If you bought an iPhone 5, please consider returning it

I think we’ve all gone a little insane. Or at least five million of us.

Let’s start with 2000 and work our way up. By now you’ve probably heard about the 2000 worker riot at a Foxconn plant in Taiyuan. While the initial findings seemed to indicate that the riot started as a dispute between workers from different provinces, it seems more likely that the riot broke out as a result of workers having enough of distrust and beatings from the guards. 5000 police had to be sent in to stop the riot, and the 79000 person factory shut down as they picked up the broken glass and the 40 injured.

This plant may have made the iPhone, and if they didn’t, another one just like it did. Apple sold five million of those phones this weekend, and if these workers had been pushed just a bit harder, they might have sold another two million.

But make no mistake, we bought them, this $800 phone that may be as much as a year behind its competitors. Many of this five million will likely replace this new phone with the latest model next year.

I didn’t buy one, but that’s not terribly surprising. Apple hasn’t been selling to me for a while. I particularly like the Mac Book Pro, priced at $1399 for the basic 64GB model. The computer on which I am writing this blog post has 160GB (+32 GB in an expansion SD card slot),  and cost $185 dollars. I could literally buy seven of them for the same money, one for each day of the week.

I’m solidly middle middle class. Maybe lower middle middle. I have gadgets certainly, but an $800 phone makes no sense. I was mad when my $800 HP laptop only lasted two years, and most people who buy the iPhone don’t even keep it that long.

This is insanity, this economy that requires a constant influx of new things while we throw out the old. And I think we know that. We also know the “hidden” costs of this constant influx of new things, environmental damage, distracted driving, and thousands of workers in China working criminally long hours, being searched to make sure they aren’t stealing the products they make, and being beaten by guards at the slimmest provocation.

We don’t need these things, and we know it. I’m a cube dweller. There is not a single function for my job that requires, or even would be helped by an iPhone (or any smartphone). There are thousands like me in my company and in every company. Even managers who might have more of a legitimate business use more often then not seem to use these devices for little else than being rude in meetings.

I’m not saying give up your gadgets. To pull out an old chestnut from my dear friend Brian “pot to kettle, damn your blackness.” I’m saying keep them and use them until they don’t work anymore. Make deliberate decisions about what you buy and decide if its really something that’s right for you and that you will use. Take your time before bringing this thing into your home. And consider the source, the people who made this magic device you are holding.

Apple’s not alone in the crazy department (though a patent on rounded rectangles is just silly and Michael Okuda should be counter-suing you any day now Apple), but lately they may be a little more insane than most. Even the little decisions, like cutting Google Maps from the phones and then not knowing where Mt. Rushmore is just seems sad. It’s sad that Apple prices itself out of the middle class, and doesn’t seem to share its wealth with the people making its products, be it through more humane working conditions or better pay.

We know what’s right, what’s sensible, what reasonable. So do it already!