back to article 'It's as though I've got Jonathan Ive's personal tool in my...'

The delicious tumult that surrounds each new release of Jobsian product is enough to make many adults, otherwise a bit weepy and mopesome, positively gush and wobble - and I should know. That some spurt incontinently with excited happiness and others squeal in painful outrage (ooh!) is quite irrelevant, it is the fascinating …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Paris Hilton

    Maybe?

    Maybe the Apple does not want everyone and their dog contacting iPhone/iPad users?

    A select few maybe, but everyone?

    The Apple always likes to be elite yes?

  2. Bryce Prewitt
    Thumb Up

    Oh, deary me

    Are we sure this article doesn't fall foul of any obscene publications laws?

    I think I just cummitted a thought crime!

  3. M Gale
    Badgers

    Article co-written by Ms Bee?

    Also, playmobil version please.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Oh Yes!

    Sticky Sarcasm!

    Not sure if I'd've preferred to spot the bootnote before instead of after reading the article with increasingly high brows. Then again, it's early so sound judgement is evidently beyond me.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Up

    Haha, what a lovely Sunday morning treat

    PS: kneejerk downvoters, you might want to actually read this properly

  6. This post has been deleted by its author

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Jobs Horns

    More Please

    ...will Stephen Pie start tweeting?

  8. Jeremy Chappell
    FAIL

    Err...

    GROW UP!

  9. david wilson

    Hmmm.

    However irritating Fry might be at his luvvie best, he can at least write readably.

    It's possible to bracket sections of text and still leave things readable, and also to punctuate things into a pig's breakfast. A parody of Fry that is pretty much unreadable does't really work

    This article seems to be the literary equivalent of a stereotyped 70's copper trying to go undercover in a gay bar.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Heart

    Oh my

    I need to go lie down for a bit

  11. Paul Corbett 2
    Happy

    I had to check

    That it wasn't written by amanfrommars

  12. Danington the Third
    Jobs Halo

    either that...

    or he has jailbroken it, and is not on ATT.

    For once I'm going to stick up for Jobsie and venture that when I buy the iPhone 4 and use it on Manx Telecom, I will not be suffering any of these issues.

    However, if I am wrong I will gladly eat humble pie, most probably with a helping of lamenting-wasted-money gravy.

  13. Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

    "i'll have what he's having"

    but seriously, i thought i was into phones, but he's REALLY into them! (I'm not into iphone though, it's overpriced, overhyped, overly restrictive. Plus at&t sucks so that'll keep me far away.)

  14. Elmer Phud
    Heart

    Mongo love Sherrif Bart

    "With this device in my hand I feel that I am holding its designer Jonathan Ive’s personal tool. Ive is surely one of the most gifted (oh it's twoo! It's twoo!)"

    God darnit, you use your tongue prettier than a twenty dollar whore.

  15. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    weak

    One of the most embarrassing "articles" ever to appear in the guardian.

    Lightened only by their refusal to confirm or deny a marketing link up with Apple.

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Pint

    Steven Fry

    is undoubtedly the biggest spoon-fed fanboi on the planet. Referring to a cellphone as "an object of rare beauty" is tantamount to calling your typical family picture the Mona Lisa. However, I did feel a slight envy for those who feel "touched" by an iPhone.

    -Posted from my iPhone 4G.

  17. Ian Ferguson
    Grenade

    To be fair

    Fry is an equal opportunities connoisseur - he carries around a Blackberry and an Android device as well as his iPhone. While he's a Apple fanboi by self-admission, he's usually pretty fair about comparisons.

    Oh, and he can write your socks off, sorry anonymous author :(

  18. frank ly
    Happy

    Ahhhh, It's A Parody

    Say no more. Nudge, nudge; wink, wink.

  19. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    Pseudonym?

    Is Stephen Pie really Lester Haines, but extremely drunk?

  20. gaz 7
    Jobs Horns

    great article

    I loved this article.

    Following from the JOB's banning of dodgy apps in the Apple App store, it seems reasonable to me for them to design a phone which is incapable of being held in the left hand. Thus at a stroke making it pointless for the vast majority of users to bother to phone chat lines, and look for p0rn on the web browser.

    and surely putting a "bumper" on the phone detracts from one of the main features, and that is the look. I hate the iEverything ecosystem, but have to concede that the Iphone4 is a cracking design, until you put a sh1tty bit of plastic around it.

    BTW, it's nice to see Mr Fry being objective and neutral as usual!

