Phoney Baloney

Today is the day that Apple is expected to unveil the all-new, improved, latest, greatest model of its wildly popular iPhone, expected to be called the ... wait for it ... iPhone 5. It seems like only yesterday that Agnes and I went home from the Apple Store with our brand-spanking new iPhone 3GS's. The new iPhone is expected to feature 750,000 megapixel front, rear, top, bottom, and side cameras, electronic messaging, radar, sonar, GPS, MSG, and PDQ. It parallel parks itself. It slices and dices, plays games, scans funky pixillated images, and raises the dead. And you can even make phone calls with it.

Will wonders never cease?

I remember a time when you used a telephone to talk to other similarly-equipped people in distant locations. It weighed 30 pounds, sat on the desk or table, and a straight wire connected the telephone body to a wall socket, while a tightly-curled wire of insufficient length connected the receiver to the body. If you wanted to pace while you were on the phone, you had to buy a long enough set of wires, and carry the telephone body (a heavy little sucker made of indestructible bakelite) in one hand and the receiver in the other.

Now, of course, telephones aren't just for communicating by voice - they are multifunctional devices which allow you to annoy people within a wide radius by sharing your most intimate conversations at high volume while simultaneously taking their pictures and surfing the net. Sort of like a twenty-first century party line. Mike will remember what that is.

Whatever happened to the good old telephone? There was a time when you could defend yourself against attack in your home by smacking an intruder with a 30-pound bakelite telephone. With a four-ounce cell phone, not so much. When you wanted privacy, you dragged the entire phone at the end of its 40-foot cord into the bathroom and shut the door.

If I want to take a picture, I can use my trusty Canon. If I want to surf the net, I have my iMac (with a 24-inch screen) and my laptop (with a 17-inch screen) ... I'm getting too old to squint at a teeny little 4-inch screen on a cell phone. If I want to play games, I can haul out the Yahtzee, Monopoly, or Scrabble boxes.

So ...

The Luddite in me is grumpily scowling at the introduction of a fancy new iPhone, while the tech aficionado in me is salivating like Pavlov's dogs at the thought of the same toy.

Wouldn't it be nice if there was an iPhone that just ... well ... made phone calls? Of course, that would defeat the purpose of the whole thing, wouldn't it?

I think I'll wait for the new iPhone 6, which is already rumored to include a Swiss Army option that also provides a screwdriver, corkscrew, chainsaw, and - for inner-city use - 9mm pistol with 15-round magazine ...

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo