Life Without the iPhone

I struggle to quantify how diminished my life would be if by its tortured end I never experienced the personal fulfillment of owning an iPhone. I struggle because I can’t picture in my mind’s eye what an iota actually looks like so that I can know it to be true when I say, “Not one iota.”

For all I know, an iota is enough to drag me down the tunnel of despair as I realize with my last remaining breath that it was within my reach, if only ... if only ...

If only I wasn’t forced to use a company phone from Verizon. If only I wasn’t too cheap to get my own anyway. If only I was a better geek or if only I gave a good goldarn.

But apparently millions of people do. They brave long lines and part with a week’s wages (well, maybe not a week for you). They throw their current provider under the bus and incur huge penalties to get out of contracts. They sacrifice network and service quality (in some cases). They succumb to the peer pressure.

However, not everyone gets the chance to be so shallow. Not everyone is allowed perchance to dream. But pity not the stubborn Verizon user who waits and whines, “What about me?” They have a choice; they can do as others have done and switch to AT&T. And Verizon has a choice: Take some billions of your dollars, partner with some brilliant college kids and develop your own iconic device.

I do, however, give a bunch of iotas for those who don’t have the option of running out and buying an iPhone for all the wrong reasons. I am concerned for those who, by choice or by birth, live in the forsaken hinterlands of rural America and cannot switch to AT&T — at least not without the high price of driving their hometown provider out of business and potentially their Uncle Cleetus or Aunt Rosemary out of a job.

Exclusivity is an uppity kind of business practice for which I hope one day its practitioners pay a price. This doesn’t pertain only to Apple and AT&T, but the 46 other mobile devices that fall under its spell. Not only is it uppity, it’s an unfair business practice, particularly against rural operators. Verizon customers have device choices. Many rural markets do not. Their customers can’t get their bejeweled iPhones or the latest sleek smartphone that makes the back pocket on their skinny-jeans bulge with the telltale outline of a high-end mobile device. The kid from the 4-H Club looking for the latest techniques for teaching his or her hogs to count can’t thumb through a mobile device to see if there’s an app for that.

The motto of the 4-H Club is: To Make the Best Better. Right or wrong, kids (and adults) want access to the best and they think – for some reason that no doubt has to do with television – that the best is the iPhone, or any of the other advanced devices they can’t get their hands on. But device exclusivity doesn’t give them the chance to make the best better. They don’t get the best. They get a hip-hopper’s hand-me-downs.

E-mail me at heyBOSS@vpico.com or click on the comment button below.