iDoNotWant! Young Man Says "No, Thanks" to Latest Tech Toy
Mark Dempsey had read all the breathless pre-launch hype and the early reviews (Mossberg, Pogue, Gizmodo, etc.). He’d planned his day on Friday carefully: He’d wake up at 5 a.m., ride his fixed-gear bike to the Apple store in Soho from his apartment in Williamsburg, wait in line, get his iPhone, and be at his job as the marketing manager for a record label by 11, when everyone else would be rolling in anyway. But when he woke up at the appointed hour on Friday, he was hit with a revelation: “I just didn’t want the iPhone anymore,” he told a reporter on Sunday, as he ate a tofu scramble at Phoebe’s on Graham Ave. Mr. Dempsey is tall and thin, and wore scruffy black Converse, corduroy pants and a vintage Motley Crue T-shirt. He has a mustache. “I decided that my LG Chocolate would be fine for the next few months. Then maybe I’ll get a Blackberry or something.”
Mr. Dempsey, who is 29, admits he’s the only one of his friends who doesn’t have an iPhone yet. “I was at a party in the McKibben lofts on Saturday night, and everyone was taking out their phones and showing off their new apps,” he said, a little wistfully. “Even the people who didn’t have the new version had upgraded their old phones, so they were all, like, taking photos with their phones and uploading them automatically to Facebook and shit. This one kid had even downloaded this anatomy book for $39.99 and was trying to pick up chicks by showing them the vas deferens.”
To be sure, not everyone Mr. Dempsey is acquainted with has purchased the iPhone. “There’s this girl at work, one of the receptionists—I think she’s from, like, Ozone Park or something—and she has a Sidekick,” Mr. Dempsey said, stifling a guffaw. “Oh, and the guy who comes around and empties our trash has one of those free Nokia phones you got like five years ago when you signed up for Cingular.”
But Mr. Dempsey is steadfast in his new conviction that he just doesn’t need the new gadget, even if it makes him a social pariah. “I’m just not convinced,” he said, sipping on a mug of green tea. “I mean, it’s only a phone.”
