Mobile Ministry Magazine

The crew of websties that makes up Smartphone Experts has been rolling along with a Smartphone Round Robin for the past three weeks or so. I initally had not thought to post about it here, but after a quoted comment in a look at the BlackBerry 8310, I just had to post this:

...Let me adapt an idea from Italian writer and semiotician Umberto Eco, writing about the DOS vs. Mac divide in the 80s:

The fact is that the world is divided between users of the Macintosh computer and users of MS-DOS compatible computers. I am firmly of the opinion that the Macintosh is Catholic and that DOS is Protestant. Indeed, the Macintosh is counterreformist and has been influenced by the “ratio studiorum” of the Jesuits. It is cheerful, friendly, conciliatory, it tells the faithful how they must proceed step by step to reach - if not the Kingdom of Heaven - the moment in which their document is printed. It is catechistic: the essence of revelation is dealt with via simple formulae and sumptuous icons. Everyone has a right to salvation.

DOS is Protestant, or even Calvinistic. It allows free interpretation of scripture, demands difficult personal decisions, imposes a subtle hermeneutics upon the user, and takes for granted the idea that not all can reach salvation. To make the system work you need to interpret the program yourself: a long way from the baroque community of revelers, the user is closed within the loneliness of his own inner torment.

In this case, the Catholic smartphone is the BlackBerry, the Protestant Smartphone is Windows Mobile. Basically, the BlackBerry takes all the work of setting email up and moves onto the priests of BlackBerry - the BIS servers. You punch in your email address and your password, wait about 20 minutes (actually, I never waited more than 5), and your email magically starts getting pushed to your BlackBerry. Compare this to most Windows Mobile setups - where everything is handled device-side. Sure, WM can often (usually) auto-detect your email settings, but everything is pretty such client-based...

Not that I would ever call anyone who doesn't use a Palm OS Treo a heretic or anything, but I just loved the quote. The contest is still underway and the prizes are pretty good. Even if you are not interested in winning, getting an idea of what changing a device does to folks who know only how to use one or two devices well does make for some great news.

Catch the rest of the Smartphone Round Robin by visiting WMExperts, Treocentral, Phone Different, and CrackBerry.com. Or subscribe to the RSS feed of all of the latest entries.

Labels: mobiles