My new phone

It was determined that I need a phone that I would actually answer so the SO and I went down to the Verizon store. We have a family plan that actually spans the world from California to Boston to Grenada and Madagascar so that seemed sensible. Knowing very little about phones, I requested the model that the current hipsters demand, the iPhone 4S. And it's a beautiful money making machine for Apple.

First thing off the bat, I need to enter my email address and password. Bang! all my contacts sucked off to be analyzed for marketing opportunities, sorry guys. Now I'm presented with a screen full of useful apps, or more like Apple revenue opportunities.

• You tube - ads to view and demographics to collect
• Newsstand - subscriptions to sell for "news"
• iTunes - totally controlled music to sell and to store
• Stocks - who knows what this collects?
  
• Camera - an opportunity to sell some storage options
• Photos - another place to sell image storage
• Game center - another place to collect information and sell content
• Maps - only really useful if you enable the tracking feature for more collection
• App store - at least this tells what it is, a store.
• Weather - another way to get me to turn on location tracking

I did find out how to get most of these icons off the home page. Oh, I just remembered, I put in the password for my home network to get the maps working. I wonder where that will end up?

At 4.9 ounces it's a real money making heavyweight. Time to turn it off! Does it really?