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I'm deeply suspicious of Apple. I know a handful of Mac users, and it's always seemed to me that every Mac purchase comes with a free "Lifestyle" and cult membership included. My computer is not an identity; it's an appliance. I don't want any trouble, Jobs. I'm just here to check my mail.

More crucially, over time, my reaction to Apple's ad campaigns has ranged from mildly insulted to openly hostile. The harder they try to convince me they are cool and fun and easy, the more I wish a swallowing hole would open in the earth below their headquarters, assuming it is above ground. For years they've told me, in so many words, "The computer you use is for stuffy, bespectacled dweebs! What are you, Elbow Patches, some kind of loser? Now, give us several hundred dollars." This tactic didn't work during third grade recess, and it's not working now.

Nonetheless, there's no denying that the iPhone is the most universally loved consumer device since the Tivo. Even if there is, there's absolutely no denying that my wife would have run over her grandmother with a moped to get one. Her Blackberry was literally held together with tape at the end. Eventually I relented to her pleas, we switched plans, and in return she got me a 3GS. (The "S" is for "something.") I've been fiddling with it for a month now, and I must admit that there is a lot to like about it, although-- sorry, you zealots-- it does have its flaws. But then, don't we all?

The Good:

It is a wonderbox of magic that knows what you want to do and did it already while you were thinking. I don't know how many of these features are unique to iPhones-- all of my previous phones had this single, killer app that would transmit your voice to people in other houses-- but my first days with the app store were like some sort of whirlwind cocaine binge. 90% of what I use my computer for can now fit in my pocket! Twitter and Kindle and Pandora and Youtube and Fandango andandandpantpantcollapse! I became the blowhard who settles an argument at the diner by pulling out his phone and looking it up on Wikipedia within days.

My dimwittery will forever be a secret now. I have lived in this city for decades but can get lost in an empty parking lot. I am incapable of finding a place I have not been to forty-seven times. Navigational intelligence has been crowded out of my brain by useful information like Huttese Star Wars dialogue and the name of the head GoBot. Thanks to my iPhone, however, no one needs to know: all I need to do is type in the name of the place, and the phone will pull up a map, draw a line on it, show you where you are, and occasionally whisper, "Almost there. Keep it together, buddy," when it senses panic. Now all I need to worry about is mowing down pedestrians because I was staring at my lap while operating a motor vehicle.

Multitasking. The first time I was on a phone call and needed to refer to a note I'd made on the phone, I was positive I would hang up on the caller, but no! You can click around like a clicking fool while on the phone and/or using five other apps, and the all-knowing wonderbox never even loses its place.

Double time! O blessed day! At long last, the iPod app allows me play podcasts at 2x speed, something I've been doing on my laptop for years. I'm an impatient man with a constant podcast backlog, so I cannot praise this perk loudly enough. Of course, having my temperament, my second thought after "Oh, thank God" was, "There is no compelling reason this feature shouldn't have been available for my iPod classic all along, you stingy bastards."

Shaking is encouraged. Committing violence against a phone makes it do things? It's like you know me.

Headphones optional. Forgetting your ear buds doesn't reduce the iPhone to pocket ballast; it just plays the songs and podcasts over the speakerphone! My ear doctor will be as delighted as I am.

Now 70% more jolt-free. If you are listening to music without headphones at full blast, and then you plug in the headphones, the volume automatically turns itself down to keep your tympanic nerve from being pulverized. It's the little things.


The Gripeworthy:

The suit of armor. Sure, it's pretty. For about twelve seconds. It's all glossy and sleek and shiny when you take it out of the box; then you see how pretty it is, you say, "Huh!" and the breath from your "huh" scuffs the finish. What would possess such a Thinking Different company to create a device meant to be used for everything all day everywhere you go and then make it out of gossamer fairy wings and gold leaf? After World War II, there were American tanks that returned from the European Theatre in better shape than the iPod that has been in my cotton jeans pocket for a year and a half. It's style over sense; you immediately have to cover all the sheen and elegance with a helmet and pads like the phone is about to be on Double Dare. It's still pretty under its rubber Trapper Keeper; too bad no one will ever see its precious design under there.

