Hanging on the telephone

The iPhone is here! The iPhone is here! Well, all right, not here, exactly. It’s in the States, which is ‘here’ if you’re Steve Jobs. Steve, we’ve concluded over the ten years since he came back to Apple, uses the same map of the world as George W Bush. The one with America in the middle and… actually that’s about it. The only difference is that Steve can point to Texas on his. That’s how he knew it would be too much hassle to fly there for the last Apple Expo Paris.

Obviously, Limey Apple fans won’t be prepared to hang on till autumn to get their mitts on the new kit. (That’ll be the autumn that begins in February, after the summer that starts in October, according to the calendar that came with Steve’s map.) At the time of writing, shortly before the iPhone’s first public appearance in California, at least one eBayer is already offering it for sale in the UK at £299.99. Presumably he’s either a criminal, an idiot, or the kind of hopeless wide-eyed optimist who waited for the 3GHz Power Mac. But by the time you read this there’ll be plenty of real offers at real prices. In fact, eBay and Google will probably both have opened rival online stores dedicated entirely to transatlantic sales of nearly-new iPhones. Innocuous-looking Jiffy bags will soon be flooding in through HM Customs faster than you can say ‘What do you mean it doesn’t look to you like a personal gift of value not exceeding £36, officer?’

Not that you’d buy an iPhone to make phone calls, but it’s one of those handy extras There’ll be no UK airtime contracts available, of course, until those first snowdrops herald the arrival of autumn, which could leave premature iPhoners a bit stuck for a way to communicate with each other. Not that you’d buy an iPhone to make phone calls, for heaven’s sake, but you know, it’s one of those little extra features that would niggle at you if you couldn’t use it. Like the telly section of the iTunes Store. And the movie section. And Apple TV. And the ability to fudge the date of your stock options instead of wishing you’d waited to buy Apple shares until after Steve popped up at WWDC and proudly demonstrated that Leopard consisted of some zoomy icons.

Anyway, fortunately the iPhone is equipped with WiFi, so early-adopting Brits will be able to hook up without the benefit of a cellphone network, as long as they’re within 20 yards of each other. In London, this shouldn’t be a problem, since no self-respecting Mac-botherer would be caught further than that from Soho Square. Provincial Apple types will just have to gather in the local Waitrose.

Thanks to the combination of WiFi and web browsing capabilities, VoIP services should also be accessible, unless Apple has disabled this to appease its network partners. And, thinking about some of Apple’s partners over the years, it’s hard to name many that would select ‘appeased’ as the adjective to describe the feeling they were left with. So it may be possible to chat by iPhone after all, albeit on a connection with more digital noise than a Björk album. Watch out for casually dressed men with goatees shouting ‘I’m on the iPhone!’, then apologising.

Not that being on the iPhone will be anything to shout about. According to the latest market research, within four minutes of launch 98% of the world’s population will have bought one, thus negating the pose value that motivated them to buy it in the first place. At least this means iPhones will have a black market value of approximately zero, so they won’t be targeted by muggers, who’ll already be using theirs to stalk Nokia N95 owners.

Texting in your pocket minimises the risk of someone noticing your phone isn’t cool Just as well, because younger users will be deprived of their primary anti-theft measure: in-pocket texting. Most people below the age of consent seem to have mastered the knack of typing SMSes within the pouch on the front of their hoodie, which minimises the most serious risk associated with mobile use: someone noticing that your phone isn’t cool. Reading the replies presumably takes slightly more practice, although it hardly matters, since they’ll be gibberish too. The whole exercise is a sort of circular Turing test, where the goal is merely to sustain the illusion of information being exchanged. You know, like an SEC investigation.

But number keys that are just pixels on a flat glass screen will be pretty hard to operate by feel. To use an iPhone, even teenagers will have to hold it up and look at it, an unfamiliar level of coordination that could send their gangly forms crashing into nearby lampposts. Which, this being 21st Century Britain, will automatically shout at them, take their picture, X-ray them for knives and email their DNA to the CIA.

Maybe it’s no bad thing if autumn comes a little late this year.

Adam Banks remembers when gadgets had moving parts.

First published in MacUser, 6 July 2007

Tagged as: Apple, Design, iPhone, Law, MacUser