Things I will never buy in the future

A point-and-shoot camera. A pocket video camera. A portable music player. A standalone GPS device. A handheld gaming unit. A dedicated e-reader. A PDA.

And a phone that doesn’t include all the above functionality.

5 thoughts on “Things I will never buy in the future

  1. Today I will agree with you on the handheld gaming unit (but I’m not much of a gamer) and on the dedicated e-reader and PDA… I still really like my GPS, and use it often, and I use it while I’m using my portable music player and sometimes my phone. So what happens when you want to use your one device to do multiple things at a time? I can also see use cases for the cheap, small camera, you know, like when I don’t want to strap an iPhone onto my bike helmet. :)

  2. I’d own a GPS device–if it came built in to the dash of my car or something. It’s not that many of these things don’t have value. It’s just that the additional value they provide (such as the ability to strap it to one’s head) is becoming smaller and smaller as smartphones become better and better.

    Actually, now that I think about it, the first HD video footage I saw out of an iPhone 4 was precisely that: strapped to some tech writers bike as she rode around the city.

  3. Of course I’d buy anyone of those things separately… because when they’re all smushed together into one device, they’re probably implemented poorly. If I wish that these functions in my phone would be better-made, isn’t that the same as admitting that separate functionality devices are still better? There’s the convenience of having them all in one device in your pocket… but I’m often still cursing the shallow implementations.

  4. Sure, the houseboat syndrome. Not a very good house, not a very good boat. But things do change… some houseboats are now pretty ok houses and pretty ok boats! Plus, in the case of the camera, I already have one of the best cameras money can buy. It’s only convenience I’d be looking for in a pocket one. And I now have a pretty decent 5MP camera with a little flash on it included on my phone which is with me wherever I go. HD video, too.

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