Worst of the Week: iPretend

Hello! And welcome to our Friday column, Worst of the Week. There’s a lot of nutty stuff that goes on in this industry, so this column is a chance for us at RCRWireless.com to rant and rave about whatever rubs us the wrong way. We hope you enjoy it!
And without further ado:
So, Apple is having its annual developers pow-wow next week and most are expecting the maker of all things iCool to unveil its latest iPhone iteration. And, thanks to some nefariousness over the past month or so, I think most of us have a pretty good idea of what that new device will look like and what updates it’s likely to include.
But, what’s the fun of knowing all of that. It’s like finding out how bad a punch from Clubber Lang is going to hurt before he punches you. Again, where’s the fun in that?
So, I say let’s pretend we don’t know what Apple is going to unveil and instead try to guess what it could be. This is awesome in two ways. First, it involves pretending, which is something I can never get enough of. (I often pretend I could take a punch from Clubber Lang.) And second, it takes us back to previous years when we did not know quite so much about what Apple was about to launch and that is sort of like time travel, but in reverse. I like to think of those years as simpler times, when if you told someone you were going to twitter they looked at you funny and told you to get a room.
So, follow me as we enter the wonderful world of iPretending …
(Setting the scene): Here we are a few days before Apple is expected to announce some mysterious updates to its iPhone and the world is waiting with baited breath as to how the Confucius of Cupertino Mr. Steve Jobs is going to rock our metaphysical worlds.
My first guess is that the new iPhone will include an advanced touch screen that instead of reacting to input, it will initiate contact. That’s right. It will be able to sense what you want to do and actually reach out to you to help accomplish that task. The feature will at first completely freak people out resulting in an increase in uncontrolled screams from iPhone users as well as result in serious injury in some cases as people are so freaked they actually throw the device at the head of the person nearest to them. (Hopefully not Clubber Lang. You don’t want to make him angry.)
These injuries will be substantial as word on the street is that the second update to the device will be that it will be made out of a new material recently discovered on one of Steve Jobs’ private islands that is stronger than titanium, but lighter than a super-model. It will be called Jobsonium and it will trade on the black market not for money, but for the precious horns from unicorns. (Luckily, Apple has its own herd of unicorns that it’s able to extract their precious horns from. And I also hear Apple has its own cafeteria with subsidized lunches. That place sounds awesome.)
A little bird told me that the new iPhone will also finally bridge the gap between network technologies by implementing alien technology in the form of smart radios that will allow the device to work on any radio frequency or signal. (Apple was able to secure this alien technology quite easily as it has its own head of aliens over behind its cafeteria.) This is intended to muffle the riff-raff always complaining about not being able to get a signal on their iPhones by providing access to any and all signals.
The technology will allow the new iPhone to utilize any AM or FM channel that is running a commercial where the advertisers phone number is shot out in rapid-fire speed at least three times, microwaves, string that is used between a pair of tin cans, any waves of communications coming from aliens, waves at a wave pool and brain waves. This last feature will be kept quiet for some time as Apple is still fine tuning the technology that will eventually allow Jobs to stop sending e-mail replies to those lucky enough to be acknowledged by his existence and instead allow Jobs to speak directly to their minds. E-mails are so 2009.
Perhaps most impressive is what the hair dresser of a friend who knows the cousin of a guy that hangs out in a bar near Apple’s campus said would be the most awesome feature of the new iPhone: a new feature called “iEverything.”
iEverything will be Apple pushing the boundaries on the whole multi-tasking phenomenon in that instead of just allowing users to do a few different things at once, it will require users to do everything at once. No longer will users be able to sit, staring slack-jawed at some YouTube clip on their iPhone wasting precious time and brain resources. With iEverything, whenever the device is on all of the applications and functionality of the phone will be running whether needed or not. This will provide for the utmost usability as well as quiet all of those current complaints from users that they can’t listen to the Black-Eyed Peas while playing Sudoku. This will also cause a slight increase in the instances of iPhone users shaking uncontrollably while using their device, but not too significant to be very noticeable.
As we can see, the next iPhone is going to be amazing and make the current model look like a rotary telephone. And, as can be seen by the shanty towns already being erected next to every Apple store, people can’t wait.
<back to reality): Now of course we all know that none of this is going to be made available on the next iPhone, but wasn't it nice to go back in time for just a few minutes to at least try to capture what it was like to shake with anticipation in not knowing exactly what the new iPhone was to offer and instead relying on half-crazed rumors?
See isn’t pretending fun?
OK, enough of that.
Thanks for checking out this week’s Worst of the Week column. And now for some extras:
–Definitely looks like Sprint Nextel is sticking to its guns about its “4G” service really being 4G. This seems like a logical idea and in no way do I see this ending badly or causing any consumer confusion.
Also props to those carriers that have so far resisted the urge to call their next-generation networks “4G.”
–I am not much for numbers (I think they are pretentious and elitists), but our man Jim Patterson provides a nice breakdown of why AT&T Mobility might have recently re-jiggered its data pricing plans and why others may follow.
I welcome your comments. Please send me an e-mail at dmeyer@ardenmedia.com