Rhetorical Object Analysis: The iPhone

The iPhone was originally released on June 29, 2007. The 3G iPhone was then released on July 11, 2008 and the 3GS was released on June 19, 2009. As of the 2010 census by Apple there have been 42.48 million iPhones sold in the three years since it was released. Just to give you a hint of how many phones that is, there are only 3,642,361 people living in the entire state of Oklahoma and only 19,490,297 living in the state of New York. That’s still not even close to the number of iPhones sold in three first three years of production.

The iPhone has become the icon of the Apple company. I myself also have an iPhone. I chose to buy the normal 3G model in light that OK doesn’t even have 3G coverage in most of the state. AT&T, the only phone company that carries the iPhone, is working on expanding its 3G network to cover most of the U.S. but won’t complete its network for almost another two years. By this time, they will be prepared to release the first 4G network iPhone and change over there network to all 4G. The iPhone itself has become an iconic object of future technology in the rapidly expanding world of “tech”. It has changed how we use the so called, “cell phone”, forever. Now they are more than just cell phones that can make calls, they are hand held windows to the rest of the world.

The old bulky cell phones of the previous generation could make calls and that’s it, and in most cases could barely do that. April 3, 2003 marked the 30th anniversary of the first public telephone call placed on a portable cell phone. In the thirty years cell phones have been around they have went from large, bulky, and heavy paper weights to less than an inch thick, portable, lightweight devices that can makes calls while texting someone half way across the earth, all while “surfing the web” and checking your email and seeing what your “bff” posted on her/his facebook or blog. The even the name “cell” phone can’t cover what they can truly do. Now we call them smart phones or the iPhone. Even with smart phones and iPhones the tech age isn’t even close to being complete.

That’s the crazy thing about technology is that its always evolving and what was new last week is old news today. I think this is why technology is so big in the world today, there is something for every person and there are new things being made around every corner. At least this is why I relate to tech so easily. I enjoy having shiny new things that can do more than anyone else’s. This is why when some shiny new toy comes out I’m like a kid in a candy shop or a fat kid in Charlie’s Chocolate Factory, how ever you want to put it.

I relate to the iPhone because of my needs it meets. I’m a student in college and normally checking my email has never been a big thing for me, but now it’s a must have type of thing since professors communicate through email just about as much as they do during class. Technology is the one thing that can immediately change our world without anyone fighting. To make major changes in society it takes a natural disaster, war, or new technology to make that change a reality.

The commercials for the iPhone focus on what the iPhone can do and how it could change your world. The commercials consist of a pair of hands holding and using an iPhone in a certain way that would entice you to buy one, which is the point of every commercial for a product. It may show the hands making a call and searching the web to find a movie that’s out then finding a restaurant that’s near the theater at which the movie is showing that you had just chosen with your iPhone. Then it would show the hands selecting the restaurant and getting directions to the theatre and restaurant all while the narrating voice is telling you indirectly what the hands are doing through a conversation with another person that the original call was made to make it seem more realistic to the viewer. The commercials use the “cool” apps of the iPhone to entice the viewers because while other phones have apps like the iPhone most networks can not access the internet while making a call, which sets the iPhone out of the crowd and into the spot light. The genre it uses is of course an advertisement for TV or, now days thanks to tech, also the internet. AT&T is the network in which the iPhone is on. In there commercials, Luke Wilson also tells us how only AT&T lets you surf the web while making a call, but really is there a survival need to be able to search the web while making a call? I know it makes things more efficient and in the tech world that is survival but we made it for thousands of years without phones at all. I believe that the underlining message of this commercial is that everyone's life is hectic and there are more things to do in the day than there is time for, so why not use a piece of technology that will make your life, well less hectic? Apple

So what is the real meaning of why the iPhone was created? To answer that question you have to refer back to when I said technology evolves. We don’t need a car that goes from zero to sixty in 2.3 seconds like the Bugati Veyron, but still people buy them and they are produced to sell. In the world today, it’s not what you need when Apple or any tech company or any company period makes something new. It’s based on what will sell and how large of an audience it will reach. And the reason for the creation of the iPhone was it was the next natural step for tech. We had phones that could send texts and “pix” and emails and could surf the web all separately, but the iPhone took all of these things and made a device that could do all of these things but at a whole new level. Everything that could be added to a phone had been (other than a 50 cal. Rifle and a laser beam). The next step naturally was to take what it could do already and make it where it could do those things better and more efficiently. And that is why the iPhone was created. I can relate to this even to some people may say that its unneeded tech, but everything that the iPhone does makes my hectic life as a student seem not simple but less hectic which means a lot to me. The stress level in college can become overwhelming and anything that can help is a good idea to me no matter how “unneeded” others may think it is. As long as there is an audience for a certain tech companies will make them.

http://www.apple.com/iphone/iphone-3gs/

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