Tuesday, 15 February 2011

How do you know if someone has an iPhone? Because they tell you

Apple's iPhone 4 (Picture courtesty of Apple)

By Dan Morris

Is it me, or are the ‘older generation’ getting altogether, far too comfortable using 21st century gadgets.

Are you over the age of 40? Do you own an iPhone?

Can I ask why?

Without trying to sound like a moron, do you have any real reason to buy such a gadget?

I’m willing to put it out there, that before the iPhone, you didn’t even know who Apple were, or what they where about. Granny Smith is not the boss of Apple. So what persuaded you to part with such an excessive amount of money for something you'll almost certainly only get 25 per cent of the use out of.

Perhaps we just have to hold are hands up to the marketing prowess of Steve Jobs and his increasingly growing empire, or alternatively we can put it down to the sheer nature of consumerism, whereby even the complete technophobes among us now own one - without really knowing why.

There’s that saying; how do you know if someone has an iPhone? Well, because they tell you, and even the older generation of iPhone users are no stranger to this stereotype.  The thing is, every time I see them struggling to operate one, I feel compelled to ask: "WHY THE HELL DID YOU BUY SOMETHING YOU HAVE NO USE FOR?" - Of course I don't, but I sure as hell think it.

What's most annoying is the obvious reasons for having one; everybody has one. I don't begrudge people over 40 owning an iPhone but when they can't even download iTunes to make it work correctly, my patience runs thin. What's iTunes? Exactly.

Surely a Nokia 3310 would suffice, after all, these people don’t play mobile games, rarely send a text message, don’t Tweet and aren’t on Facebook. Oh wait, apparently they do all of the above.