  21. Ivan Headache

    This would have been

    a reasonable piece - if it wasn't for the juvenile asides.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      FAIL

      I think

      You may have missed the point somewhat old bean

  22. Sean Timarco Baggaley
    FAIL

    Gadget-loving celeb loves gadgets shock. Film at 11.

    You know, it'd be a lot easier to take The Register's attempts at parody more seriously if The Register were not, itself, part of the perceived "problem". This website cranks out more free publicity for Apple than even Macworld manages—and only one of those sources actually gets invited to Apple's Sales & Marketing stunts.

    What's astonishing is that most of your coverage is for essentially the same architecture: UNIX-based "iOS", UNIX-based MINIX Clone "Android" and UNIX-based MINIX Clone "MeeGo".

    Only Symbian and Windows Phone 7 have f*ck all to do with that increasingly anachronistic throwback to the 1970s, yet they're losing (or not gaining in Windows Phone 7's case) market share by the picosecond.

    UNIX, once revered and worshiped by the High Priests of The Temple Of Code as some kind of "ideal" operating system, (though Codd knows why; OS X goes well out of its way to hide most of it and pretend it's not there), may have briefly lost the phoney battles of the desktop, but is *winning the war* of ubiquity.

    And nobody seems to have noticed. THAT is genuinely interesting news.

    That Stephen Fry—a notorious gadget nut who has bought almost every bloody electronic device ever made—happens to like the iPhone 4 is NOT news. It never was. He writes for the Guardian, for f*ck's sake: a perennially loss-making national newspaper, with a circulation of a mere 350K readers. It's so popular with old-media types, it's practically their club newsletter, which explains all its biases.

    1. Rattus Rattus

      "OS X goes well out of its way to hide most of [it's UNIX underpinnings]"

      Which sums up exactly why I don't like OSX. I want my system's plumbing exposed, where it can be reached easily.

      It is very interesting, as you note, how UNIX derivatives are doing so well on phones, possibly the most single-user application ever. I wouldn't say it's an "ideal" operating system though - it's just the least bad of all operating systems out there. Remember, all hardware sucks, all software sucks. Some just sucks less than others.

      1. chr0m4t1c

        Maybe

        The UNIX core is doing well on phones because it was originally written to allow lots of processing to happen on single-CPU systems with limited memory.

        It was also written by programmers for programmers. That's programmers, not someone who drives a rapid-development GUI.

        Sheesh, I'm getting old.

  23. Chris Hatfield
    Troll

    The most trolly article El Reg has published. Evar.

    ..there's a real possibility at the author / El Reg is trolling here.

    In before.. Apple is a cult

    In before ... No it isn't.

  24. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    Tumbleweed.

    It's always going to be difficult lampooning someone cleverer and funnier than you, and I think you've fallen a bit short of the mark here.

  25. anarchic-teapot
    Thumb Up

    Hilarious

    Just... Hilarious. Give that person a raise.

  26. CADmonkey
    Coat

    Fnarr!

    Something squashy and squeezable around the lower end?

    That's not a bumper - that's a BUM!

    iBum?

  27. Dick Head
    FAIL

    Makes me wonder...>>

    ...just how many people you have dedicated to the Register's Apple newsdesk. Not that much is news, commenting on commentators doesn't seem like a ver productive occupation.

  28. Si 1
    Jobs Horns

    "The two sides will simply never agree, the whole thing has become an ideological stand-off"

    It's a pity people have to pick one side of the Apple fence and stay there. To be fair the unwavering support true Apple fanbois dish out even in the face a phone that doesn't work when you hold it is understandably polarising. You either agree with them or want to bash them in the head.

    I suspect I'm one of a very small group of people who can like certain Apple products without needing to convert to the Church of St Jobs. I've owned a couple of Macs for testing purposes and never found them to be that great, give me a Windows or Linux box any day.

    However, I do really like the iPod, I've been buying them since they first came out and my trusty 160GB iPod Classic goes everywhere I do (at least until there's an iPhone with a similar amount of storage). I despise iTunes though, it's clearly the work of Satan. I bought an iPod Touch and thought it was crippled and crap, but I then moved on to an iPhone and I've been incredibly happy with it ever since. After years of Windows CE/Pocket PC/Windows Mobile it truly was an incredible device: portable, stable and very versatile. Anyone who criticised Apple for not adding multi-tasking until now clearly never used a Windows CE device!!! ;)

    There's now Android to offer a credible alternative, and certainly the ability to use Flash is tempting, but I'm not massively impressed with the UI or the software keyboard, nor the lack of games compared to the iPhone.

