I finally got an iPhone

I have had a BlackBerry Pearl for over eight years now. Every time I was due for an upgrade, I would just get the newest Pearl and life was great. Even though everyone else on Earth seemed to hate my phone, I loved it. It was small and rugged and I could type texts and emails faster than the wind blows (does the wind blow fast? Is this a good analogy?).

But Research in Motion has been on an undeniable downward trend. Their phones, quite simply, are crap these days. My ol' workhorse Pearl just couldn't keep up anymore -- sometimes, when I tried to type something, each key I hit on the keyboard would enter the letter three times ... so if I were to type without looking I might end up withhh a texxxttt that lookkkeddd lllikeee thhhisss.

It was time to make the change.

My whole family has iPhones. Jesse has an iPhone. We have an iPad at home. I have an iPod and keep all my music in iTunes. The choice seemed obvious -- I needed to join the herd. So we ordered my new iPhone -- the 4S -- and I just got it activated today.

And oh my god I f**king hate the shit out of it.

I am writing this post on Friday, less than two hours after activating the new phone, because by Monday I will have mostly learned to use it so I won't be nearly as pissed off anymore. And clearly, this post will be much funnier if I'm still pissed off when I write it, because I'm young enough that I shouldn't be insisting things are "broken" simply because I haven't figured out how to use them yet. No. This goddamned phone is f**king broken.


First of all, this bitch is loud as f**k. Like, what the hell, why is it so goddamned loud. The f**king keyboard is all clickity-clickity-click; whenever it goes to sleep and you wake it up, it's like SSSHHHHHHHCLICK! Like, hey bitch, I JUST SWIPED THE SCREEN TO WAKE YOU UP. Clearly I'm aware that you're not locked anymore. Why on God's green earth would there need to be a sound associated with that?!?!?! What kind of mentally defective zoo animal would require a sound for that??? Oh great; it's easy enough to turn this sound off. That is, by "easy enough" I mean who in their right mind would assume that you would uncheck a box called "Lock Sounds" to get that to go away? I figured the "lock" in "lock sounds" was a verb -- as in, click this button to lock the sounds. But apparently it's a noun -- click this button to turn the lock sounds on or off. Jesse had to tell me how to do it while I threatened repeatedly to throw the phone into a river, onto the f**king freeway, or onto an orphan's head from a great height.

Once the keyboard and lock sounds were turned off, it was time to take a look at the ol' Sound Profile for messages and calls and whatnot. And guess what I learned? What the f**k, you can't set up multiple sound profiles for this motherf**ker? What the hell kind of bullshit is that??? My BlackBerry had a bunch of profiles, four of them that I used regularly. One was full loud make-noise-for-everything; one was all vibrate; one was medium-loud only make sounds for calls and texts but vibrate for emails and Facebook notifications; and then there was full silent for nighttime. MY BLACKBERRY HAD THIS. ALWAYS. (Oh hey, the iPhone is soooo much better than the BlackBerry, right? ARE YOU SURE?!?!?)

This stupid-ass goddamn piece of crap phone only appears to give you two options -- noise or silent. If you tell it you want it to vibrate while it's on silent, then I guess it just keeps you up all night with its bullshit because Old Navy can't f**king stop emailing me no matter how many times I unsubscribe from their mailing list. Or, you can manually go into the Sound settings and turn off vibrate every night. And then manually go into the Sound settings and turn vibrate back on every morning. No. That is retarded. I know you're not supposed to use that word because it's insensitive but SERIOUSLY APPLE THAT IS RETARDED. Christ on a cracker, I can practically use this phone to fire atomic missiles, but I can't set up a variety of personalized sound profiles? I'm throwing it into a f**king volcano.

And what the f**k is with these widgets that I can't delete? The whole home screen is clogged with bullshit and it won't let me delete any of it. I'm sure there's a way to do it, but it's not obvious to me at all. I shouldn't have to Google "how to delete stupid bullshit apps that come installed on the phone and Apple has apparently decided that I may not remove". I should just be able to f**king X my way out of them and never have to deal with them again. A Stocks Widget? Eat my asshole, iPhone. All I want is the f**king calendar and the camera and Facebook and Twitter and maybe a couple other things. Your stupid Weather Widget makes me want to strangle an innocent puppy. (UPDATE Monday morning: apparently you seriously cannot hide or delete this shit. You just have to move it to the back page and pretend you can't see it. WHAT THE F**K.)

Oh hey, and thanks for the awesome touch screen keyboard. Really love it. My favorite part was when I was entering "baby due" in the calendar and it typed "baby die" instead. That was a nice touch.

Meanwhile, I had to go to the AT&T store to get the phone activated and move all my contacts over. And I was like, "can you move my photos over too?" And they were like "haha no you silly goose that is impossible and cannot be done. We could sooner raise the Titanic and build a colony on Jupiter than move your photos from one phone's memory to another's. That is madness."

Well, I guess I'd better start looking into cases for it. Because unlike my Pearl, which was hardy and could take a pretty severe beating, this iPhone is a fragile f**king snowflake that will shatter if you so much as look at it with malice in your eye. It's daintier than your f**king great-grandmother and slicker than the bar of soap you keep in your shower that never quite gets all the way dry. I bet a case with some f**king pictures of cats on it costs like $65 because F**K YOU APPLE. (UPDATED Monday: I bought a $7 case at Safeway that is a useless piece of shit but at least now I don't have to worry about dropping calls from touching the phone wrong).

F**king goddamned piece of shit phone.

Does anyone have a baseball bat I could borrow?

No particular reason.



More Monday updates: I've had the phone all weekend and did some more learning on it. I have gotten better at typing on the touch screen and I installed some apps that are pretty convenient, like Craigslist and banking stuff and whatnot. The apps are nice, I admit.

But the battery life is dogshit and I'm still pissed that I can't delete those widgets so I'd say on the whole I still give this phone A BIG FAT F-MINUS. F-MINUS, APPLE.

AND WHY CAN'T I ADJUST HOW LONG THE SNOOZE ON THE ALARM IS? TEN MINUTES IS TOO LONG TO SNOOZE.

I COULD DO THAT ON MY BLACKBERRY.

PIECE OF GODDAMNED GARBAGE.

*punt*