Must-have ... the iPhone. Photograph: Michael Nagle/Getty
This weekend, I and millions of other zappy, zeitgeisty individuals bodysurfed a thrilling wave of cultural nowness by rushing out and not buying an iPhone.
In my case, this was partly due to not having the gadgety gene, partly to a growing conviction that bringing something inside the Apple brand fold by putting a lower-case "i" in front of the word is becoming fantastically annoying, and partly and paradoxically, by Stephen Fry's brilliantly entertaining article in favour, or perhaps I should say in defence of the iPhone in Saturday's Guardian.
With magnificent cool, and like the black-belt show-off that he is, Fry revealed that he had not needed to wait in line for his iPhone along with all the other mortals; he'd had his for months. And yes, he was well aware of all the possible objections. Yes, yes, he said, almost every technical aspect of this device, considered individually, turns out to be inferior to those already on the market. And it's very pricey.
In fact, the awful truth would appear to be that the iPhone is the dodgiest and most overrated consumer item since the iEmperor unveiled his iClothing line. But Fry unleashed a torrent of superb prose in a rhetorical rearguard action. The upside of the iPhone, he said, was: "Beauty. Charm. Delight. Excitement. Ooh. Aah. Wow! Let me at it." Owning an iPhone, he said, was like having a gloriously un-sensible 60s sports car. I suspect, however, that Apple supremo Steve Jobs had imagined something analogous to a super-modern automobile, and that in his heart of hearts Fry knows that these days actually driving a classic 60s sports car, as opposed to looking at one, or thinking about one, is a pretty un-sexy experience.
Stephen Fry has been a brilliant and enlightened advocate of Apple design these 20 years. I remember as a student in the 80s being wildly excited by what was later re-released as the "Mac Classic" with its bizarrely small letterbox screen. At university, I wrote to Fry to ask him to come and speak, and positively pink-cheeked with self-congratulation, I used an Apple LaserWriter for the job, thinking that this might impress him. He wrote a charming letter back, regretting that his diary commitments would not permit it, but then congratulated me on my printer. "Almost as good as an Apple LaserWriter!" he wrote playfully, and for a second I mentally spluttered: "But it was an Apple LaserWriter!" - in precisely the way Fry must have anticipated. It all helped to turn me into an unrepentant, un-recovering Mac-head, although this is probably more a case of brand loyalty than discriminating connoisseurship. I am writing this right now on my MacBook Pro.
I have to admit there is a rather strong anti-Apple current of feeling around at the moment - possibly encouraged by its corporate competitors - best symbolised by two sketches from Fox TV's MadTV series: the first sketch is one about the, ahem, "iRack"; the second is about the iPhone itself.
Reading Stephen Fry's iPhone article over the weekend, I thought I recognised something that overwhelms many critics: a passionate need and want for something to be good: something to which the critic has looked forward for ages and with which he has developed a partisan, almost proprietorial relationship. It's a yearning, hero-worshippy desire to compel it to be good, and to suppress one's own doubts, by sheer force of will - and a compulsion to dam and divert all the rhetorical power at one's disposal into pre-empting objections and turning them upside-down.
Fry's article is, I think, in this vein, but it's so droll and persuasive that I actually now feel like buying an iPhone after all, just to look at it and study it. For decades, Fry has been telling us that Apple design has been A Good Thing. And he's right.
