"Why would anyone want to limit the iPhone?"

This is part of the I'm a fuddy-duddy and a luddite series.

Sprint has a much-played commercial out there, touting the flexibility and "unlimited" nature of its iPhone and associated plan.
There are over half a million apps and counting on the iPhone. Apps that can take you anywhere, do anything. You might say there's no limit to what this amazing device can do. So the question to ask is, "Why would anyone want to limit the iPhone?" We don't.

The commercial pans over city scenes as nifty app logos float through the sunny sky and ride contentedly along on trains. The camera begins to zoom in on a building, then zips into a bedroom, where a young boy of five or so is concentratedly messing with the phone. The narrator then asks us, "Why would anyone want to limit the iPhone?"

If you Google search "Why would anyone want to limit the iPhone?" you get a bunch of online forums where people are complaining about all the faults in Sprint's plan that make it not "unlimited". But complainants and Sprint agree: no one wants to limit the iPhone.

A few commercials will absolutely snap my attention to when they begin, but most, of course, do not. I must have have seen this commercial four or five times (it's on rotation during basketball games on espn3, for one) before I finally heard what they were saying.

I'd thoughtlessly assumed, as the camera zoomed in on the kid, that the commercial wanted us to disapprove of the kid playing a game on the iPhone. I really just wasn't paying attention. Ah, how blithely ignorant I was.

I'm supposed to get mad at anyone who would fail to provide me with enough data coverage to let little Johnny improve his mind and train his reflexes on my mini-computer. I need to raise my kid to be competitive in this world, and I need help babysitting him, so you better not choke off my data!!

Don't get me wrong, our kids will play the occasional game on the computer. But it's far from the end of the world if they have to go outside and play. Might be nice if someone did limit the iPhone.





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