Ownership of Apple iPhone on verge of crossing line into AIG-like excess and arrogance?

Tom Kaneshige reports for InfoWorld, “The iPhone, the tech symbol of the ‘in’ crowd, is on the verge of crossing the line into AIG-like excess and arrogance. ‘I’m not sure, under the current economic conditions, that it’s a great statement to make,’ says Rob Enderle, principal analyst of the Enderle Group. ‘You may not want to flash it.'”

MacDailyNews Take: The real question is where do you hide the BMW amidst the myriad soup lines of “The Great Depression II?”

“Yet the iPhone’s cultural impact is much more than just another wedge separating the haves and have-nots; the iPhone changes how people interact with each other and their surroundings. Traditional cell phones and iPods already audibly isolated people in their own little worlds, and iPhone’s visual carnival pushes that isolation further,” Kaneshige reports.

Kaneshige reports, “The visual nature of the iPhone can be a big distraction. Will consumers, walking around with their heads down as they play a game or look at a map on the iPhone’s mini-screen, collide with each other like pinballs?”

Full article here.

[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “scopie” for the heads up.]

Kaneshige’s deadline must have caught him by surprise.

56 Comments

  1. Good grief, Charlie Brown. This nitwit is equating a $200 phone to those AIG execs who went on the $400,000 spa retreat after the government bailout? Oh, but Rob Enderle agrees, so it must be right. Rob doesn’t have any ulterior motive for bashing Apple, now does he? ” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”smile” style=”border:0;” />

    P.S. GO PHILLIES!

  2. $200 minimum for an iPhone vs $200,000 minimum salary – yeah I can see the parallels in excess… not.

    You don’t need to ‘flash’ the iPhone, you just use it and the reaction is in the others around you: a good reaction, not a “what a w@^ker” reaction.

  3. Once again, if you can’t beat an Apple product by actually making a better product, the paid-off surrogates for iPhone’s competition will come up with some ridiculous stuff.

    Remember when it was obvious that Mac OS X had much better security than Windows XP, it was “Mac OS X is not secure because Apple has not hired a ‘security czar’ to promote security.” Or Mac OS X will have just as many viruses as Windows (or at least one), if its market share number rise above 2 or 3 percent.

    Or when the iTunes Store “locked you in” while most people who buy and use iPods play music ripped from their CDs or obtained “elsewhere.”

    When the competition has to resort to such measure (that have nothing to do with the products themselves), you know they are really desperate.

  4. Well, I guess diamond wedding rings are going to take a real hit now that this article has hit the street. LOL ” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”grin” style=”border:0;” />

    Just a thought.
    en

  5. I really do wonder how many of those Microsoft inspired $ for the criminally insane, or as they define it ‘IT experts’ old Rob finds in brown envelopes on his doormat these days. ‘Independent’ must have a totally different meaning than that traditionally associated with the word in my formative years. If all phones were proved to cause instant insanity amongst freeloading independent analysts you can guarantee that Rob will forget to mention all the other phone models in his deep reaching resultant analysis.

  6. “The visual nature of the iPhone can be a big distraction. Will consumers, walking around with their heads down as they play a game or look at a map on the iPhone’s mini-screen, collide with each other like pinballs?”

    Say Whaaat?!

    I find professional analysts so illogical they distract me and I can’t remember…

    What were we talking about?

  7. “The iPhone, the tech symbol of the ‘in’ crowd, is on the verge of crossing the line into AIG-like excess and arrogance. ‘I’m not sure, under the current economic conditions, that it’s a great statement to make,’ says Rob Enderle, principal analyst of the Enderle Group. ‘You may not want to flash it.'”

    This is socialism, nanny state and class envy.

    “Yet the iPhone’s cultural impact is much more than just another wedge separating the haves and have-nots”

    There will always be haves and have-nots. What separates people is not having iPhones but the way people think.

  8. You people are all complaining about nothing.

    Other than the unfortunate first paragraph where the author uses AIG as an analogy, the article is spot on in regards the problems of “device obsession.” The point he is making has nothing to do with AIG, that was just a stupid turn of phrase.

    So he used a bad analogy or reference, that doesn’t invalidate the article’s main point.

  9. If I read another sophistic, spurious instance of Enderle’s idiotic “insight”, I’m going to send him the bill for my doctor visits and beta-blocker prescriptions. Stupid asshat. His insolence makes me want to punch out my monitor (at work I have use a pc, so it’s ok).

  10. I’m with Rob Enderle. People are having way too much fun with their iPhones. This must be stopped!

    “Rob Enderle, meet Ebenezer Scrooge. I’m sure you two will hit it off famously.”

  11. “There will always be haves and have-nots. What separates people is not having iPhones but the way people think.”

    And if people think that having or not having is important, they’re fucking idiots. Period.

  12. “bendnhurl” can suck it.

    what myopic crass uninformed drivel

    it is the one phone i see breaking class barriers.

    the only excess is the freakin ridlin-xanax-vikidin-vodka cocktail
    dumbass for brains is drinking.

    what a *#$!tard.

    seriously.

  13. Genius – in the current climate, you want something that looks like cheap s**t that you spent no money on.
    Can’t wait for the fruits of Enderle’s mind to come off Dell’s production line. I’ve no doubt it’ll be a huge hit with people who know the price of everything and the value of nothing.

  14. Points:

    1) Rob Enderle is a blithering idiot who only use is as a robotic FUD spewing machine by Microsoft. You need know nothing more about him. That anyone bothers to quote him is as ridiculous as anyone bothering to quote Dvorak. I wish MDN would just ignore him. Who cares.

    2) The actual name of “The Great Depression II”, as MDN called it, will be “The Bush Depression” in honor of the bush league bozos who messed up the world (not just US) economic foundation to create it.
    Exhibit A: The unfathomable debt Bush League created. (And yes, the Democraps and Republicraps both unconscionably played along).
    Exhibit B: The moronic manipulation of the Federal Reserve rate in order to hide the fact that our economic foundation was missing, thereby luring lenders and real estate purchasers into the realm of the unreal.

    Nice work fellows.

  15. “Traditional cell phones and iPods already audibly isolated people in their own little worlds, and iPhone’s visual carnival pushes that isolation further”

    This is the same tired old argument against technology. I say reading a book is much more “isolating” then talking with someone on a phone. Technology doesn’t isolate people do.
    The very fact that all of us are interacting in this format proves that. Technology is a useful tool. Enderle, however is just a tool.

  16. “So he used a bad analogy or reference, that doesn’t invalidate the article’s main point.”

    You’re right.

    However, the simple fact is the article is just another opinion piece, which means the article doesn’t really have a “valid” point.

    If it does, then here’s an equally “valid” point, without a lot of pseudo-intellectual, pop-psychology verbiage… the article is pretentious nonsense.

  17. What? no reference to Lipstick on a Pig? or maybe Enderlie makes us all feel “snappier”? C’mon MDN posters, you are letting me down! you are the source of my inspiration, you make me laugh every day….

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