I’ve broken some kind of barrier. My interest level in early technology adoption has gone from eleven to less than one. The days of acquiring the latest and greatest on the day of release (or close to it) are over for me.
Here’s the question: Is it me or is it technology itself? I suspect the latter.
I passed on the iPhone because it’s a walled garden—you can’t add anything to it that doesn’t pass muster with Apple (unless you jailbreak it)—it runs on AT&T’s craptacular network (yes, yes, the very same AT&T that cooperated in former President Bush II’s warrantless wiretapping program, all indications are that it sucks as a telephone, and its two-year contract costs more than a MacBook Pro. Are you kidding me?
Google’s Nexus One may hold promise, but it’s too soon to tell. Google is learning the hard way that when you actually sell stuff—as opposed to giving away services in order to sell ads around them—you have to provide support. And real support services cost real money. Google releases a mobile operating system that is open source—or at least partly so; the services on which it actually makes money remain proprietary—and then turns around and competes with its partners. Is that a sustainable business model? Really?
My wife and I gave up our mobile phones last October when Qwest, our carrier, got out of the business and became an agent for Verizon. We had grandfathered plans: US$30 per month for 1,300 minutes on each phone plus US$25 for unlimited 3G data on my line. None of the other vendors can come close to that deal. So we passed, and added unlimited voice to our landline. No dropped calls and exceptional call quality; imagine that. My line in the sand for mobile is now US$50 per month per line for unlimited voice and data.
