I hate it when it all comes together

When it comes to technology, I’m an early adopter. Heck, I’m more than that. While others are filling in the adoption papers, I’m nursing the gadget into adolescence.

In 2001, for my 30th birthday, a group of generous friends chipped in to buy me an MP3 player. None of them knew what the hell this shiny little thing was, but they knew from my not-so-subtle hints in the months leading up to the Big Day that I wanted nothing else, and the best response they could hope for if they gave me a Woolies voucher or novelty belly ring would be a polite “Gosh, thanks. You don’t mind if I keep it nicely wrapped up, do you? That way when I give it back to you for your birthday it’ll save me the trouble.”

No, I wanted the Creative Nomad. (Well, actually, I wanted the Creative Jukebox, but didn’t want to test the boundaries of the friendship that much.) So my wife, bless her, went off and bought me one with my friends’ money. And for a while it was my most treasured possession. It could hold a full 19 songs — double that, if I splashed out on an expansion card or dropped my Pink Floyd megamix from the playlist. I was in heaven. In fact, I even joined a gym so that I could show it off in public. Today it sits in the middle drawer of my desk, largely neglected and usurped by my iPod. But I can’t bring myself to throw it away.

So I love technology. But I don’t get this whole convergence thing.

Back in 1995 I acquired my first cellphone.

“Look at this,” I grunted as I pushed the wheelbarrow into the lounge. My housemate looked up from the Nintendo I’d bought him (share the love) and said: “What the hell is that?”

“It’s a wheelbarrow,” I said. “But more importantly, look what it’s carrying.” And I pointed. At the rectangular brick propped up by manuals and a spare battery.

“What’s that?”

“A phone.”

“Oh.”

And he returned to Super Mario Brothers.

Notice that his first response wasn’t “But can it take photographs?” or “Does it have a built-in GPS?” It was a phone. It phoned people when you were able to muster the strength to lift it to your ear and, using your clenched fist, were able to punch in someone’s number in the right sequence. He got that. And so did I.

Nowadays a phone is never just a phone. Nokia’s newest device, the N95, comes with a marketing campaign that brags “What computers have become”. Whose dumb idea was that? Computers haven’t become a phone any more than microwaves have become convection ovens, even if some of them claim to grill things. This is a phone trying to emulate a computer and falling way short of the mark.

Look, I’m all for efficiency. My current phone does email and it surfs the web, and when I’m away from my office I find that pretty handy. But it’s just not a computer. Computers have big screens, full keyboards and they can do a million things a phone can’t do. It’s also not an MP3 player. iPods have nifty click wheels and massive storage capacity.

I haven’t bought a gadget for a while, so I have decided to splash out on a GPS (hey, Cape Town’s a tricky place to navigate — it’s got a bloody big mountain in the middle. And if one more lentil-swilling, tie-dyed local tells me I should use the mountain to orient myself in my adopted city, then I’m going to shove a mountain goat up their arse. Or vote for Helen Zille. Same thing.) And I want a GPS, dammit — not a phone that is also a GPS when it’s not being an MP3 player or playing some screeching kid yelling “Daddy, your phone is ringing” as a ringtone (see arse-shoving rant above for how I feel about those).

Large corporates such as Sony, Nokia and Apple are genius innovators. They consistently churn out great products that make our world a better place. But somewhere they’ve lost the plot — why would they try to sell me one device that replaces four, when I would happily buy all four? Let’s stick our head into a Sony board meeting:

Head of Product Sanyan Yakamoto: Chairman-San, I have a great business proposition for you.

Chairman: Yes, Sanyan?

SY: Well Chairman-san, you know how we think we’re going to sell five million MP3 players next year, and 13-million phones? If we merged the two devices then we could sell 13-million of those instead.

Chairman: So instead of selling 18-million things you are now suggesting that we sell 13-million?

SY: Yes, Chairman-san.

Chairman: And thereby render the whole MP3 division obsolete?

SY: Right again, Chairman-san. (Sits back and basks in the glow of the praise he knows is about to come.)

Chairman: Sanyan, if you weren’t my son I’d order the samurai at the door to lop your head of with the Motorola Razr.

SY: But Chairman-san …

Chairman: No, son, I mean Sanyan-san, it’s not going to happen. Go and clear your desk and work for Apple.

See what I mean? Ludicrous, but a conversation like that must have happened at some point with a different outcome, or else we wouldn’t be seeing all these schizophrenic devices on the shelves. What are these guys thinking?

OK, I may be wrong in all this. And in 2025 when you’re buzzing down the highway to work in your toaster, you’ll be having the last laugh. But right now the converge-alists leave me cold. Now excuse me, please, my doorbell is ringing. That means my laundry is done.