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Why I Won’t Be Buying An iPhone 3G

I don't dispute that the iPhone is an extremely cool little gadget, for a whole host of reasons I probably have no need to explain to most folks likely to be reading columns on this Website. There is also much blather about the iPhone being a satisfactory replacement for a road-warrioring laptop computer.

However, even though Apple's iconic smartphone has finally made it's long-delayed debut here in the Great White North, I won't be buying one. Now, strictly speaking, virtually the entire county where I live - one of the geographically largest in Nova Scotia but sparsely populated, is outside Rogers Communications' GSM/GPRS coverage range, the nearest edge of which is about 30 road miles away, so there wouldn't be much point anyway, but even if there was a Rogers GSM tower close by, I still wouldn't buy an iPhone because for starters there is no way in God's green earth that I would pay $70 or more a month for phone service and handheld Internet access. Especially locked into a three-year contract. That works out to $2,720 including the cost of the iPhone itself but not including taxes, or about the price of a 17" MacBook Pro.

Indeed, I don't have a cellphone of any sort, largely because I philosophically resist the concept of locking into multi-year contract commitments for any sort of service, and also assuming the obligation to pay for incoming calls over which I have no control. I don't have to commit to a term contract of any sort for my basic land line phone service, my long distance service, my Internet service, or my household electricity service, and I balk at doing it for anything else.

For example, I have a long distance service that charges me a very modest rate for calls actually made, on a per-second rather than a per-minute basis, and nothing else - no plan fees, no "network fees" no contract, no nothing extra. When I heard of that service becoming available, I was able to dump my previous long distance provider immediately and make the switch, and if a better deal than I have ever presents itself, I'll do the same again. And if smartphone service ever becomes commodified to that degree, I'll get interested.

Other folks take a more middle-ground approach. Reader Terry cced me a letter he sent to Apple, noting that while he was among those Canadians who bought a 3G iPhone from Rogers Communications on its inaugural weekend, in order to get a 8GB 3G at the $199 rate, he had to increase his phone plan from $20 per month (150 minutes) to $35 per month (250 minutes)), and that rate does not include any additional service, no voicemail, caller ID, etc. etc. Terry did not subscribe to any data plan, since, like me, he lives in a community where 3GHe says he will take advantage of Rogers Wifi Hotspots when they're available - or WiFi from his home network.

He says he would be interested in an unlimited data plan (for $30 per month!) if Rogers ever offers 3G service in his area of Canada, although he's not holding his breath even though Rogers charges him $7,50 a month for a "Network Systems fee" that purportedly covers network 'development costs, and notes that particular charge is the subject of a class action lawsuit right now.

When I buy a computer, I'm free to purchase Internet service from any supplier I choose. Ditto for land line telephones, and that's the way I like it. I'm jut not interested in owning expensive hardware that is useless (or at least crippled) without being tied to one particular sort of proprietary service charges.

If you'll pardon a brief digression here, again speaking philosophically, I'm probably more on the Open Source Linux wavelength than Apple's. What keeps me coming back to the fruit stand is the nonpareil elegance and slick, low-hassle functionality of the Mac OS. I'm no Apple fanboy, but I am a consummate Mac OS fanboy, and I figure that ponying up $129 every couple of years or so for a system version upgrade (if you don't happen to get it thrown in with a hardware upgrade) is a reasonable tariff for what you get. On the other hand, InformationWeek's Serdar Yegulalp reported last week that Ubuntu Linux's Mark Shuttleworth is expressing ambitions to compete with or beat the Macintosh at its own game, with a stated goal of making sure "the free software ecosystem can deliver a Mac OS-like experience, or an experience that will compete with the Mac OS." Shuttleworth quite reasonably sees Apple as the gold standard of the computer user experience, and believes that while it will be a challenge, the innovation inherent in the Free software process can deliver an experience that is comparable and in many ways superior. I wish him and his colleagues every success with that aspiration, will keep watching desktop Linux's progress with intense interest, and if they ever get the user-friendliness into line with the Mac OS, all bets are off.

Anyway, back on topic, unfortunately, in Canada, the prospects are not that promising for the wireless market to free up anytime soon. Unfortunately, it seems to be tightening up. There are just three national cellphone service providers in Canada - Rogers Communications, Bell Canada and Telus Corp, and while that theoretically could provide the market structure for price competition, it manifestly hasn't, and indeed a chummy price detente seems to exist among the big three, unlike with other industries that have high fixed costs, such as airlines, where competition tends to generate price wars or at least sharply competitive pricing and discounting.

Canada's wireless carriers, on the other hand, obviously are loathe to compete on price and seek rather to differentiate from each other with hardware products offered such as Rogers with the iPhone and distinct service package bundles - which of course bump up the cost of service to the consumer, as opposed to countries where real competition exists like Hong Kong and India where cell fees run about a penny per minute.

The iPhone has already had a profound impact on the wireless industry in Canada, with Rogers evidently blindsided by the intensity of grassroots wrath that descended on them over their iPhone service fee announcement, and their competitors Bell Mobility and Telus are also feeling spillover heat for their incredibly clumsily-timed (in light of the iPhone backlash) revelation that they will start charging 15 cents per incoming text message for users who don't sign up for a service plan package. The cellphone providers have had it too much their own way in a cosy, three-way "family compact," refusing to compete on price and raking in the profits. Leave it to Apple to stir the pot and inspire "thinking different."

However, back to my own iPhone resistance, while it's mostly about the cost, it's not all about the cost. I also dislike touchscreen keyboards intensely, am not a fan of touchscreen input in general, and find the number of typos in email sent to me by my iPhine-using friends unencouraging, so if I were to get a smartphone, I would be much more likely to opt for a BlackBerry or other product with a real, analog keyboard. If Apple ever wants to rope me in as an iPhone customer, they need a real, analog keybaord too - at least a plug-in, external one perhaps.

I also recoil from surfing the Internet on a display that tiny. I hate scrolling, and it's bad enough on smaller laptop computers. The iPhone (and other Internet-capable smartphones) give you the Hobson's choice option of viewing browser pages so tiny you can't see or read anything, or endless, tedious scrolling over partial page views. If that's what floats your boat, more power to you, but you can have it. I wouldn't mind telephony capability being built into a road-warrioring laptop computer, but as for the iPhone as some sort of adequate replacement for a laptop, not even close IMHO. I'm not prepared to make those sorts of compromises. A regular (cheap, no-frills) cellphone and a real laptop makes a lot more sense to me, and in that vein, I don't see why a MacBook Air with iPhone-like functionality, or perhaps something along the lines of the hot-selling Asus Eee PC, which sells for iPhone-like prices but offers a sweet-spot combination of featherweight heft and svelte dimensions combined real, laptop functionality and reasonable viewing area with would not be a smash-hit. PhoneBook anyone?



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cmoore@macopinion.com

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