The New York Times has just posted an article about a particularly annoying pet peeve of mine. Since owning an iPhone I have had numerous arguments with people regarding the iPhone’s lack of MMS (picture text messages). These people ridicule the iPhone over it’s lack of this “feature”. The basic argument is thus: “My phone can send pictures in a text message, why can’t your shiny new iPhone?”. No matter that their phone can’t send or receive email, which is an exponentially better messaging platform than SMS or MMS. What everyone that has argued over this fails to understand is that they are being ripped off by this amazing and wonderful “feature”. The cell phone carriers are charging exorbitant amounts of money to send tiny, text based messages and blurry photos to and from cell phones exclusively (excluding the SMS/MMS to email gateways). I can send a photo attached to an email to a phone or computer. It can be viewed on any number of devices and it doesn’t cost me anything extra. SMS should be free, it doesn’t cost the cell phone carriers anything (relatively) to deliver the messages. MMS should go away and be replaced with email on all phones. Neither should be touted as a “feature”.
On a side note: I am actually a little upset that AT&T requires that I have a text messaging plan in my contract, I would prefer to never send or receive messages via text messaging as it is an old and over-priced technology. That I am forced to pay a flat rate for a text-messaging plan is ridiculous.
