iPhone = Iraq War

I know that almost no one gets my vitrol on this subject, but I just can't help myself.

The Iraq War, in historical perspective (or, the perspective of people who weren't fucking idiots and were screaming at the top of their lungs for reason once the 9/11 dust cleared), looks like this:
US gets attacked by group angry about our presence in the Middle East, everyone rallys around the flag. Conservative group in power sees perfect opportunity to complete four pet goals at once: 1. give rich and powerful corporate executive friends infinite oil-slick handjobs (or in Cheney's case, outright whacking off, considering how much money he still gets from Haliburton) 2. focus public anger against an external threat for political gain, 3. try to run the experiment of successfully using American military hegemony, both to overthrow the spectre of Vietnam and to be able to have more influence in the world at large, 4. Do the rash thing that Daddy was too wise to do. George HW Bush got an ear stud in the first Gulf War, so his son had to go way further to rebel (Prince Albert).

The war was sold to the public as a means of protecting ourselves in the war that had been started on the enemy...except it was against a different enemy, and the war strengthened the enemy, and caused many innocents to become enemies by spreading poverty, neptostically appointing friends to run/control the country's resources, etc. In short, the announced reason for the war was never the real reason for the war, and the war actually had the OPPOSITE effect of what we said it would do. This is a peculiar form of irony that is specific to the 2000s America. A cultural mood of self-defeating fakeness. The exact formula applies with a number of the other Bush political policies (tax cuts, energy policy, etc.)


The EXACT same logic is at work with the iPhone. Every single review - even those ones that gush about its multimedia playback capabilities, as if mp3 and video players larger than 8gb had yet to be invented or something - mentioned the biggest area of inadequacy of the iPhone being....the fucking phone!!! That's 5/6ths of the name they fucked up! It is on the worst carrier in the US, the price is outrageous, it is complicated and clunky to make and answer phone calls. Apparently the way to "revolutionize" phone usage is to make it really obnoxious. The only thing revolutionized is the extent to which consumers will thank a company on their knees for the right to grossly overpay (the profit margins on the iPhone, like all other products, are HUGE. Apple gets away with price rape just because no one has the self-esteem to say no!). Oh, and the reason why they went with AT&T? no other phone carrier would allow Apple to keep a big chunk of the yearly phone fees for themselves. What a fuck you to the consumer!! The iPhone wasn't about making phones better; it is finding a way to get people to buy a multimedia player (aka, the ipod) AGAIN, and to make them more reliant on itunes/apple crap. What genius product is next, Apple? The iPorto'Potty, where instead of a toilet inside, there's just a bunch of food? Or the iSunGlasses that end up just shining superfulous lights in your eyes?



Nothing Apple has ever done has been genius from an invention standpoint, just a business/marketing standpoing. OS X has a few strong advances on XP, but a lot more GAPING holes! (no DirectX, no systems rights customization, no domains and thus no good for businesses/colleges, no support for thousands and thousands of free software out there, no alternatives to crappy/evil programs like itunes). And that's the best thing they've ever done - that operating system. Mac hardware is nothing to be impressed about, especially since they don't make the important parts anymore. Windows sucks dick in a number of ways itself, but it is vastly easier to avoid using flawed products with so many free alternatives floating around. Apple is a small-market-share monopoly, whereas Microsoft is a huge market share in that it has its finger in everything, but you can easily avoid actually giving any money to them.


Edit: In my anti-Apple rant, I ended up fudging some facts when I was trying to identify OS X negatives. Which I realized only after the fact (it supports active directory fine, the ones I use at work just have that disabled). I'm not totally as irrational as I seem; I recommended that my ex-roommate Kerri switch from a pc laptop to a macbook because she doesn't know anything about computers and the simplicity would help her. But I, like every other computer enthusiast, balks at Apple's monolithic approach to its overpriced hardware. I'm going to be building my own machine this summer once the core2duo 6850 price drop hits that far outstrips the highest end desktops Apple has available, for a dramatically reduced cost. But if I didn't do anything with my computer except surf the web, liked wasting money, and didn't hate the Apple aesthetic..then I might make the switch and enjoy OS X's handful of nice features (although except from target mode and a few UNIX command line tricks you can do, I can't think of any that would benefit a single user).