The Perdox Rant

I use the Bloomberg application on my iPhone to check the prices of commodities, read news about the share market and see where various stock exchange indices stand. While using this application, I might get the ‘bing’ sound that tells me I have received email in my MobileMe account. Here’s what I need to do in order to read the email message.

Quit the Bloomberg application. Start the email application. Click on my Inbox. Read the email. Perhaps reply to the email. Quit the email application. Start the Bloomberg application.

Why do I need to do this? Because the iPhone does not support multitasking. This is the phone that Steve Jobs told us was the best ‘smartphone’ ever produced. Yeah, right.

I remember watching the webcast of Steve explaining to the faithful why multitasking was not an option on the iPhone. He showed some slides of a phone running the Windows Mobile Operating System (OS) and the multitasking manager that is part of that OS. He ridiculed it. He informed us that having multitasking on an iPhone would be a huge drain on the battery’s life.

Hmm. Let’s take a close look at the this statement, shall we?

First, thanks Steve. We never would have known that multitasking drains the battery quicker than normal use. Wow!  This information is more profound than the explanation of the photoelectric effect.

Steve, I have news for you. We are not morons! We do understand this. Thanks for your concern and your condescension. Would you like to know why battery life is so important to you Steve? Let me tell you.

Unlike all the other phones on the market, your fucking phone has no accessible battery compartment. Remember that Steve? You decided that the iPhone’s battery could only be replaced by your technicians so that you could make more money. That’s the reason you won’t let us access the battery, Steve.

If the iPhone did have an accessible battery compartment, I would be able to buy a spare battery for my iPhone so that when one ran out, I could simply insert the fresh battery and continue to use my phone, just like every other user who has a non-Apple phone is able to. Can you understand this Steve?

And let’s not forget that I also have a car charger for my iPhone and of course there’s the AC adapter that comes in the box. Oh, then there’s the USB cable that I can plug into my laptop that also charges my iPhone.

So you see Steve, battery life is not really that much of a problem for me. I have many ways of charging my phone as outlined above. I would prefer to have a multitasking-capable phone rather than worrying about its battery life. My user experience would be greatly enhanced if I didn’t have to do the ‘app dance’ to get things done.

Hence, if you stopped thinking that your customers are idiots, you would simply let your customers decide if they wanted to use multitasking or not. A simple preference setting would do it, I think. Let’s see. Something like: ‘Do you wish to turn on Multitasking? Yes or NO?

But no. You decided that multitasking was not a good thing so that’s the end of it. Where the fuck did you buy your arrogance? Do you have to replenish it each week?