Lately Apple has been showing ads on television for their iPhone product. I really like the iPhone, even though I don't own one, but I really dislike the ads. The ads are reminiscent of the 'switcher' ads that ran in the 90's, with one major difference. The switcher ads were funny, and in some cases the stories they told were real stories of frustration with using Windows (even if they were exaggerated a tiny bit sometimes).

The iPhone ads lack that wit that the switcher ads have, and sometimes, dare I say, they are even dumb!
Take this for example: you see a guy showcasing his iPhone and he says that it replaced four devices. Before he used to carry his iPod, a digital camera, a cell phone, and a communications device to send email and text messages. The iPhone took care of all of that! My first reaction to this was 'huh?' what are you smoking? OK you can indeed have your iPod and your phone in one device, this is a valid observation, however
1. If you REALLY want a good camera, you won't settle for what is available on the iPhone.
2. Most cell phones already have a 1.3 or 2.0 megapixel camera on them, so if you don't really care about the photo quality (as is evident from point 1), why carry a camera?
3. You carried a 'communicator' device with you for email and text messages? Why? Why not get a blackberry, windows mobile, palmOS or symbian device that has a built in keyboard, and camera and is also a phone? Where have you been living?

The premise of the switcher ads in the 90's was that the Macintosh 'just worked', it didn't eat your homework, it didn't give you cryptic error messages, you didn't have to worry about dip switches. While the iPhone is revolutionary in it's own terms, there are cell phones out there that do what the iPhone did before the iPhone did it, and they worked!

The one ad that is an exception to my disapproval of this new batch of iPhone ads is the 'visual voicemail' one. This one I really like.

This ad is the one I dislike the most: