When Barack Obama first made his run at the United States presidency way back in 2008, much fuss was made about how this politician was so cool, he used a BlackBerry.
Seems laughable now, doesn’t it? Yet at the time, Obama was considered so technologically hip for using a BlackBerry that he once laughingly said that if the Secret Service wanted to take it from him, they’d have to pry it from his hands.
Flash forward five years, and President Obama’s BlackBerry doesn’t seem so cool anymore. In fact, it seems ridiculous. So why isn’t he using an iPhone?
During a speech yesterday promoting Obamacare to a youth audience attending a White House summit, Obama meekly admitted that his days ordering the Secret Service and other national security agencies that watch over his safety to get with the tech times or else are over now.
“I’m not allowed for security reasons to have an iPhone,” he admitted.
It’s honestly pretty absurd. Here Obama is, communicating by e-mail on a BlackBerry, a device made by Canadians for god’s sake. Early in his presidency, when he had political capital to burn, Obama went head-to-head with the National Security Administration to make sure they let him use it for his job. Unfortunately, what that meant is he had no political capital left to make the switch to the American-made iPhone when BlackBerry became an obsolete joke.
It’s not all bad for Obama, though. He is allowed to own both an iPad and a MacBook.
John Brownlee is a writer for Fast Company, and a contributing writer here at CoM. He has also written for Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, VentureBeat, and Gizmodo. He lives in Boston with his wife and two parakeets. You can follow him here on Twitter.
5 responses to “Obama Is Stuck On BlackBerry, Not Allowed To Have An iPhone”
iPhones are not American-made. They are American-Designed. Pretty sure they make them in China.
He gave a Canadian company the no-bid contract for the Obamacare website. He should be using a Samsung with KNOX technology. Safer than any iPhone out there.
So, let me get this straight:
The President of the US burned up all of his political capital (capitol is not the correct word to use, chief) insisting that he gets to use a Blackberry, so 5 years later, he has none left to use to force them to let him use an iPhone. How about going into why he can’t use an iPhone. Maybe the Secret Service is just to paranoid to let him put iTunes on his Presidential Computer, or quite possibly, more than just Barack and Michelle want to read his e-mails, and there is a real security issue there, other than the password being 0000000. Wait, that was the nuclear launch code until 1977. Anyway, reporting what the guy said doesn’t make you even better than a DVR. Analyzing and critical thinking makes the difference.
Good luck in that, and I hope you get a dictionary for Christmas, along with some facts*!
*Name one factory in the US making iPhones; iMac Pro, yes, but iPhones, no.
edit: Should be “too”, not “to paranoid”
Hardly matters since the guy is probably gonna get impeached before 2016 anyway. So many scandals.