Mitch Wagner, the Information Week blogger with a blog about all things Apple may have inadvertently illustrated one of the reasons I do not find Apple OSX any more attractive than say... Linux or Windows. I have mentioned before that when I have problems with Apple OSX, the solution is invariably shown to be very simple, so simple that I was clearly thinking about it too much. A recent post by Mr Wagner, Is "Sent From My iPhone" The Sign Of The Doofus?, may contemplate the wrong basic question, based on generous assumptions.
Paul Boutin writes on Slate: "An e-mail that says "Sent from my BlackBerry" gives the impression that you're on the move but still chained to work, e-mailing from the elevator."
He adds: "An e-mail that says 'Sent from my iPhone' conjures an image of a doofus who wants you to know he has an iPhone." Funny he should say that, because that's exactly what I used to think when I saw the "Sent from my BlackBerry" tagline -- it conjured an image of a doofus who wants me to know he had a BlackBerry. Now, I just think it's just an unpaid advertisement for BlackBerrys, and I'm ever-so-slightly annoyed that the person sending it didn't take the trouble to turn it off.
I think about 80/20 rules. I think about the 80 percent of smart phone users who have never seen Information Week. I am not convinced they all can't take the trouble, I think they may not even know the tag line is a setting in the smart phone.
The VCR that used to be in my bedroom still pulsed 12:00 when I finally broke down and put it in the closet after years of disuse; so who am I to talk?