BRENTZILLA

Joseph Avila’s story, “Why Some Apple Fans Won’t Buy an iPhone,” is well written and interesting. If nothing else, it illustrates how, no matter how much you might trust a company like Apple, it may not be enough to invest in a new, unproven and expensive product.

And, as Avila points out, Apple is one thing: Being forced to subscribe through AT&T truly is a deterrent. All the companies involved in the “New AT&T” throughout recent history — the old AT&T, Cingular, SBC — have epic histories of abusing their customers’ trust.

Me? I was zinged (to say the least) when the cost of Cingular’s text messages jumped from $0.05 to $0.15 without any real attempt to inform me of the fact. Ah well, call me a glutton for punishment…

But is it just me, or is it weird to lump “Apple fans” into a “have all things Apple” category? As if there were a formulation:

Apple x New Product= Adoption by Fans

For instance: I love my Xbox (the original). Bought it when my girlfriend became my ex-girlfriend, and found most of my long-distance friends playing “Halo 2″ every day. Xbox and Halo became a way for me to have a two-hour conversation — okay, make that talk trash — with my pals while beating, lasering, sniping, rocketing, grenading them to virtual death (though more often than not, it was my corpse that decorated the screen).

But as much as I dig Microsoft’s Xbox, I’d never purchase a Windows OS. Or a Zune. Or most things produced by Microsoft.

Then again, this comparison probably isn’t fair. Microsoft has a decades-old history of creating horrible interfaces and unstable products.

Apple doesn’t. Plus, the iPod is the first product Apple has produced that’s been adopted wholeheartedly by the masses. Users’ positive experience with it and iTunes created the vaunted “halo effect,” which undoubtedly has played a major role in the rising success of the company’s desktops, laptops… and (Apple hopes, but not unreasonably) to the iPhone.

Hmm… it just occurred to me that, despite my premise, I myself “buy all things Apple”: Four flavors of iPod, an iBook, the iPhone and the latest 24-inch “oh my god it’s beautiful” iMac later, I can’t say I’m not a fanboy, I suppose…

…but it’s not like I went out and bought a Cube, after all.