5 reasons I won’t get an iPhone

by Brad Grier on June 12, 2007

in In the life,Lifestyle Technology,Marketing,Musings,News,On the web

  1. Cost. If the iPhone’s lis­ted prices were con­ver­ted to Cana­dian dol­lars, the iPhone would price out between $530 and $640 CAD. That’s way too much money for me to spend on a phone today. Yes it has other func­tion­al­ity, but I’ve got that covered; keep reading.
  2. Con­tract & add ons. In the US there’s a 2 year con­tract required. The base phone doesn’t (as far as I can tell) include a ser­vice con­tract. I can’t see that being any dif­fer­ent north of the bor­der. Now con­sider the type of data access you’d need. The iPhone offers many very cool online fea­tures that will quickly bite into your alloc­a­tion. You have to add this. Basic ser­vice for this cool puppy would be silly so you’d want to have the full data pack­ages. Pri­cing on this ‘seems’ (Rogers plan pri­cing is kinda all over the place) to start at $50.00/month. I’m a heavy online user so my costs would be more.
  3. I already have an iPod. My Nano is per­fect for music and pod­casts. Why would I want to have my phone bat­tery drained when I listen to music? How would this integ­rate into my exist­ing iPod systems?
  4. I already have a PDA I’m happy with. My Palm T|X. Same bat­tery drain issue. As well, my PDA is awe­some for doing what I need it to. I have all the soft­ware bought and installed. It syncs nicely with work and home com­puters. To con­vert everything over would take Mucho $$$.
  5. New pro­cesses to learn. Integ­rat­ing everything into one unit means I’d have to change the way I do things. My sys­tem works now for me. To use the iPhone I would have to delete and install new soft­ware for time man­age­ment, and cal­en­dar integ­ra­tion. I have no idea how well it’ll sync up with Out­look (at work) and what I’d use to sync with at home. I run Win­dows PC’s and Ubuntu. Is there a Linux Cal­en­dar­ing app that will work with the iPhone, avail­able now?? I’d need new meth­ods to grab my pod­casts (I don’t use iTunes). How would that work?

Too many unanswered ques­tions. So, the way I fig­ure things. I’d likely end up pay­ing over $1000 CAD to learn how to use a new gizmo, when my exist­ing giz­mos all do what I need currently.

An iPhone isn’t in my imme­di­ate future. Though, I guess if I really want the look of one, I could use an iPhoney :-)

***UPDATE*** Mar.23.09 I’ve just acquired an Apple iPod Touch. Not an iPhone, but enough of one to make me rethink some of what I’ve writ­ten above. I’ll post a review of it and my exper­i­ences at the Apple store once an issue is resolved…hopefully within a few weeks.

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{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }

1 chris June 12, 2007 at 2:58 pm

I admit I would love to get an iPhone, and I haven’t even seen one in person yet. And yes they seem quite quite expensive, but I guess it depends on what works for you.

1. Cost – Yes the list prices will probably be $549/$649 CDN (or thereabaouts). But that is, for better or worse, in the ballpark for so-called smartphones. Rogers, which would almost certainly be the Canadian carrier, is currently selling the brand new BlackBerry for 8800 for $500. Telus is selling the Palm Treo 700 for $549 with no contract (down to $200 if you commit to three years) and the Moto Q for $599 with no contract ($499 with a two year contract, and a sale price $99 for three years). Factor in how much slicker and easier the iPhone could be to use compared to the other smartphones, the built-in iPod with video, etc. and the cost is arguably competitive, especially for a brand new product line.

2. Contract and add-ons – Yes, we’ll have to see how those add up and that will depend mightily on Rogers. Here again, though, I doubt it would be any more than a typical BlackBerry/Treo user would pay for. Maybe less, actually, as the iPhone does have built-in wi-fi and switches to use wi-fi hotspots for Internet access automatically when it finds them. I’m waiting to see what the plans are.

3. I already have an iPod – I do too. I’m not against replacing it though, as it’s a few years old and doesn’t play video. The iPhone has the cool rotating wide screen, and the new user interface using the touch screen, which I’m sure will be big improvements over the iPod I already love. Being only 4/8 GB may take some getting used to for me, but it’s flash, right? I don’t think I’d be too worried about the battery life. I’m not a huge phone talker.

4. I have a PDA I’m happy with – Does a Moleskine notebook count? My work computer’s Outlook syncs (painfully and unintuitively) with my Nokia phone. I look forward to killing that relationship.

5. New processes to learn – Unlike you, I do not have a geeked-out Ubuntu home computer (iMac home computer, Mac Mini studio DAW), but like you I run Windows XP at work (and don’t like it much). So either way I would connect, home or at work, will work fine for me. I wouldn’t count on any Linux support for the iPhone. But for me, it would be quite an easy transition, plus I’d be carrying one less device around with me everywhere.

So we’ll see what happens in the coming months, but if I had my way, I know I’d love to get one.

2 Brad Grier June 12, 2007 at 9:22 pm

Heh, nice points Chris. Yeah, with the price of those other data phone packages, even though the iPhone is comparable, it’s still not for me…and I’m an early adopter! I just can’t justify it with the stuff I’ve already got.

I look forward to playing with your shiny new iPhone when you do get one (’cause you’ll likely get one sooner than I do :-) )

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