The Internet-tech world is abuzz with the iPhone 4G Loser controversy right now – which really is more the irony that the news sort of replaces the screaming headline news of the recently released iPads earlier this month, and how local retailers here are selling their units for twice the retail price.
As the story goes: someone who was working on the iPhone 4G accidentally left it behind at a bar. The unit gets picked up by someone else who initially intended to return it to the owner, but upon realizing that the unit was the top-secret iPhone 4G, had a change of heart and instead put it up for bidding. Popular news site Gizmodo apparently paid an princely sum involving four-digit figures to pick up the device, which they next proceeded to dissect – and then determine that yep, it’s the real thing. Apple, not surprisingly, now wants their toy back, and there’s talk of law suits coming down Gizmodo’s direction.
Opinion sure is divided whether the leak is deliberate on Apple’s part. On the one hand, some think it’s inconceivable that Apple would knowingly leak out what is a bonafide prototype of a hot product, knowing their penchant for jealously guarding product secrets (and people have committed suicide apparently out of terror of what Apple would do if you bloop there). On the other hand, others are saying this must be one of Apple’s cleverest ‘gotcha’ tricks they’re playing – they’ve deliberately let out the leak just to generate free publicity for their next big toy.
Either way, I’m tempted to just dump the Apple iPhone when the thing wears out and just go for an Android phone next. The phone’s got a fatal defect now – at least two or three times a day, it’ll state dumbly “No SIM card installed”. And everytime that happens, instead of an iPhone I’ve got an iBrick.
I don’t want to come off as a contrary prat, but am I the only one who finds all this iPhad craze a little silly? Insofar as Apple’s products are functional I enjoy them as much as the next person, but I feel sometimes as if the lifestyle bus left without me. I mean, it’s a phone, right? I’ve been using iterations of these things since I was 3 years old and, try as they might, no one has improved upon them since then. If anything they’ve regressed because all I ever seem to do with today’s phone is misplace it. That, and I can’t use today’s handphones as a weapon. And in America, an object is valued only to the degree to which it can be used to maim someone.
Haha.:) Too true, bud. I think the real value of these crazes lies in the meta-content that come out of it, and not just the product itself. The slandering, comments from posts, online wars and spin-stories are a lot more fun to read than what one might get from the toy itself.:)