It's been a couple of months since I bought an iPhone (considered opinion — great gadget, rubbish phone) and although I often use it to pick up emails I rarely use it to send emails.
However, when I do send emails, the slightly self-satisfied “Sent from my iPhone” email signature is automatically attached. Yes, you can change this, but “out of the box” this is what happens.
More often than not, I will remember to delete this before sending the email because of its inherent smugness — the signature might as well be “Sent from my iPhone (just in case you didn't know I had an iPhone)”.
I don't think Apple is entirely to blame because if my memory serves me correctly this trend was started by BlackBerry, with its “Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device” message appendage.
When BlackBerrys (BlackBerries?) first came out and I started receiving the odd email with this signature it didn't seem at all like the sender was lording their technology choices over me, in fact it felt more like an apology: “Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device (so please forgive brevity bordering on rudeness and more typos than a Nigerian banking scam)”.
Perhaps this is because the iPhone is a device marketed on its physical beauty whereas the first BlackBerries looked like they were made out of Lego by a child with attention deficit disorder.
In 1884, when Lewis Waterman patented the first practical fountain pen, I wonder if early adopters insisted on adding “Written with my Waterman Original Capillary Feed Fountain Pen” to the bottom of their letters?
And did early telegrams have similar product placement embedded in their content?
PENELOPE'S CONSUMPTION WORSENS STOPSEND DOCTOR SOONEST STOP
SENT FROM MY SAMUEL B MORSE PATENTED ELECTRICAL TELEGRAPH STOP
How far should this brand-enhanced declaration of tools and methods go?
If you and I are chatting in the street, how much time should I allow to pass before informing you that the face you've been looking at was shaved with a Wilkinson Sword blade, the tongue forming the words was recently bathed in Listerine Total Care Clean Mint Mouthwash and the ears listening to your own words were cleaned using Boots Cotton Buds1?
So in the interests of full disclosure I should state that I am posting this entry from my Apple Mac Pro, using ideas from my head and typed using the fingers on my hands.
1 Cotton buds which, I might add, “must never be inserted into the nose or ear canal”. Is there any other product whose most common use is the one specifically proscribed on the packaging?
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