Has anyone else noticed that whenever the iPhone comes up on in an internet forum (e.g. slashdot) or in the media there is always someone who feels the need to rag on it and say it’s nothing special? I don’t mean the people who legitimately prefer having a physical keyboard or simply don’t like the design. I mean the people like the one in this slashdot story who say thing like:

After seeing the iPhone introduction, I was totally confused by how much excitement it generated in the US. It offered no features I could see beyond my Casio W41CA’s capabilities. I had a lot of apprehension towards the idea of a virtual keypad and the bare screen looked like a scratch magnet. Looks aren’t enough. Finally, the price is ridiculous. The device is an order of magnitude more expensive than my now year-old Keitai even with a two-year contract. After returning to the US from Japan, I’ve come to realize the horrible truth behind iPhone’s buzz. Over the year I was gone, US phones haven’t really done anything.

Amazingly this guy manages to rag on defects he hasn’t even seen. Now the iPhone only has a bit higher screen resolution than the phone he mentions but having 8 gigs to store movies and music seems like a big advantage over the W41CA’s 70 megabytes of memory. The iPhone’s interface and consistent UI is genuinely new (to the consumer) and warrants a big buzz while phones like the W41CA look and behave just like any other phone. You don’t have to like the iPhone but it just doesn’t make sense to pretend you don’t see it’s a big deal.

Apparently some people feel attacked by the introduction of popular new technology. Fifteen years ago you could certainly find people saying the same things about how their typewriters were just as good as a computer and I bet today you can hear people pretending that HDTV isn’t any better. But I still don’t understand it. Back when I thought I would keep my Treo and avoid the hefty iPhone price tag I was still planning to write this post and didn’t have any problem admitting that the iPhone would be nifty to own if I could afford it. So what is it that makes people feel the need to hate on new technology they don’t have?