Funny you should mention durability. Our need for perceived durability was also discussed in the film I watched last night. Marc Newsom mentioned that we could all easily still be using the cell phone we had 5 years ago, but in those 5 years, most of us have had 5 or more different cell phones. And it's not because they wear out, it's because we always want the newest thing, partly because that's our nature, and partly because we've been trained to want the newest things, by way of marketing, media, and society as a whole.
Also in the film, Karim Rashid and others made some interesting points about the sustainability of manufacturing products, in particular electronics. He opined that his next computer should be made of cardboard. Electronics are discarded long before they're dead, so why build them to last a lifetime?
20 years ago if you bought a $500 SLR camera, you were careful with it. If you dropped it, it broke, period. And if you dropped it and broke, it wasn't a flaw in the camera, it was just your stupid clumsiness. But today, our $500 electronics are not allowed to be fragile. We demand that they be able to be thrown at a wall in a rage, or carelessly dropped, and they're expected to perform flawlessly and without sustaining a scratch. To me, this is more about people becoming more spoiled rotten and inconsiderate than it is about the actual need for more durable products.
Interesting thread. I am seeking out the movie and will watch it... it sounds interesting.
As for the iP4, it is the first iPhone I've owned. My wife has the 3GS. She has hers in a case, which adds some bulk, but to me it feels plastic-y. I like the dense feel of the 4 (I use only a bumper).
To the durability of devices, my first cell phone was an LG something or other with a color inside
and outside screen. It had a camera so you could have picture ID... seriously, it was the **** in 2002. I had it in the side pocket of my carpenter jeans one night getting in to a wooden booth at a BBQ restaurant and I leaned on it on one of the screw covers of the bench that was raised up and cracked the outside screen. The outside still worked, but the inside screen must've had more damage because it was just white. The phone still functioned, as in I could dial and call, but couldn't see any of my contacts or anything.
Before I get "cool story bro"'d the point is I have been much more careful with all of my devices since that point. I've noticed that people with cracked screens of iPhones or otherwise seem to be high on the douchbaggery scale to me, and regardless of the durability of their device, they would have damaged it somehow. Unfortunately, even the best designers in the world can't "common sense" proof a phone.
Now, you could hand me the least durable phone in the world, and if it is operational, and save for a total freak accident, I'm going to take care of it. Especially since I pay hundreds of dollars for it.
To your point about phones wearing out... I had a Samsung something or other, the one that you could flip the phone open in portrait and also in landscape, and the keys were oriented in two directions (the updated model has LCD keys that change depending on position) and the zero button quit working. I had the ROKR and RAZR back in the day, and they both had keys that became dysfunctional. So in 5 years, I've had 4 or 5 phones, and a couple have worn out. The others I swapped because they sucked, or I just wanted the new thing.
I don't plan on switching to the iP5, especially if it is just a 4GS (for lack of a better term).