    So I've got an iPhone 4, I'm impressed with the camera and the display, the speed it loads web pages is fantastic and my games now run much more smoothly (these were my biggest gripes from my old iPhone 3G). The signal loss thing is incredibly crap, hopefully a bumper will fix it, but at present I'd be reluctant to move to a different phone maker/OS.

    But I am starting to feel the time to pick another mobile OS grows near. The lack of emulators on the App Store, the lack of Flash in the browser, restrictions on movie formats the phone will play, etc are all starting to become more and more grating. Jobs is going to have to either open the platform or fall into obscurity, and the decision on which way he is going to go will need to be fairly soon I think... (and knowing him, he'll stubbornly lead his flock off the cliff).

    1. Aculeo

      Liking, Not Converting

      I like Apple's products. I've never had any particular objection to the thingummies and doodads themselves. I don't know anything about Jobs beyond the way he's represented in Publications That Love Apple or in Publications That Despise Apple. I do know that the Mac was/is a great system - I just use the PC (I mean.PC other than the Mac*) out of habit, and the fact that there're quite a few more games for Windows than for Mac. That and the fact that the Mac always seemed to be more focused on graphics and DTP at the time.

      What does put me off Apple kit now is, to be honest, the unremitting hype. Sure, there was some of that in the old days, but it does seem to be far more feverish and fervent than it used to be. Until it all calms down and people start to come back to Earth I figure it's just best to stay out of it all.

      (* They are PCs, in every way that makes a PC a PC. I just observe the convention of pretending otherwise.)

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      #Two Sides

      >It's a pity people have to pick one side of the Apple fence and stay there.

      Fry's article in the Guardian - and a similar piece in Wired - deserve and invite contempt, polarisation is entirely rational.

      If any other company had brought out such a fundamentally broken product they would be a universal laughing stock. Its the Emperors new phone, only worse given the number of gullable fools buying it, sight unseen.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Do tell

        Which side of the fence are you on, then?

  29. jake Silver badge

    Whatever.

    Who cares, one way or the other, what one bit of Fry or Laurie think? Yes, they have assulted the Yank media with their tatty take on "acting" ... it doesn't mean that they have any useful input on day-to-day technological stuff. Why give 'em any press? Next, you'll be giving Larry Magid or Bob Metcalfe page-inches ...

    It's a fscking phone, fer chrissake ... Can I make a phone call in Sonoma Valley's so-called "dead-zones"? No? Then it's useless to me. What good is a phone that can't make a phone call? Surely that should be the end of the story?

  30. Nudge
    Coffee/keyboard

    oh it's twoo!

    Baby please, I am not from Havana!

  31. Tree Surgeon.
    WTF?

    Amused!

    Amused, that is, that my first post criticising the waste of time this article represents was rejected. Afraid of your own detractors, I suppose.

    /shrug

    Oh well, repost without such direct criticism I guess?

    The post was bad, a big waste of time, as was the lampooned article in the first place.

  32. Gene Cash Silver badge
    Coffee/keyboard

    Funny as hell, even before the bootnote

    I'm the guy across the pond with the stupid grin. Made my Sunday night. Thanks.

  33. Alan Esworthy
    Stop

    hyperbolic

    if ROTTA is the set of all Reg over-the-top articles, then this article is over the ROTTA.

    It is sad to see what the ill-considered apparent combination of alcohol, cocaine, and ego has wrought here.

  34. Joshua Goodall
    FAIL

    flail

    If you're going to parody Fry you need to be articulate and funny.

  35. Stefing
    Happy

    Remove the campness...

    and you've also got the Guardian's Apple-bitch Charles Arthur.

    OOOH!

  36. Jon Arden
    FAIL

    What????

    Why is it so acceptable to lampoon Stephen Fry as a group sex enjoying bondage loving man who's unable to describe anything without using a million sexual innuendos. I read the register almost daily and have done so for many years, but this pile of crap article has really let you down! Anyone who reads or watches Stephen Fry knows that in general he steers clear of these crass sexual references. Its nice to see that gay stereotypes have not moved on since the 70s in some peoples minds.

  37. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Up

    An homage

    with a touch of l'homme about it.

  38. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    Oh, leave Stephen alone

    He's a lovely guy who's just showing enthusiasm for some great bits of technology. What's wrong with that? It's exactly what our industry needs in my opinion.

    Also, as others have pointed out, this is a poor parody and not remotely funny.

  39. Neil Hoskins
    Stop

    "...steers clear of these crass sexual references..."

    You've never seen him after the watershed or read "The Hippopotamus", then?

  40. Rob Moir
    FAIL

    You know

    Writing "humour" pieces and parody only works if you're actually funny. I see what the author was trying to do but this was just painful to read.

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