Ultimate iPhone Review — Will It Blend?

I've been enjoying the Will it Blend videos forever. There's something about a labcoat clad crazy man putting things like marbles and soda cans into a blender and after reducing them to powder, warning you not to breathe in the particles. Well today they ask the ultimate question of the latest over-hyped internet sensation Will the iPhone Blend? Fans of these videos can probably guess the answer... and this story made my morning. I've been waiting for an excuse to link these forever. If you haven't seen these, you're in for a real treat.

Great for kids!

[PIPBoy3000]

My kids and I spent nearly an hour looking at all of these last night. Sam kept exclaiming "That's totally awesome!" Even four year-old Emma enjoyed the blending of the Barbies.

I assume the whole thing is a viral marketing deal for the brand of blender, but it's so beautifully done. My wife and I decided that it was pretty obviously marketing towards men. Women might enjoy chopping up a rake or two, but men's eyes grow wide and they get a funny grin whenever you start tossing in glow sticks, marbles, iPhones, and other fun things.

The other thing of note is that he probably should have been wearing a respirator for some of these tricks. The marbles in particular were very nasty. Breathing in small amounts of glass smoke is incredibly bad for your lungs. That's why they banned asbestos, after all.

Re:As funny as the videos are....

[shoptroll]

That's the entire point. It's supposed to be an advertisement. But it's a lot better than most of the adverts you see on tv these days.

Re:As funny as the videos are....

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course it's an advertisement! But hardly a "waste" of a good product -- links on digg, slashdot, and all the mac sites to boot for under a grand is the cheapest ad campaign ever.

If you're looking for wasteful advertising, try the Olympics.

Re:As funny as the videos are....

[Ngarrang]

They kind of piss me off, too. It's always a waste of a good device/product.

How is that? I thought it was an excellent use of a blender. The blender survived just fine.

Re:As funny as the videos are....

[gEvil (beta)]

Also, it's like an advertisement.

I'm amazed by how many people can't recognize a blatant advertisement when it's staring them in the face. It's not "like" an advertisement, it *is* an advertisement.

Crowbars don't blend....easily.

[TapeCutter]

Many moons ago I worked at a sawmill, the wood chipper would get blocked on a regular basis and required a crowbar to unblock it. I was not the first person to try and blend the crowbar. These (accidental) experiments demonstrated that crowbars don't blend easily, but you can slice the end off one if you have several tons of flywheel behind the blade.

Re:As funny as the videos are....

[ahoehn]

As someone who work at an ad agency, let me say, I would be freaking thrilled to come up with an idea half this good. Not only do these clips entertain the viewers, they also highlight what's excellent about the product being sold. Compare that to something like the Subservient Chicken [subservientchicken.com], which is entertaining but really says nothing about Burger King's product.

I hope Blendtec sticks with whatever agency/marketing intern came up with this concept. It's solid gold.

I don't quite enjoy it so much

[jollyreaper]

I can appreciate the novelty of grinding up old junk like golf clubs, marbles, etc. But trashing a new piece of electronics for the novelty value? Not so much. There are sites out there like Smashmyxbox where pranksters would go to the effort to buy the latest and greatest novelty and then smash it in front of fans waiting in line. I could respect it more if it were an act of social commentary but it's basically a frat prank video intending nothing more than a Nelson Ha-ha! The laughter I hear from the cameraman on the video is no different from the laughs directed at people in serious pain. The youtube video I'm thinking of in particular is the kid trying to do a trampoline basketball dunk. He wasn't trying to do something intentionally dumbass like riding a skateboard down a handrail or get a fluorescent bulb smashed across his bare back, he just bounced too high, got his foot caught in the rim, and felt it wrench as his whole body went the other way. I wouldn't be surprised if he broke something there. But instead of a genuine gasp of horror and a dropped camera, we get giggles and a tight focus on a boy screaming in pain. Holy fuck, isn't this fun?!?!

Re:Fun?

[nerdup]

Being depressed for a week over dropping an inert piece of metal on the floor is more perverse than getting a charge out of watching one great piece of engineering chew up another, in my humble opinion...

You might want to reexamine your priorities

Re:Fun?

[NutMan]

I had the same thought. Once I attended a small group discussion on hunger at a local University. A student from Africa said that when he first came to the U.S., he was in the cafeteria one day when a big food-fight erupted. It made him sick because of the contrast between the U.S. & Africa. He saw people starving over there, but here food is so plentiful we waste it by throwing it at each other as a joke.

Re:Fun?

[blincoln]

Rich kids with too much free money to spend...

Agreed. It's in the same category of stupidity and arrogance as rock stars smashing instruments.

The cluster of "Look! We're revealing the secrets of the iPhone! By breaking it!" articles on release were equally lame in my opinion.

If you have something useful that you don't want, have the good nature to give it to someone who can make use of it.

Re:Fun?

[mrchaotica]

Rich kids with too much free money to spend...

The guy in this video isn't a "rich kid with too much free money to spend," he's the owner (I think) of a blender company trying to advertise his product.

Re:Fun?

[flooey]

To me, it's a terrible waste of money and technology. My parents would have gone mad if I had ever deliberately broken something as expensive as that.

Rich kids with too much free money to spend...

You do realize this is an advertisement, right? He's spending $500 on an iPhone, plus production costs, in order to sell what's likely to be thousands (possibly tens of thousands) of dollars in blenders. Not exactly a waste.

