- New Segway feature: iPhone dock.
Idea: It doesn't fulfill me.
Some early adopters won't be as completely fulfilled with it as they would be with the cash in hand instead.
Oddly enough, the iPhone--even though it doesn't have a blinkingly fast Internet access, has become the #1 portable Internet page downloading gizmo. Beating the pooh out of all those mobile-windows using other gizmos.
You can't please all of the people all of the time. That's what Lincoln really was trying to say. Today, five days before iPhone Day, it's all kootchie koo and put your hands together and give a big round of applause for...
But before Week One is out, some folks will find that no matter what, their previous habits, expectations and needs are not met by the iPhone. They'll dream up curmudgeonly pithy names for it. The iPhoney, the iPaidWhat, the iPickPocket and so on.
The press will give equal time to the nay-sayers. It's good journalism, after all, to promote public controversy. Dividing people sells ad space. Look what the press did with the global warming issue. Giving equal time to any contravening view seems to be the Rule Of Journalism. Press coverage is not about giving proportional space to disproportionate opinions.
So the stories of Grumble Grumble and The Clown Who Never Could Text Message Still Can't will be broadcast farther and wider than they deserve.
Numerous people will be completely bummed out when they realize there will eventually be an iPhone2.
See also:
- iCheating scandal at West Point.
- iPhone disrupts pacemaker.
- Jet crash suspect: iPhone.
- Lack of parental controls bans iPhones in Alabama.
- Bomb/gun scare resolution: iPhone in jacket.
- He got the house. She got the iPhone.
- New word: iPron.
Idea: I sat on it. It broke.
Lookie this: It fits in my haunch pocket. Whoops, I slipped/sat/fell on a rake. Crunch.
See also:
- It's not that waterproof.
- It stopped a bullet and saved my life.
- Don't put it in the same pocket with Mentos.
- The Xray machine at the airport killed it. Or did it?
- You can't throw it/skip it across water that far.
- Dropped iPhone jams brake pedal.
- iPhone battery bursts into flames. iRecall.
- Child/goat/cow (etc.) swallows iPhone.
- Keeping iPhone in BVDs promotes ED.
- And eventually, Hundred year old lost iPhone discovered behind radiator in building demolition.
Idea: The Deadly iPhone.
The dashboard is a bad place for entertainment, research and email. My iPhone shoulder holster idea, while successful as a product, turned out to have unintended consequences.
Police discovered the reason for the seven car pile-up that killed three in New Jersey this morning was an iPhone. The car that started the chain of events was being driven by John Custworthy, and his ATT records show he was composing an email at the moment his SUV crashed into...
Officers pumped 34 rounds into Mr. Rodriguez when he reached under his coat for his iPhone and one of the officers shouted "Gun!"
Idea: Damn. It doesn't have XYZ.
I liked what it had, but until it contains XYX, it's not for me.
Folks have said this, but in general, it is THE best received electronic gadget ever. Ever.
Proof that if Apple thinks it's going to will every heart and mind, they had better get up off their collective ass and advertise this thing.
6/9/08: Gen 2. Wholey Cao. √
Potential candidates for XYX:
- GPS -Done
- Video Phone
- Mind Control dialing
- Faster Net connection -now with G3.
- Walkie Talkie
- Sonogram
- iGaggle
- Heart Monitor
- Lojack -or something like it.
- Beverage cap opener
- Geiger Counter
- Chem Lab
- Voice Recognition
- Text to Speech
- Air Guitar
- Matefinder-or something like it (local peeps list detector).
- Et Cetera -loads of Cetera.
- iTunes store connection
- Google traffic status reports
Idea: iMugged.
Who will be the first victim of iMugging? Thousands of iPods have been yanked from their owners, but who will be the first victim of iPhone iCrime? I give it less than an hour.
Idea: iPlage.
The New Yorker Shouts and Murmurs column will mirror ideas embodied in this page.
They did not.
You heard it here. Second. First was here.
Is this the iPhone Gen 2 3? The one that actually has XYZ? B'cause the iPhone 1.0 didn't have camera #2.
Dad drat the ding busted blankety heck, anyhow:
Cancel that last curse. Rumor has it...
