Remember how boooooring the iPhone 5 was? Sure you do! It was in all the papers! The iPhone 5 was totally dullsville, man, and Apple is out of ideas! Better just fire Tim Cook, shut the company down, and give the money back to investors.
Bor. Ing.
Well, you might want to have a neck brace ready, because you’re about to get whiplash.
Slate’s Farhad Manjoo practically pioneered the “iPhone = boring” theme back in July.
Subtitle: “It’s time for Apple to show us something new.”
We know you’ve reinvented more product categories in the last ten years than all of your competitors combined, but what have you done for us lately, Apple? Make with the new shiny! The effete members of our esteemed technology press are practically falling asleep in their snuff boxes!
Anyway, what’s the opposite of buyer’s remorse?
Yes, by Farhad Manjoo.
The Macalope, ever trying to be helpful, will frequently come up with explanations for why a pundit will say something crazy about Apple. In this instance he submits for your approval the idea that Slate employs two Farhad Manjoos. Or is it Farhads Manjoo? Well, whatever, one Farhad Manjoo is of our Earth, the other is a goateed Farhad Manjoo from an alternate Earth—an Earth gone mad, if you will. An Earth turned upside down, where good is evil, black is white, day is night, right, you get the idea.
One of the Manjoos, presumably the non-evil one, is at least upfront about the varied opinions you’ll get from guys named Farhad Manjoo who write for Slate.
When Apple unveiled the iPhone 5 last month, many tech pundits called it “boring.” I was one of them. In fact, I was so bored that I called the iPhone boring way back in July, on the basis of the lackluster new mobile operating system that Apple announced at its developer conference.
Indeed, Evil Farhad even keyed the Farhads’ first reaction to the iPhone 5, calling it “not the best iPhone ever,” and complaining about the Lightning connector.
Now, almost a month later, it’s time for me to get something off my chest: I’ve made a huge mistake.
Or, is it that Good Farhad is now writing and simply doesn’t want us to know, because evil twins aren’t covered under Slate’s group health policy? Your filial loyalty (or whatever you call it with an evil twin) is admirable, Farhad, but you shouldn’t be covering for him. Particularly not after what he did to Ensign Chekov in the Agony Booth.
I’ll go even further: When I pick up the iPhone 5 and examine it closely, I find it difficult to believe that this device actually exists. The iPhone 5 does not feel like a product that was mass produced. In a strange way, it doesn’t feel like it was built at all. This is a gadget that seems as if it fell into the box fully formed. If you run your hands around its face, you…
OK, OK. Easy there. Suffice it to say, Good Farhad likes the iPhone 5. A lot.
We are left to wonder, however, when Evil Farhad will escape from the dimensional corridor in which Good Farhad has trapped him and retake the keyboard to …
Uh … shoot. The Macalope dropped his Star Trek: The Original Series reference cards and now they’re all mixed up. Crazy Lazarus from The Alternative Factor wasn’t from the same dimension as Evil Spock. Or was he?
Well, whatever. At least the Macalope’s explanation is more charitable than “technology pundit shoots his mouth off about technologies he hasn’t used yet.”
[Editors’ Note: In addition to being a mythical beast, the Macalope is not an employee of Macworld. As a result, the Macalope is always free to criticize any media organization. Even ours.]