Immortal Apps. In addition to the apps you can download from iTunes, there are a handful that come pre-loaded on the iPhone, and I hope you like them because they aren't going anywhere. As long as I live, even when my retirement planning can be done on one page of the calendar, I will never use that Stocks app, but by God iPhone will shake hands with Bill Gates in Times Square before it will let me delete it. Apple knows better than I do. This is another symptom of the cartoon-frowny-face, don't-you-worry-your-pretty-little-head-about-it condescending paternalism Apple employs under the guise of making things "easy," and though I should be used to it by now it still drives me nuts. I don't want to hide these apps; I don't want an Island of Misfit Toys screen that I just never scroll to; I want them gone. If you'll let me accidentally delete the apps I paid you for, you should let me intentionally delete the free ones I'll never use. I'll bet you could find a way to get me another copy of that Stocks app if I really needed it.

To empty your trash, hit the "Edit" button? Whaa? This is probably just nitpicking, but with Apple's reputation for intuitive design and user-friendly experience I found the apparatus for moving and deleting mail clunky on an almost Soviet level. Maybe they think I would only throw out my whole inbox and are protecting me from myself again.

"Performance." I have had my Windows laptop for three years; I have had an iPhone for three weeks. One of them has never, ever frozen or crashed; one of them has a stroke a couple of times a week because I tried to listen to a podcast. Kiss my ass, John Hodgman!

The telephone and MP3 player apps. This one is largely unavoidable due to the inherent nature of the touch screen, but it seems that they have married the phone to the iPod in such a way that makes both features into the new device's biggest weak spots where I am concerned. It turns out being able to feel the tactile clickwheel is the key to how I use an iPod, which is to say "without looking down at it." While walking or jogging, do you typically skip songs or adjust the volume without taking your MP3 player out of your pocket? Get used to the sensation of colliding with mailboxes and lampposts. Have you grown used to using your iPod in the car? Enjoy dying on fire. If it's lying at an angle, the buttons aren't even in the same place anymore.

The goddamned sounds can't be goddamn changed, no matter what you goddamn do. Like every phone without a coiled cord coming out of its receiver, the iPhone allows you to change your ringtone to whatever you like. It even lets you customize ringtones for different people, so that Song of the Volga Boatman can play every time work calls. (Of course, you can only choose from songs you bought from iTunes, and then you have to pay for the song you already own again to make it a ringtone, and one day the soulless leeches will find a way to charge you for every time your phone rings, if not every time the song gets stuck in your head, but never mind.) Unfortunately, for reasons known only to the unfathomable dark god that belched it into this world, you cannot change the iPhone's "you've got mail" or "new voicemail" sounds. Why allow some changes but not others, other than to drive me quite mad? Never mind the fact that the chosen sounds are indistinct and mean nothing to me, forcing me to constantly gawp at my pocket like an ape roused from a sound sleep, saying, "What was that? What does that beep mean? Is my battery dying?" Apple has made no bones about wanting to take over the market with these phones; has it never occurred to them that more than one iPhone would occupy the same household?

IPHONE: [INSCRUTABLE BEEP]
WIFE: Is that you, or is that me?
ME: I don't know. You? I think? Mine's on the coffee table.
WIFE: Mine's on the coffee table too.
ME: I don't even know what that sound is. Are you expecting something?
WIFE: Would you just go look, please?
ME: This is going to be an awesome couple of years. Thanks, iPhone!

This obvious, mind-boggling flaw annoys me so much that just thinking about it makes me want to take off my shoe and go Khrushchev on the bedeviled phone, but if I do that I'll lose all my contacts and have to go make new friends in some other town.


In the end, who am I to complain that I live in a Jetsons wonderfuture but the robots are rude to me? It's the niftiest of gadgets. It has saved my bacon ten times since I got it. Just don't expect me to put an Apple sticker on my car.

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