Yes, it’s time for ANOTHER article about that bloody phone people can’t seem to shut up about. Don’t worry though, it’s not yet another uninformative news post. We all know that so far, the American blogosphere has salivated over every chunk of Jesusphone semi-news, just to mention the product name seven times per sentence and fill the comments section with glowing sentiment. And of course, the rest of the world is content to sit back and slowly grind their collective teeth.

But what of the FUTURE? So far, the past has been more predictable than a Tom Clancy plot about Russian terrorists holding the US Government entire world to ransom with a nuclear warhead, why hasn’t someone had a crack at predicting the eventual outcome? Well, join me as we power up the flux capacitor in the Rebuild Software DeLorean (picture a Fiat Panda with a tube amplifier taped to to the passenger seat), and map out the FUTURE of Apple’s Jesusphone!

29 Nov 2007:
• Apple releases the Jesusphone to the French masses for the princely sum of €399 plus TVA. While Télécom Orange reports brisk first day sales, they rapidly dismissed claims that the absurdly high salesperson-to-customer ratio created a needlessly pressuring sales environment, much like in the classic sitcom “Are You Being Served?”. On a positive note, all customers were assured that their Jesusphone would ride up with wear. So far, no mention has been made of the mythical unlocked Jesusphone mandated by French law.

19 Dec 2007:

• After giving nearly a month for punters to fatten and pamper Orange with mandatory service contracts, Apple quietly and reluctantly releases the unlocked variant of the Jesusphone for the first time. It costs €799.

20 Dec 2007:

• Smelling the aroma of a cash cow just begging to have its tits squeezed, French Ebay punters begin to export Jesusphones en-masse to hungry overseas buyers. Despite the sneaky labeling, only 40% of them are really unlocked. About 2% are rotting cheese and Eurodisney figurines packed in an Apple box.

25 Dec 2007:

• News outlets begin publishing stories about the number of Jesusphones hocked on ebay.fr. AT&T are upset. Orange are upset. Apple are upset too, and in an effort to curb contraband Jesusphone sales, handsets become region-locked to the country of origin’s iTunes store. Howls of rage and waves of smugness devastate comment sections around the blogosphere.

2 Jan 2008:

• A 15 year old on a Romanian internet forum discovers that the French Jesusphone CAN be used normally; if you change your system language settings to French, buy a credit card through a French offshore bank to sign up for iTunes France, and bounce all internet traffic through a French web proxy. Apple zealots stuck with region-locked Jesusphones see a thin ray of hope. Webster’s French-English Dictionary makes it into the Amazon’s Top 100 Sellers List for the first time.

4 Jan 2008:

• A one-man Mac shareware development team packages a single-click OSX tool which goes through all the above steps and vice versa. It is priced at $30. About 1,150 people buy it before Apple renders it useless a week later with an iTunes update. At this point zealots who own Le Téléphone De Jésus pretend nothing is wrong, insisting that they understand why Apple has been forced into such a position by the nasty miserly Ebeneezer Scrooge-like mobile carriers, and they are all the better for it. The incessant complaints and laughter are punctuated by cries of “FERME TA PUTAIN DE GUEULE”.

29 Jun 2008:

• Someone, unaware that they deserve a punch up the bracket, titles their blog post “Happy iPhone Day”.

28 Aug 2008:

• Apple releases Jesusphone mark-2. The icons have changed, the phone is 3mm thinner, and the phone now has a 3G chipset (probably adding MMS, which existing 3G users have had all along). The SIM card is now located inside the unit with the battery, making it impossible to change without voiding the warranty. The zealots point out that this is a much-needed safeguard for Apple’s revenue stream against the society-ruining communists who choose to illegally unlock the handset (after AT&T has so graciously subsidised it). Useful retorts such as:
  • “it keeps honest users honest”
  • “when you bought it you KNEW you had to buy an AT&T contract so it’s ENTIRELY YOUR FAULT”
  • “why SHOULD Apple have to support whiners who want to ruin their new gadget with an unapproved SIM then cry about it”

  are once again rolled out for the new product launch.

  29 Aug 2008:

• First whinging blog post arrives complaining about all Apple Stores within a 30 mile radius having no phones in stock. The flames leaping from the server powering http://store.apple.com have been extinguished, and shipping estimates for new Jesusphones range from mid-October to the end of January.

7 Oct 2008:

• A post on Engadget surfaces whinging about the colour depth of the new Jesusphone screen. Accompanying the article are three blurry comparison photographs, some component model numbers indicating that Apple has changed from the C7T21905 to the C7T21904 (which, according to some China-sourced part list, is 15¢ cheaper), and hundreds of angry punters commenting that they always thought the screen looked a bit funny and now that you mention it yes the hideous disfiguration is quite visible. Stories surface of people trying to hand their phone in for warranty repairs and getting laughed at. An internet petition is started and gets 10,000 signatures. The zealots insist that nothing is wrong, then quickly throw their 1st generation Jesusphone on Ebay to cash in on the tide of dissent. Sadly, the market has already been flooded by a tide of idiots trying to hock off old Apple gear to pay for Jesusphone mark-2.

31 Oct 2008:

• In a fascinating example of sick-bucket journalism, the Jesusphone is listed as Time Magazine’s Invention of the Year for the second time in a row. Lev Grossman justifies the choice on the grounds of the “new svelte look”, the “revolutionary new MMS feature” and how “it’s been a year and no device on any other platform has made any headway, compared to the Godzilla-like assault Apple has made on the Tokyo of handheld computing paradigms”. The $1 water purifier and the device which reverses global warming each get a footnote on page 79.

20 Oct 2015:

• An Apple company auditor discovers due to a recent financial reshuffle, a company-owned warehouse in a Shanghai backlot still has several thousand crates of first generation Jesusphones.

21 Oct 2015:

• Original Jesusphone goes on sale in Australia for $899 (locked to Telstra for 12 months).

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 15th, 2007 at 12:00 am and is filed under Articles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.