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Why You Should Not Buy The iPhone 13

11 Oct 2021 Joe Kukura- Millionaire in Training
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There is a new iPhone that just went on sale, for no better reason than it is autumn, and Apple puts out a new iPhone every autumn. Of course, this means your current iPhone has probably already started slowing down. But people, you should not buy the new iPhone 13 just because there is a new iPhone 13.

Oh, I’m sure you’ll just die without that “advanced 5G experience” that is still effectively no different than 4G. And I’m sure you’re stoked for that improved camera that’s still nowhere near as good as its Android competitors. But the brief sugar high these alleged improvements might bring to your everyday life comes with a considerable global downside. The environmental and consumer costs of disposing of 150 million smartphones every year in the U.S. alone are staggering.

Does the iPhone 13 come with any features that paying customers have been asking for? Of course it does not! Can you mark text messages as unread? No you cannot! Is the screen more durable or shatterproof? No, and it never will be! Can it take decent pictures of the moon or the sunset? No, but buy more cloud storage and listen to our TED Talk!

Phone manufacturers and telecom companies have created this bullshit expectation that a normal person needs to discard and upgrade their smartphone every year, even if the phone is not cracked and is still in good working condition. The consequences of this pointless, fraudulent, manufactured consumer need are wrecking the environment, driving income inequality and making the world a genuinely worse place.

THE iPHONE 13 FORCES YOU TO USE CREEPY FACE ID 

Apple loves to eliminate the iPhone’s best features and replace them with shittier, more privacy-invasive technologies that are nowhere near ready for market. Touch ID, which let you unlock your phone with your thumbprint, was awesome! But the iPhone 13 only uses Face ID (or a passcode).

Face ID is great if you’re a white guy who wants Palanitir to have all of our biometric data for future discriminatory purposes. Face ID does not work and is discriminatory toward people with darker skin, who may find themselves holed up at Gitmo because the bots mistook them for someone else. 

A lot of us would prefer Touch ID to Face ID. We are wearing masks because of the pandemic! But it is part of Apple’s core mission to never listen to their customers who make them rich, nor to ever even so much as say “Thank you for your business” to people paying $1,000 for a goddamn smartphone. 

THE iPHONE 13 IS LESS STUFF FOR MORE MONEY

In perhaps the greatest “Fuck You” move in the history of smartphones, you do not get earphones or a charger with the iPhone 13. That means you’re stuck with your old iPhone headphones and charger, or rather, the knock-off replacements you bought because the original accessories they sold you were so brittle in the first place.

Apple hilariously claims that this move is designed for “further reducing carbon emissions and avoiding the mining and use of precious materials,” an argument so implausible that only a vested shareholder would say it with a straight face. They are doing this to sell more overpriced accessories! 

Because if Apple really wanted to help the environment, they could have easily eliminated one major source of waste…

THE ENVIRONMENTAL HAVOC OF LIGHTNING PORT HEADPHONES AND CHARGERS

It’s been nearly ten years since Apple made the wildly anti-consumer, anti-environmental decision that took away the standard, universal headphone jacks and USB chargers. As any sensible person realizes, Apple did this because they think their pissing match with Android is far more important than the survival of the human race on this planet.

As the Verge thoughtfully observes, Apple could just switch to  “a much more useful USB-C to USB-C cable that could charge basically all of your electronics.“ But they won’t, because incompatible charging equipment is a major source of sales for them. 

Maybe one day some Silicon Valley genius will invent this year’s to-die-for smartphone that magically changes into next year’s to-die-for smartphone when next year rolls around. That would be a true “miracle device”. Until then, we  ought to hold this industry more accountable for the human and environmental tolls of excessive consumption and disposal of smartphones.

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Joe Kukura- Millionaire in Training

Joe Kukura- Millionaire in Training

Joe Kukura is a two-bit marketing writer who excels at the homoerotic double-entendre. He is training to run a full marathon completely drunk and high, and his work has appeared in the New York Times and Wall Street Journal on days when their editors made particularly curious decisions.