danajohnhill.org

I don’t want to give the iPhone any more publicity, since Apple has already accomplished total media saturation. But I feel compelled to say, go to hell, iPhone. I have a threshold when it comes to advertising, and the iPhone has crossed it. That is actually saying something, considering how little time I allot to watching commercial television, and when I do it is almost always time-shifted via DVR, allowing me to skip commercials.

Apple, apparently aware of my viewing habits, has engaged in a relentless marketing campaign, encompassing every imaginable medium. It isn’t just television and magazines and internet sites. I imagine there are city buses and taxis emblazoned with iPhone posters; movie theaters with iPhone trailers before the show; college students awakening from a night of drunken partying with iPhone tattoos. I could tolerate almost all of that, iPhone, but you took it too far. You invaded my workspace.

I work for non-commercial public radio. In spite of this, there hasn’t been a day in the last two weeks when I haven’t heard something or other about the iPhone, from reviews of the product to features about how Apple is letting a lot ride on its success. Sure, these are all passed off as timely tech-news. But then I see it again on NBC Nightly News, with lines of people waiting outside Apple’s New York City store to be the first to have this wonderful new device. Well, here’s a question: how great is the need of these people for a do-it-all gizmo like the iPhone, if they can afford to sit on the sidewalk for a week waiting for it to go on sale? They obviously don’t have jobs.

Then, last night, as I fast-forwarded through the commercials during back-to-back episodes of The Office, I couldn’t help but notice that the iPhone was advertised during each and every break. How expensive must that be? I’ll give Apple credit, getting journalists to talk about the iPhone is a clever source of publicity, albeit unscrupulous. It’s also free. The billboards and full-page, glossy ads are decidedly not free. I really have to wonder if this contraption couldn’t maybe cost about $200 less had Apple not pumped hundreds of millions of dollars into its marketing campaign.

In any event, it doesn’t matter. Because the iPhone offers nothing of any practical use to me. I don’t want to watch a movie on a tiny screen; I don’t want to read a newspaper on a tiny screen; I don’t want to dial numbers on a tiny screen; I don’t want to spend $600 on an electronic device that doesn’t do anything better than other electronic devices I already own.