You know that joke where you say a year called and it wants its whatever back? Yeah, it’s been overused and turned into a cliché, which is OK because the Macalope thinks this piece by the Tampa Bay Times’s Daniel Ruth was literally filed from 1920.
“Consumers Picked a Sour Apple” (tip o’ the antlers to @JonyIveParody)
Exhibit A:
Is it too late to bring back the hand-crank phone?
Prrrrrrobably?
Apple spends an estimated $2.1 billion a year on the research and development of its products. No doubt a sizable portion of that budget was dedicated to the company’s recent rollout of the much-frothed-over iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus gizmos…
Doohickeys. Whatchamacallits.
…giving its customers even greater critical access to nude selfies, texts reminding people where one is currently consuming moo goo gai pan, and interminable, inconsequential telephonic babble.
Technology is stupid! Kids these days! Boy the way Glenn Miller played!
In the first week of sales, 10 million gullible people lined up…
Or ordered online and had their iPhones delivered to their doorstep like the Macalope did. Which would probably make Ruth even madder.
…to plop down at least $200 to purchase a device that will… well, essentially do exactly what their iPhone model whatever already did.
And then they all went to Ruth’s house where they apparently stood on his lawn. Now he demands that they get off of his lawn. But they will not. They stand there, implacably Tweeting, Facebooking, texting, doing the Foursquare and whatnot, in defiance of all that is good and true and American, gosh darn it.
Despite Apple’s expenditure of vast sums to create the iPhone 6 Plus, along with the work performed by the nation’s finest techno geeks, potentially fatal consumer flaws in the device apparently went unnoticed.
These flaws are so bad they will kill you. Or the device. Or both.
It seems the iPhone 6 Plus cannot be jammed into today’s fashionable pockets.
Are you literally typing this on a manual typewriter while a Victrola plays behind you? Because that’s how it reads.
And if one somehow successfully manages to dig, shove, push, wedge, cram, or otherwise nudge an iPhone 6 Plus into his or her clothing, some customers claim the whatchamacallit tends to bend.
He actually used the word the Macalope used jokingly to parody him. The horny one can’t even out-do this guy.
The nation’s foremost producer of highly engineered communications devices spends hundreds of millions of dollars on a new thingy, which is supposed to be marginally better than its old thingy, and the entire project is put at risk and Apple’s stock craters because gelatinous consumers wearing tight clothing can’t pry the cockamamie widget into a pocket.
“Craters.” Apple’s shares closed at 97.99 the day it announced the iPhone 6. They’re now at almost 100. As craters go, that’s some nice cratering. Also, let’s forget the fact that the stock market overall fell the day Apple’s shares fell, so much of the drop had nothing at all to do with bending iPhones.
Around the world, wars are waging, diseases are claiming thousands of lives, volcanoes are erupting, humorless terrorists are running amok…
“In my day, terrorists were quite droll, I’ll have you know!”
…and demonstrators are taking to the streets seeking freedom. But what seems to be consuming countless Americans? Their iPhones are leaving unsightly shapes in their pockets…
Daniel Ruth is the last angry man! See him perform a one-man rant that’s Network and …And Justice For All wrapped into one! This week only at the Tampa Bay Dinner Theater!
…that is, when they are able to squeeze—against all laws of physics—the doohickey into their pants.
HE DID IT AGAIN. Good Lord, he’s unparodyable!
There is a silver lining solution to Apple’s iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus woes. Since the new whatsits…
The Macalope didn’t even think of that one. Is there no stopping this monster?
…are so unwieldy and a crime against couture, might this lead to consumers leaving their iPhones in the car, or at home, or in a giant knapsack?
Technology is evil! Chase it to the castle with pitchforks and torches! BURN IT ALIVE!
People might actually have to sit across from one another in restaurants and converse eye-to-eye. How socially revolutionary. Social human discourse uninhibited by a handheld techno-cave. Now there’s a concept.
Ugh. OK, let’s tell another side to this story. A few years back, the Macalope had to take a loved one to the hospital for a cancer-related surgery. The good news is, it all turned out fine. But while he sat in the waiting room by himself, he was able to keep in touch with his family and friends, provide status updates, and receive encouragement not only for the person being operated on, but himself as well, all thanks to his iPhone. Do people sometimes ignore others at a restaurant and look at their phones instead? Sure. Is that enough to condemn the entirety of mobile computing? Hell, no.
The Macalope is sorry if you don’t see these benefits. Maybe you’re holding it wrong.