Saturday, June 30, 2007

"Going Mental" for iPhone


Leander Kahney, the managing editor of Wired magazine, was quoted as saying, "They are going to go mental for it." He also predicted iPhone-inspired muggings and selling of first-borns. Folks have been waiting in lines all week just to get first dibs on Apple's new digital wunderkind. It is only a matter of time before i see an iPhone-inspired psychiatric problem in my E.R. And i know just the type of medication to use: an SSRi (or, iSSR?).

John Paczkowski from Digital Daily has dubbed the iPhone obsession iOCD -- and apparently this diagnosis is now in the DSM! Funny... the AMA stopped short of calling video game addiction a disorder, but there is clearly an overboard quality to the iPhone hype. Google "iPhone" and you get 118 million hits this evening, which is 50% more than yesterday. This is more than Paris Hilton and Britney Spears combined. And, it is certainly a few million more than "My Three Shrinks".

This video documents some of the iPhone hysteria...



And speaking of hype, how often do you think the iPhone is paired with some sort of psychiatric symptom? Let's see...

Clearly, the iPhone is one of the coolest tech toys on the planet today. Lack of interest is definitely NOT going to inspire many hits.

EDIT: But it may inspire a new religion (Xenu beware).

Other blogs and links worth checking out:

EDIT: Must-see YouTube Chris Pirillo here, with an iPod and a Zune going at it under the covers ... Zune doesn't satisfy like iPhone (Warning: Graphic Gadget Adult Situations).

18 comments:

Paul Levinson said...

It's been a long time coming ... the iPhone was first predicted back in 1979...

Gerbil said...

(Roy, how did I know you were going to post about the iPhone?)

The real question is whether iPhone hysteria (conversion disorder? teehee) is going to be worse than Cabbage Patch hysteria, circa 1983.

I am too young to remember the hysteria itself, but I do remember this being the reason that I was not allowed to have a Cabbage Patch doll!

Emy L. Nosti said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Emy L. Nosti said...

God, did anyone else have bad Willy Wonka flashbacks after watching the first 30 sec of that video? Speaking of which, how about iPhone PTSD for trauma sustained in the queue or during the Geschäftkrieg?

I doubt I'll ever want/own an iPhone. It may make more sense to pathologize deviants like me instead...abnormally low imotional reactivity, perhaps.

Well, bedtime--visions of iPhones will not be dancing in my head.

Anonymous said...

So did you get one???

I was outside an AT&T store at 3 pm yesterday and there were 6 or so people in chairs camped on line. It wasn't so impressive with 3 hours to go.

There's something tempting, but I can't have one: I have an email addiction and when it's accessible all the time, it's all I do, so I've had it turned off my phones. I also hear you can't text messages and the internet is slow-- NY Times article. Otherwise, I would kinda like one.

Cabbage Patch Dolls, Tickle me Elmo, I've never been into this stuff, but I decided to buy my husband, who has everything a Nintendo Wii (have I gone nuts? our kids are excited but they want to know why Daddy gets the good toys). Never mind the damn i-phone, at least you know where to camp out to get one. The Nintendo thingy-- you can't imagine how many Gamestop/BestBuys/ToysRUS's I've called. They don't know in advance when they'll be there, shipments come everday at unpredictable times, they may or may not be in the shipments, and they sell out within the hour, if that. On=line, the price gets jacked up by about $200. At least I know where to get the i-phone.
And yes, I've preordered Potter.

Thanks for the Post Roy. I can't wait to play with your i-phone.

Anonymous said...

You can get the Wii online for less than a 200 buck markup. Way less. Whether you want to support the scalpers is another story.

Midwife with a Knife said...

I keep meaning to get a Wii. They can be a bit hard to find still.

I have no interest in an iPhone. I only need a phone to be a phone. But then... maybe I'm a luddite.

Anonymous said...

you can't be a luddite if you have a blog.

Roy said...

I did not get an iPhone.

If I had money to burn... maybe. I'm still holding out for the iTablet. Since the iPhone is just a tiny OS X computer, it is clearly only a matter of time that Steve brings the same user interface to an 8-1/2" x 11", razor-thin tablet PC. I'm guessing either November or January.

Anonymous said...

btw, there were plenty of Wiis in stock at local Best Buy yesterday. The Wii is way cheaper than an iphone and i don't see what all the big fuss is. how did anyone survive before Wii and ieverything? Go to the library and get a book.

Sarebear said...

I asked my husband when they'd come up with a nosePhone?

Okay, baaaad pun.

Me, I'm "going mental" because I'm hurriedly trying to back up a bunch of stuff from my computer before it crashes.

Technology sucks. MWAK and I can form our own society.

Rach said...

Roy,
let me know when you buy your iTablet - I want one too!

I just finished reading long, drawn out pieces about the iPhone in both national newspapers here (Canada) - there's no way we're going to have iPhone service for at least another 2-3 years (unless what's his face who owns RIM decides to take on Steve Jobs... but that's another story) THe media must be bored on this long weekend.

Anonymous said...

What do you do with the iphone? Call yourself? What if nobody anwers? What if somebody does?

Roy said...

Check out the video on this psychiatrist's blog... it's an amazing African preserve nature scene of a three-way battle between a pride of lions, a crocodile, and a herd of buffalo, all battling over a baby buffalo. (Nothing to do with the iPhone, though I guess you could watch the video on it.)

Sarebear said...

I saw that recently, it's cool! I think the baby buffalo benefits from what looks to be inexperience on the part of the lions; the lions have a male feel to them, to me (I didn't check their . . . specifics), adolescents maybe without their manes, or maybe adolescent females. They seem to not quite know what to do with the buffalo; biting at it but not with a ferociousness I'd expect; grasping it with their paws or claws but not swiping with force to hamstring, gut, strangle, or cut throat . . . no bites onto the throat, either, it looks like.

Of course, I'm sure what they DID do hurt quite a bit! When the alligator joined the fray, that was just amazing! That, of course, made the lions a bit wary . . . I think, though, that by the time the buffalo adults got the courage up to approach, the young would have been dead long before, if the lions had a clue about what they were doing lol!

Hooray for the baby buffalo, though! Those cats have BIG paws/claws (once when we were camping in the mtns, stayed up late looking at constellations; in the morning, we went over to where we had done that, and in the dirt was a great big mountain lion paw print . . . . eeee!). When you feel even that kind of a passing brush with a wild predator like that, when you have a sense of the size of the thing . . . whether they knew what they were doing or not, that baby buffalo is awfully lucky to be alive!

Anonymous said...

your revenge on me for saying they were right to save the mouse....

Ladyk73 said...

The ward I volunteered at the Psy Center got a Wii. It is really great therapy for the younger patients residing in a locked ward. They actaully have to get up and move!!!!! And the older folks with their negative symptoms were engaged with novelity of it all (Well at the time).

Roy said...

I added this to the bottom of the post, but in case you missed it...

EDIT: Must-see YouTube Chris Pirillo here, with an iPod and a Zune going at it under the covers ... Zune doesn't satisfy like iPhone (Warning: Graphic Gadget Adult Situations).