Dear Apple, please don’t make a phone
written by Stuart on August 16th, 2006
Thats right. I am strongly opposed to apple (properly) entering the mobile phone market. Yeah, I hear you shouting, but lets think rationally for a moment here.
Firstly, I should say that since getting my first mac a couple of years ago I've become that annoying person you all know who answers every hardware or software related problem with the stock answer "get a mac". That's me. I love my macintosh, and wouldn't go back to using any other operating system or hardware unless you were going to pay me a lot of money. [No really, hire me!]
Secondly, I'll do a brief roll call of the mobile phone manufacturers who's products I have owned in the past. Nokia, Sharp, Siemens, Motorola, Samsung, HTC, LG, and most recently, Sony Ericsson…
What do all of these companies have in common? [1] I have at one stage or another cursed them for making such shoddy devices, devices which quite often fail to perform their only important function.
Sure, some mobile phones are better than others, but for the most part using a mobile phone is crap. The interfaces are rubbish, they are unreliable and they generally last a few months before they start acting up or become replaced by a new shiny model with it's buy me good looks hiding the same shoddy workmanship as its older brother.
So, Apple if anyone can enter this market and do a good job, it's probably you, I'm sure you'd create a great looking phone, and rethink the way we interact with mobiles in the same brilliantly simple manner you did with the digital music player. But I doubt even you, the demigods at cupertino, could make a mobile phone I'd be happy with.
My demands aren't particularly high, but I have this feeling of dread, deep in the bowels of my being that tell me it's not a good idea. Call it a hunch if you will, but I always trust my hunches. And that is why I dearly hope that the growing chorus of rumours is wrong, that you will steer clear, and leave me to hate on Sony Ericsson a bit longer. I don't want to hate you, but if you make a mobile phone I'll buy it, and if it's no better than the crap I already have I'll curse you too. Not in a witchcraft sorta way, I'll just get really angry when the battery dies in the middle of an important call or when the poor signal quality makes every call sound like it's coming in from the ARA General Belgrano.
As much as you have made my computing life immeasurably better, the demands of a mobile phone are different. I couldn't live with a spinning beach-ball when I'm dialing 999 to get assistance for some poor sod dying at the road-side. It just wouldn't do. Sure it would probably be the prettiest mobile phone the world has ever seen, but looks are worth sod all at 4am when you're trying to call a taxi and the call key is jammed and you're stuck in the rain having missed a whole load of Columbo repeats on late night TV.
Please, don't do it. Not only for my sake, but for your own. It will only damage the good work you have been doing recently.
Yours hopefully.
Stuart Frisby.
- Well yeah, smart arse, they all manufacture mobile phones [back]
Popularity: 71%
you care to much about this stuff. everyone knows mobile phones are crap. if you had one that worked you wouldnt need to buy knew ones would you!!!
I think the site would look much better on a blank white background. I find my eyes constantly darting to the side in an effort to work out what the image is
Apple’d make a mobile phone? Woot!
(lol, said that only to crack you up)
Don’t deny it: you’d buy.
Well, I’m late to this post…but here’s my token comments.
Apple haven’t brought out a mobile phone yet - but they already endorsed one made by Motorola (The ROKR)…the only mobile so far that comes with iTunes - Apple really made a big thing about it - seriously expecting it to take a sizeable slice of the MP3-playing mobile marketplace. And it didn’t really have much success at all.
Sure, if Apple had branded the ROKR as their own then it ‘might’ have sold more (and you probably would’ve bought one too Stuart) but it would still be a Motorola underneath.
It doesn’t look like Apple will make a mobile anytime soon…but, that’s a shame!
Fact: Mobile phones have operating systems too…for example some of the Sony Ericsson models still run of an OS based on Windows ME …(ME fer f**ks sake!!)
With OS X proving to be a better Operating System on the Mac (Vs. PC) time and time again…how much better would mobile phone operating systems be with a version of OS X powering them along?
An Apple Mac phone would be more than just visual eye-candy…it might also be a better phone technically too….and that’s worth waiting for.
You may want to check the below link out. Though most of the people I’ve talked to see it simply as the normal N80 with a few software upgrades to make wifi connections easier to set up - the ‘i’ therefore standing for ‘Internet’ not ‘Itunes’.
Misinformed they may be but at least they can confirm your fears are unfounded
Nokia will be doing the handset design for Apple in the near future it seems.
http://www.mobilementalism.com/2006/02/22/nokia-n80i-the-new-itunes-phone/
How clever, the Nokia N80 is my phone of choice and “IF” an iTunes package came out for it that I could install, I’d rip someones arm off for it !