Size Matters

It's fitting that on that day I launch this blog, Steve Jobs tries to outscoop me by announcing that he's making a bigger and better 16GB iPhone:

Apple Doubles iPhone Capacity (CNET).

Ever since I bought my iPhone, everything seems to have become a compeition. I have to be cooler, faster and trendier. Before my conversion, I was a resigned, uninterested and otherwise unengaged consumer of emerging mobile technologies who owned a RAZR and was quite content, thank you very much. Now, it seems every time we're out and my iPhone makes an appearance, it's greeted with "Oh, someone has an iPhone, well now..." Hell, even my ex-boyfriend ended up getting an iPhone shortly before we broke up, in what my shrink has since described as a last-ditch attempt to bring us closer. (!)

When I think back to why I bought my iPhone, I realize I was either:
(a) suffering intense iPhone envy of any myriad of the hot guys I saw carrying one or...
(b) so desperate to be connected that I didn't want to miss out on the next big thing.

Everything about the iPhone involves competition and size. In a matter of months, the bigger iPhone was the clear favorite, the smaller 4 GB was discontinued and its small owners emasculated forever just for having the smallest iPhone. When I was shopping for cases/protection for my iPhone, I saw the words "girth" and "thickness" used freely on packaging. The MacBook Air is the world's thinnest laptop. Look at the Mac and PC guys. You can either be unattractive, middle aged and round, or hot, scruffy, and dark-featured. No need to go into the size issue here.

So, the iPhone really got bigger so that Apple can capitalize on the video feature it launched in software update 1.1.3 that finally added the functionality that users were looking for. I haven't really embraced the movie feature yet, but it's only a matter of time, right?

When it comes to the competition for size, I couldn't help but wonder, does Apple want to be bigger and better or just smaller, faster and a whole lot cuter?