Tuesday’s announcement of the iPhone X — like the number 10 — came with its fair share of criticism, starting with “what happened to the iPhone 9?” and culminating around its hefty $999 price tag.
Apple CEO Tim Cook called it the company’s biggest leap forward since the original iPhone was released ten years ago. Regardless of whether this is true, the decade of the iPhone is not an unimportant landmark to take note of.
This world-famous rectangle has been an icon of the millennial generation since its inception — the original iPhone was released when today’s college students were just children. As they have grown and changed, the iPhone has grown and changed with them.
This will be the product’s 11th iteration in its just 10-year history. We continue to see technological leaps never previously imagined, and yet they never seem to satisfy our thirst for the next big thing.
Every few years, or even more frequently than that, your iPhone is bound to stop working. The problems will occur little by little — a crack here, a glitch there — until replacing it becomes an absolute necessity. Even if you are one of the lucky few whose phone avoids this slow demise, you will soon look around at the phones of your family and friends to see that yours doesn’t measure up, and then you too will grin and bear it, paying whatever it costs to stay relevant.
This problem of planned obsolescence is not unique to Apple, but the iPhone does seem to be a glaring example of this frustrating phenomenon. It isn’t surprising, it is simply the nature of business. What is surprising, however, is all of the things that are becoming obsolete in the iPhone’s stride — calendars, calculators, cameras and even clocks are all past their prime, now easily stored all together in just one pants pocket. The digital era is leaving tangible products in its dust, products that are no longer necessary parts of our fast-paced lives.
However, the iPhone is also giving rise to thousands of new companies, with new apps being designed every day. When Apple pioneered the idea of a smart phone, it didn’t just create its own whole new field, it transformed hundreds of other fields along with it.
Payments, car rides, food deliveries and music streaming are now huge industries, all within the bounds of the mobile phone — and that’s not even to mention the giant that is social media. Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, you name it — would all be a fraction as successful as they are without the accessibility of the iPhone. Cliché as it may be, the world really is more connected than ever before.
This online-interconnectedness poses some real qualms for our society. What is to come of face-to-face interactions? When everything from ordering food to taking classes can be done remotely — will human contact be the next thing to become obsolete?
iPhones are also blurring the line between our work lives and personal ones, with emails and phone calls now coming to our cellphones, regardless of whether or not we’re at work. It is no longer as easy to separate the two as it was 10 or 20 years ago. This can be a troubling thought, and the idea of making your current iPhone your last, and going back to the good ol’ days of land lines and desktops is certainly tempting — but thinking about the amount you’d miss out on in just a single day is overwhelming, and more often than not, this kind of transition is just not realistic.
Furthermore, it cannot go unmentioned that when Apple releases a soon-to-be-ubiquitous $1,000 device, it further disadvantages low-income people. It feels like you have to have an iPhone to stay relevant, but what happens when this is simply not a financial possibility? iPhones are so incredibly expensive that nearly everyone buys them with a payment plan — essentially taking out a loan to afford their phone. Not a car, not a house, not a college tuition. A phone. This is unprecedented.
The iPhone X has more features than ever before, including some that are really cool and exciting. However, at the end of the day, all we really want is an affordable iPhone that can hold a charge for longer than a few minutes.
