iDon'tPhone

I seem to be one of the few people on this planet unaffected by the Steve Jobs Reality Distortion Field; indeed, I find the Fake Steve Jobs more, er, authentic. Desptie this, I have to confess I much enjoyed this Jobs profile by John Heilemann.

But in all its shrewd and witty analysis, it seems to miss the key thing about the iPhone: that it is not just expensive, but obscenely expensive in a world where many people earn less than $500 per year. In other words, the iPhone - rather like Jobs - is supremely narcissistic.

Perhaps that why Apple's products stick in my craw: with their self-assigned exclusivity and implicit sense of superiority, they are the antithesis of free software, which is inclusive and fundamentally egalitarian. The fact that MacOS is built on free software only adds insult to injury.