Why I won’t be buying an iPhone

First off, lets get one thing straight. Generally, I love my Apple products. I have a MacBook Pro, a Mac Mini, a G4 iBook, a 160Gb AppleTV, a 30Gb iPod Video and a 1Gb iPod Nano so that I can use my Nike+ trainers. So, I’m not about to go into an “I hate Apple rant”.

That said, I definitely won’t be buying an iPhone. Why? Lets get started…

You see, I like to watch TV shows. Both on the move and at home, I like to watch them. I’m slowly going through my DVD collection to re-encode everything to H264 so that I can add it to iTunes and thus be able to watch it at the touch of a button on my AppleTV, my MacMini or my iPod. I even have an automation process set up so that TV I can’t watch when it’s on is recorded and re-encoded so that I can then watch it later at my convenience (and is then deleted automatically a week after I have watched it). I tend to watch a 45 minute show every morning on the way to work on my iPod, and I often do the same thing in the evening. So, video’s pretty important to me.

The problem is, it doesn’t seem to be that important to iTunes. When you go to sync your iPod (or AppleTV) you get the option to either sync all TV show episodes, just the unwatched ones, or the last n unwatched episodes for each selected show. This sounds good in theory, until you rip an entire season of a show from DVD (or buy it off the iTunes Store). Then, if you choose to sync all unwatched episodes of a 24 episode season at quality that’s nicely watchable on both iPod and AppleTV you end up sucking up a massive ~11Gb of disk space (roughly 450Mb of disk per episode). The bad thing is you can’t even use the “last n” functionality in any meaningful way since it will sync the last n unwatched episodes that were added to iTunes - it isn’t the last n of the season (which might be vaguely understandable). What would be incredibly useful in this situation would be a “next n unwatched episodes” option so that at all times I could choose to have the next two episodes of selected shows uploaded to my iPod. This would, presumably, be a very simple change for Apple to make to iTunes and it would mean that I would certainly be able to buy an iPod Touch, if not an iPhone.

So, to clarify, the first reason I won’t be buying an iPhone is that it doesn’t have enough storage space. O2 are selling the 8Gb iPhone for £269 (plus a minimum £35 contract for 18 months). With the current functionality of iTunes, this just insn’t big enough for me.

The next reason I won’t be buying an iPhone is the price. I’m honestly not that fussed about any of the functionality that the iPhone has over an above the iPod Touch except the actual phonecall and texts functionality and the consequent fact that it would mean that I’d have one less device in my pocket. So, lets compare like for like between the 8Gb iPod Touch and the 8Gb iPhone. The former costs £199 all in. The latter costs £269 plus at minimum £35 per month for 18 months. However, I’m currently on a contract that costs me £25, and for the past 6 months or so I’ve not paid more than that on a monthly basis. So, the iPhone will cost me a total of £(269 + 18 * 10) = £449 over an 18 month period. That’s £250 more than I’d spend if I bought an iPod Touch and stayed with my current, perfectly working, phone and contract.

I’m not needing an incredibly fancy new phone. I’m not even really needing a new one - I’m perfectly happy with the one I’ve got. If there wasn’t the crippling problem of the iTunes functionality then I might consider buying one, but as it is, it just can’t justify it. Likewise, I can’t even consider an iPod Touch until it either gets bigger or Apple makes a simple feature addition to iTunes.

Oh well, I really did want to be able to use that incredibly sexily huge screen.

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Comments

  1. by Rand on November 19, 2007 03:05 AM

    I won’t be buying an iPhone, because the price is definitive to high. Maybe I would buy an iPhone if there’s no monthly fee of £35. But £35 per month is ridiculous in my opinion.

  2. by Briefkasten on November 26, 2007 05:34 AM

    I think it is too expensive in germany. about 1000 Euro is to much

  3. by Proflogistics on December 4, 2007 06:52 AM

    Can I buy iPhone in Russia? And how much it cost?

  4. by Marco on December 12, 2007 12:23 AM

    Less than a month later… he got himself a shiny new iPhone ;)

  5. by Neil Crosby [TypeKey Profile Page] on December 12, 2007 08:13 AM

    @Marco - And I’m loving every minute of it. Well, except the minutes that I’m not loving, like when it overheats or the video playlist window doesn’t rotate 90 degrees, or the… you get the point :)

  6. by Proflogistics on December 14, 2007 07:18 PM

    I want my iPhone too. Where I can buy it in Moscow and how much it cost?

  7. by heather on December 27, 2007 11:37 AM

    iv got one its good….. but theres down sides ,its complitcated to get songs on it from your computer with out using itunes.it has got bluetooth but it doesnt work you cant send songs pictures ect or recive them bluetooth is simply used for calling people.you have no games on this phone .you cant put your ringtone as a song!!!!

  8. by Proflogistics on January 24, 2008 08:15 AM

    Can I buy iPhone in Russia? And how much it will be cost?

  9. by Proflogistics on January 28, 2008 05:41 PM

    Realy you can’t put your ringtone as a song?

  10. by 汽車貸款 on February 2, 2008 03:09 AM

    for me, the purchasing price is too high and the monthly flat rate as well.

  11. by 信用貸款 抵押貸款 on February 3, 2008 04:53 AM

    on chinese websites you can get it for about 3800 RMB and of course the software to crack it as well…

  12. by André on February 10, 2008 11:07 AM

    My boss has an iPhone, and most anoying thing is, that you can´t delete more than one E-Mail at once - for each and every mail you need to choose “delete” - this, and several other issues, keept me away from buying an iPhone. So ACK

  13. by Wellnesshotel Bayerischer Wald on February 20, 2008 08:01 PM

    I won’t be buying an iPhone, because in Germany you can buy it only with an contract of the company T-Com wit very bad conditions

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workingwith.me.uk is a resource for web developers created by Neil Crosby, a web developer who lives and works in London, England. More about the site.

Neil Crosby now blogs at The Code Train and also runs NeilCrosby.com, The Ten Word Review and Everything is Rubbish.