Part of what's wrong with America (and the rest of the "evolved" world)

[SoCalDem]

http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,132515-c,cellphones/article.html


Apple's iPhone Ships June 29
Ads reveal the date for release of two models of much-anticipated Apple phone.
Martyn Williams, IDG News Service
Monday, June 04, 2007 01:00 AM PDT

Apple will launch its iPhone in the U.S. on June 29, the company says in TV commercials that began airing on Sunday.

The much-talked-about iPhone combines the features of an iPod music and video player with those of a cellular telephone and will be available through AT&T Wireless Services Inc.

AT&T, which acquired Cingular Wireless, hasn't yet announced details of how it will sell the phones although long lines outside outlets are almost assured if the phone will be offered on a first-come, first-served basis.

Two models will be available. One with 4GB of memory will cost $499 and a version with double the memory will cost $599, the companies said previously.
Unveiled in January

Announcement of the launch date ends a five-month guessing game that began on Jan. 10 when Apple CEO Steve Jobs unveiled the iPhone during his keynote speech at the MacWorld Expo in San Francisco.

During the keynote Jobs touted the iPhone as "revolutionary" and demonstrated its features to an enthralled audience. Chief among them is Multi-Touch, a touchscreen display system that can differentiate and react to simultaneous touches from two fingers. Typically touchpanels cannot handle input at more than one point on the screen.

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and in most of the "other" world, women are treated as chattal or beasts of burden...children die because they don't have clean water or access to 50-cent's worth of medicine...andf religious fundamentalists scheme away at how to kill more of their "enemies".:eyes:

[MadHound]

1. Another gadget to seperate people from each other.

Cell phones, iPods, all of these gadgets are slowly but surely seperating each from the other. People would rather have buds plugged into their ears all the time than listen to the world around them, including people. People have more intimate relationships online that they do in real life. And rather than chatting with friends or strangers who are in front of them in real life, they instead wish to jabber with people on a cell phone.

No wonder this is becoming a harsher society, we're losing contact with each other.

[Matsubara]

3. Funny though how they appeal more to some than others...

I just bought our first cell phone in January, and I almost never use it. Over here in japan, net surfing is not so big, but texting and e-mailing on cell phones is a national obsession. Everyone everywhere seemes to constantly be fiddling with them.

I dunno, I guess I'm a fogey, or antisocial, I just don't use them much, and don't want to. I don't want to be reachable 24/7 either.

I much prefer talking to people face to face, and although I'm a longtime Macuser, I have no interest in the applephone or whatever it's called.

So much hype over just another doodad.

[MadHound]

4. Oh I find it appalling

Instead of getting a hot car or a young woman, my midlife crisis has taken the form of going back to college in order to teach elementary school. It simply amazes me that this generation is so cut off from their fellow human being. Either with ear buds jacked into their iPod, a cell phone in their ear, or some Blackberry device making them look quite Borg like, these people are interacting less and less with their fellow human and more and more with a machine. It isn't uncommon to see a group of friends walking around, each one involved with their own personal phone conversation rather than with each other. It is appalling.

I'm a luddite like yourself. I finally got a cell phone about two years ago at my wife's insistence. I started riding a Bajaj scooter back and forth to save on gas, and my wife laid down the law, a protective jacket and a cell phone in case there is any trouble. I rarely call on the damn thing, have it off most of the time, and its most practical function for me is that it keeps time. My wife and I got the most inexpensive plan possible, which had five hundred minutes each month. We use two hundred at the most, and the vast majority of those are from my wife.

[seabeyond]

2. well F*. at&t takes over land line. go to the work getting rid of them

only to have them take over my cell phone.

[bryant69]

5. OK, but how is the I-Phone causing Misogyny, lack of medicine for kids

and religious fundamentalism?

Bryant
Check it out --> http://politicalcomment.blogspot.com

[MedleyMisty]

6. One can talk on a cell phone

And still care about other people. Yeesh.

Have you ever read much history? People weren't all nice and happy before cell phones - for instance, I don't think that the Nazis used cell phones. Nor did slave owners and traders, or the people in the Crusades, or any horror that you want to think of.

I think that if you want to find the cause of humanity's problems, you're going to have to look a bit further. There probably is something in how the rich people in the first world countries have so much more than the rest of the species and can't empathize with them and are selfish and greedy and cruel and exploitative, but you can't pick out the cell phone from that and say it's all its fault.

[Karenina]

7. People are DYING in the DRC

to fulfill the insatiable desire for the cell phone with the newest bells, whistles, blinking lights and vibrator functions.