I still hate my iPhone. Oh I love a lot of things it can do or I wouldn’t have it but I despise the keyboard. I’ve been an iPhone gal for a few years now and I’m still not used to the onscreen keyboard and I make a lot of mistakes I never made with the Blackberry. Â Touching actual buttons makes the difference. But I can’t give up its other features so here I am, the reluctant iPhone user.Â
Unless you’ve been living in a cave, and perhaps even if you have, you know the iPhone 5 is coming out on Friday. Â It’s even more popular than Apple thought it would be. Â The company took 2-million pre-orders for the 5 in the first 24 hours it was available. They were unprepared for this so many of these people who are looking forward to their new smartphone won’t actually receive them until October. Â I would not want to be the poor soul who has to explain that one in person.
The 5 is smaller and thinner and lighter and a whole bunch of other things I don’t care about. Â It also requires you to buy a new adapter because the Apple power cords that you can currently use in all of their products can’t be used with the new iPhone. Industry analysts estimate Apple will make $100-million from the new adapters alone. It’s a scam on the highest level.
Knowing that there would be a rush on the 5, we got the idea to go and upgrade our 3G models to the 4. Â We do not have to have the latest and greatest thing and pay several hundred dollars for it. The Rogers store is having a fire sale on the 4 and 4S. Â For $99 each we got brand new 4S models. Â In another move of deep corporate greed, Apple reduces the capacity of the previous model when it’s releasing a new model and they did that with the 4 but not the 4S. Â The S stands for Siri, the voice command system which I will one day possibly learn to use.
So for a fraction of what it would have cost prior to Apple’s announcement that the iPhone 5 was on its way, we got tremendous improvements in speed and function. Â Well, I did anyway. Â Derek’s been having intermittent service since we switched. Â But that’s smartphones for you. Â Stupid, stupid smartphones.
I’m with you, Lisa – when my iPhone3 dies (which, for some reason seems imminent) we’re going 4 or 4S. I’m holding out on adapter changes as long as possible. As for the keyboard – thank goodness for spell check (although it tries to make its “it’s” every time!)