The death of an iPhone 4

Now that I've had my new iPhone 4 for nearly four days, I need to know what to do with my old iPhone. One has to wonder: Will it blend?

Clearly the iPhone 4 blends.

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Orac, you're an idiot! All respect lost in a few seconds.

Are you so disconnected from the real world that you haven't realised that what you're doing is just unacceptable. Have you heard of recycling? Did it still work? Could you have given it to someone who couldn't afford one? If you were secretly doing it, it would just be stupid. Publicly doing it, you should be ashamed of yourself. The height of arrogance.

And to think I had respect for you. You now have one less reader.

By Simon Taylor (not verified) on 27 Jun 2010 #permalink

Orac, you're an idiot! All respect lost in a few seconds.

Are you so disconnected from the real world that you haven't realised that what you're doing is just unacceptable. Have you heard of recycling? Did it still work? Could you have given it to someone who couldn't afford one? If you were secretly doing it, it would just be stupid. Publicly doing it, you should be ashamed of yourself. The height of arrogance.

And to think I had respect for you. You now have one less reader.

7/10 on the troll. A game effort.

Color me unimpressed. If you really want to make destroying small Apple gadgets exciting, you ought to call Dylan Stiles out of retirement.

Jumpin' Jesus on a pogo stick, Simon, you really are a putz, and a humorless one as well. Either that, or you're a troll. There's just no other way to put it. You must not have been reading very long, either, because less than three months ago, I posted the "Will It Blend?" video for the iPad:

http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2010/04/the_eternal_question_about_th…

If something so minor as my posting a silly little video that amused me and using said video to make a joke about entering Blendtec's little contest makes you "lose all respect for me," then I can only conclude that you must not have had much, if any, respect for me to begin with. Hey, sometimes not everyone likes my humor all the time. That's life. Deal with it.

However, to reassure your oh-so-pious self and to get you to let go of those pearls you're clutching at with a "death grip," as well as maybe to convince you that I'm not the BP-like ravager of the environment you apparently think I am, I'll assure you that my old iPhone is going to go to one of my relatives. There, happy now?

Now piss off, and don't let the door hit your tuchas on the way out of the blog, so to speak. My tolerance for nonsense on this blog is legendary (after all, look at how long I tolerated John Best before banning him--a couple of years, at least!), but you just exhausted it in a single comment.

ADDENDUM: I just searched to see if Simon had ever commented before. As far as I can tell, he hasn't, at least not using the name, e-mail address, or IP address he used this time. This leads me to the conclusion that Simon is almost certainly just a drive-by troll. Mea culpa for even acknowledging his existence.

Clearly the iPhone 4 blends.

Oh the humanity! I thought you liked your iPhone 4. Isn't it the iPhone _3G_ we should be blending;-)

When I saw Simon's post, the first thing I thought of was the couple times Jake Crosby berated you for using slang or figures of speech.

OT, just thought I'd let you know that several flying monkeys from the anti MMR vaccine crowd have been crapping up the comments to today's Chris Mooney WaPo op-ed. One 'ccdaddy57' seems to be the most prolific; and verbose; and tedious (probably dishonest too, but 'twas one of those tl;dr cases for me, I must confess).

Gonna post a link or two to some of your relevant posts, fyi. No, I'm not trying to be cruel - it's for the children. :)

Mooney's editorial ain't too bad, IMHO, although as a number of commenters noted, there is too much of a blame the scientists vibe - i.e., 'OK scientists, add a few hours to your 60+ hour work weeks to do PR outreach - and there is NO mention of the vast funding by vested corporate/political interests to practice large scale deception and dissemination of propaganda in opposition to inconvenient science-validated truths.

IOW, bidness as usual, alas.

sharl (you could have posted this on an on subject article), I put the ccdaddy57 in the search window above, and found he has been here before. Pure loony tunes.

you could have posted this on an on subject article

Apologies for not doing so. I rarely visit here, and am more used to the SOP on my regular blogs, where either comments are closed on older posts (I didn't check though), or comments on older posts go unseen.

By the way, I only linked to one of Orac's old posts, the 09Jun one discussing how Wakefield has now been relegated to overnight conspiracy radio.

Whilst amusing the question "will it blend?" always seems akin to Mythbusters asking "Will it explode" :)

I could see that it gets into the hands of a disabled kid who could use it as an ipod touch.

Well, of course it blends when it shatters!

Mike, one reason for the smoke is that the friction between the blender blades and the glass/metals/plastic create lots of heat, and it tends to cause smoking of plastic bits, and other electronics. The case is actually glass, which took the blender a bit to get into, but it eventually got stressed by the repetitive beating and shattered (technical term is structural fatigue).

There are also lots of nasty chemical getting mixed up, and not just the battery. He showed the thing as actually being turned on, so you know there was some chemical interactions occurring. After blending, there are lots more happening. (from experience, other than college chemistry, materials science and lots of structural mechanics while in college, do not put multiple 9 volt batteries in your pocket while replacing smoke alarm batteries... the contacts contacted and I had real "hot pockets" and smoke!)

Oh, and if you have not noticed: it is advertising a big and expensive blender. The Wildside blender is over $400!

(sharl, the reason I dislike off-topic comments is that I really don't read every article... if you had posted that comment on what Orac writes on WWII, I would not have seen it... plus it screams fly-by (sometimes troll) posting when there are active comments on an on-topic article)

Orac, are you nuts, or are your relatives just that beloved? Used iPhones are selling for a small fortune in Russia! Or so one happy new owner of the iPhone 4 tells me. He's actually made money by upgrading.

O' course, if you wanna send the old 3GS to me, I'll be happy to use it to inaugurate a new video series: Will It Bake? Inspired by one of my customers, who wanted to give his girlfriend a memorable experience by presenting her with a new cell phone by baking it into a cake. It was certainly memorable, although fatal to the phone....

Well, if you ever want to answer the question "What does it look like if hit by a 168 gr slug at 3200 ft/sec" just mail it to me.

It's amazing how many people don't realize it's not Orac doing the blending, but a place that sells blenders.

(And, really? Of course it blends. It'll be amazing if anyone ever makes a portable electronic devices that thing can't rip to bits.)

Am I the only person who thought Simon was joking? Feigning outrage for humour purposes? Oh well. I guess if he really is banned, we'll never find out.

(First time commenter myself here, but I enjoy reading the blog every now and then. KUTGW)