Oh, how I hate my damned iPhone

And the dehumanising hold that Apple has over millions of us

What does it say about our society that the launch of a new phone — a phone! — is treated by the media as though it were a major development in the history of Western civilisation?

One wonders whether the Second Coming could elicit greater wonder and awe. Indeed, there was something almost religious about the way in which apple ( now the largest company in the world) unveiled its latest creation.

the company’s chief executive, tim Cook, was dwarfed by a gigantic photograph of Steve Jobs, the deceased co-founder of apple, and the Messiah of the smartphone and iPad. In the growth of the new religion, Mr Cook might be equated with St Paul. an important figure following in divine footsteps.

he reminded his audience in the Steve Jobs theatre located in apple’s sprawling new £5 billion complex in Cupertino, California, that the first iPhone was launched ten years ago (that was when Mr Jobs was still on this earth). ‘It’s only fitting that we’re here, in this place, on this day, to reveal a product that will set the path for technology for the next decade.’

actually, there are three new models. the most sophisticated and most expensive, the iPhone X (£999 in this country, available to order from October 27) unlocks itself without the need for a number code when it recognises your face and can charge itself via Wi-Fi rather than from a mains plug. Let’s hope it doesn’t give us cancer.

Will I be forgiven if I don’t share in the general hoopla? am I a hopeless old fuddy-duddy if I question whether these doubtless clever innovations really warrant the latest outpourings of hyperbole?

In fact, let me lay my cards on the table. I own an iPhone. Quite a new one. and although I concede that it can be useful — apart from sending and receiving texts and emails, it doubles up as a radio, television, alarm clock, satnav and camera — in my heart I hate it, and wish it didn’t exist.

the reason is that I recognise its power to divert me from what I know to be more rewarding: looking at the world around me, reading books and newspapers, talking to friends, relaxing.

Of course I still often do these things, but sometimes I find myself neurotically checking for an interesting email. as often as not it turns out to be an invitation for sex from a 21year-old blonde, who in fact is an overweight middle-aged man sitting in Macedonia who wants to fleece me.

HOW is it that we have allowed smartphones to destroy our peace? People consult them in lifts, and they peer into them as they cross the road, yards from the wheels of a juggernaut. they rest them reverentially on the table in restaurants, constantly looking down at them in the middle of stop-start conversations.

Sometimes you see couples who have grown tired of one another, or haven’t anything to say, glued to their smartphones during a dinner. It seems that happiness is not to be found talking to another human being but staring idiotically into a plastic screen.

What are these preoccupied, introspective people reading? a fascinating email from an old friend? a wonderful job offer? It’s about a thousand times more likely to be some snippet of possibly unreliable news, or some silly tweet.

Smartphones (of course other manufactures are just as guilty as apple, which they have aped) have pulled off one of the biggest con-tricks of all time. they incessantly demand to be consulted, though they seldom have much that is really interesting or urgent to impart.

and the consequence is that they have driven many of us into a private world, often composed of trivia, which means that we don’t have to spend so much time interacting in the real world, which is actually far more interesting.

Sometimes this private world can be corrupting and morally debasing. a 14-year- old boy can consult hard-core pornography websites without let or hindrance, so that his view of women is based on a lie (that they are all desperate to have porn star-style sex) before he even has a girlfriend.

his parents or his teachers will never know because they have absolutely no access to his smartphone. It is his own personal sphere, where he can encounter lies, dangerous fantasies and moral abominations without the guidance of those who care for him.

In short, the smartphone often separates us from our fellow humans, although it is sold and marketed as a way of bringing friends and family members closer together.

Nowhere is this tendency to cut people off from one another more evident than in the field of politics. Social media (which could not flourish without the smartphone) enables like-mined people to communicate without ever having to confront other points of view.

AS LABOUR campaigners discovered during the last election, it is possible to implant a wild proposition in the self-enclosed realm of social media — for example that the tories are intending to kill off the NHS — without such mendacity ever being subjected to rigorous analysis.

and in this secret space people can swap lies or vile insults about their opponents — in the case of the last election, the hated tories — without ever being gainsaid, far less scrutinised.

how richly ironic it will be if the hard Left anti- capitalist Jeremy Corbyn is finally catapulted to power as a result of smartphones manufactured by the biggest, and often the most ruthless, capitalist enterprises in the world.

I don’t doubt, of course, that they can do good. Let’s imagine a gap-year student on holiday in thailand giving pleasure to his parents by ringing them on his smartphone so that they can see him, and he them. On the other hand, he could just as easily send them an email or — God forbid! — a letter.

Will smartphones continue to be a blight on civilised discourse? an increasing number of people are resisting the manufacturer’s hype and hanging on to their old phones. hence apple’s attempt to come up with new technological wheezes which don’t in the end add very much to your old iPhone.

If you own a smartphone, ask yourself whether it helps you to live a more fulfilled life — and whether you wouldn’t throw the damned thing away if you could only pluck up the courage to do so.

a decade on from its generally destructive invention, I curse apple for persuading us to attach so much importance to these trivial but intrusive things. I loathe the company for conning us into believing us that these lumps of metal and plastic are beautiful objects which we should all aspire to acquire.

and, while I am about it, I also abominate the richest corporation in the world for avoiding paying tax whenever it can. In the decade since it launched the first iPhone, it has paid just £82.1 million tax to the treasury on a turnover of £ 7.5 billion, which is just over one per cent.

In short, I hate apple and most of its works. I look forward to the day when I can find the strength to throw my iPhone in the dump, and finally turn my back on Steve Jobs’ false religion.