Blend a Book

[jameskojiro]

Preferably the Holy Bible, or the Koran or Dianetics. But if they blend a Koran I guess we will be seeing a follow up episode, "Will Tom's decapitated head blend for the glory of Allah". If he blends a Bible then I guess the pope will just get pissed off and bitch about it. If he blends Dianetics he will get his ass sued by the "Church" of $cientology.

Maybe he would be better off blending the latest Harry Potter book when it comes out, but then he might piss off Dumbledore and Tom would get turned into a blender, doomed to spend the rest of eternity blending things that shouldn't be blended.

Re:Fun?

[zero_offset]

Let me guess: the result was for everyone to feel bad about this terrible contrast and engage in little personal guilt trips for "having it so good", instead of asking why his African ancestors apparently can't grow crops and raise food animals like everybody else on the planet has managed to do for the past 50,000 fucking years.

Re:Point taken, however...

[DogDude]

finely divided glass dust is NOT something that you want to inhale.
Not to mention the fact that the blender jar and blades are now contaminated with the remnants of the iPhone, rendering the blender unfit for food preparation.

You're proving my point.
When I was a kid, kids did stupid things, got hurt, broke things learned from their mistakes, and grew up to be normal people. Now, we've got kids afraid of their own shadows, and on all kinds of dangerous prescription crazy drugs to help them deal with their neuroses. The kids coming out of today's ultra-neurotic parenting are gonna be fucked up people and I feel bad for them. Hell, I know 6 year olds that are on anti-depressants that are covered head to toe in antibiotic SPF 1000 sunscreens just to leave the house (and even then, only to play in an adult-supervised, fenced in back yard). That's sick.

Tom Dickson Jr is a genius

[drix]

Lots of people complain [slate.com] about the fawning praise lavished on the iPhone by a credible press. Tom Dickson is the only person I have seen yet who was shrewd enough to co-opt this for his own gain. It's like he established a hype resonance field--taking all the iPhone puffery, squaring it, and making it his own. I'm guessing he didn't wait all night to score those two iPhones. He probably picked a couple up off eBay for two grand; that he's willing to blow half that on a 10-second video clip testifies to how much more he's getting in return.

Tom Dickson Jr., I salute you.

Re:I don't quite enjoy it so much

[The One and Only]

Except it was to prove that the blender will fucking tear through everything you put in it. That's more than good reason for a series of "Will It Blend" videos.

Re:Best use

[Tacvek]

For the record, I have spent perhaps 2 hours tops using an Apple Computer. So I'm no expert. However I have been quite impressed by what I have seen of OSX.

It is important to remember the target markets of Apple: New or fairly inexperienced computer users, and certain specialist markets (like video editing).

1. interfaces are oversimplified and prevent real work from being done in many cases pertinent to me.

The interfaces are simplified, but often the powerful features are there, you just need to look harder (not in all cases of course). Hiding certain powerful tools helps new users immensely as it prevents them from accidentally Messing things up. The more powerful stuff is more hidden. For example the calculator has a very nice scientific mode, and apparently even has an RPN mode. Yes, the stock calculator program supports RPN! That is surprising. Often power stuff can be used by holding down one of the keyboard modifying keys (shift, option, etc.) while clicking. Other times there are keyboard shortcuts. It may not be easy to discover some of these, but they are often there. After all, open the terminal app, and you have a full BSD system (unless you chose not to install it). I will admit the not being able to discover some of the advanced things easily is not great.

Oversimplified interfaces ensure that people never learn about computers, and is analagous to using a calculator in a third grade arithmetic class. the interfaces should rather focus on being well-designed, capable, and efficient with a good balance of learning curve and power, not entirely focus on being "simple". this way, work will get done efficiently, the population will know a little about computers instead of none, and so on.

The target market has generally has little computer knowledge, and often little to no interest in learning very much. Lets face it, most people who use the computer to browse the web (go to very specific sites and/or watch YouTube videos), email, and basic word processing don't have much need to understand RAM, File systems, etc. Understanding that there is a limit to the storage space of the computer is useful, but that is about it. Also note that simple is often efficient (although of course not optimally efficient, and not always efficient).

3. oversimplified and unintuitive hardware. cd-rom drives that don't have an eject button at the OBVIOUS location, where you put the freaking cd in. cases without power buttons.

I will agree with this point completely. The CD-drive thing especially. I know the Macbooks have obvious power buttons, as does Mac Pro. The Mac mini has a clearly marked power button on the back. However, I have never been able to find a power button on the iMac.

4. badly-designed hardware. slot-loading cd drives that scratch disks, don't eject disks, and have no easy way to manually take them out in emergency. batteries that cannot be replaced by the user, on iphone and many ipods.

I have little to no experience with the hardware being bad. I will say that the batteries not being removable appears to have everything to do with Steve Jobs sense of aesthetics. A battery cover would look terrible in his opinion, and besides it could get lost.

5. badly-designed hardware as a marketing tactic to get people to spend more on tech support (batteries, being the biggest culprit).

I'm strongly doubting this. Originally Apple did not have a battery replacement program. This appeared to be because Steve Jobs honestly believed most users would choose to buy a new iPod model for its new features, etc. before the battery wore out. Further I think they already were selling OEM batteries to third party repair shops, who could then replace the battery. Apple appears to be fully co-operative with third party repair shops, but of course, makes no guarantees on behalf of those shops. Also remember that for the cost of replacing the battery