10 Or More Reasons I Still Don't Want An iPhone

I write about high-tech stuff, but danged if I'm gonna use it.

1. 3G? I still haven't figured out whether I missed the 1G or 2G stuff. A couple more Gs, and maybe I'll be in shape to train to be an astronaut.

2. A BlackBerry works well enough for most of what I need. Heck, a $1 refurbished BlackBerry from AT&T's would work . But then again, I don't need or have a BlackBerry, either. There are probably 10 reasons why I still don't want a BlackBerry, but that's for another day.

3. Heck, it might not even work, given AT&T's 3G network coverage.

4. My teenage daughter would steal it from me and figure out how to use it right away. Then, not only would I not know how to use an iPhone, I still wouldn't have one.

5. To upgrade or not? 8GB or 16GB? Any existing cell phone contracts? That $200 iPhone might end up costing me $700 if I ain't careful.

6. Even if I am careful, I'll have to pay $1,880 (plus tax) or more for the iPhone and the MANDATORY two-year AT&T subscription. Sheesh, for a few bucks more, I can get cell phone, internet, and cable television service. All three.

7. No Bluetooth. If I was going to pay that much, I would want Bluetooth. Not that I would want to look like a cyborg, or ever use Bluetooth to walk around talking on a cell phone or to listening to music I never download anyway. But dang it, I would want it.

8. I don't listen to iTunes, I don't watch videos on tiny screens, and surfing the Web is already messy enough on a 19-inch screen. And heck, I've heard that not all video and animation works on that tiny screen. Not that I care, mind you. And not that my teenage daughter would care -- she's happy watching music videos on an iPod, and thinks that's normal.

9. Apple is not keeping up with the times. Didn't putting a little "i" in front of real words like "phone" and "tunes" and "pod" go out of fashion with the dot-com explosion of a few years ago?

10. GPS? Oh, great! If I'm not sure if I'm really at the office or at home, I could just pull out my iPhone, turn it on, figure out whether to hold it horizontally or vertically, and then check where I am.

11. The buttons don't click when I press them. Wait, there are no buttons. Wait, I can press fake buttons on the screen with my greasy fingers and make the fake buttons unreadable because of the fingerprints. But there would still be no clicks. Only the sound of me constantly rubbing the screen against my shirt to clean it.

12. Not that I text message much (not that I text message ever), but the idea of that little tiny screen popping up on that little tiny screen trying to guess what word I want without giving me the option of turning off that "predictive text" feature irks me. Every time my company upgrades my laptop, I gotta spend hours figuring how to turn off that function in Word.