From 1994 until 2004, the sitcom Friends was a pop culture phenomenon. But according to Rachel Green actress Jennifer Aniston one thing would stop the show from working today: the iPhone.
“If Friends was created today, you would have a coffee shop full of people that were just staring into iPhones,” Aniston told Arianna Huffington on Wednesday’s episode of iHeartRadio’s Thrive Global Podcast. “There would be no actual episodes or conversations.”
Being there for you when the rain starts to pour? Apparently there’s no app for that.
iBe there for you
If you want to suddenly feel very old (because, hey, everyone likes being reminded of their own mortality, right?), back when Friends debuted in 1994, the Apple press would have been busy talking about Apple’s PowerBook 150 laptop, the company’s first truly affordable PowerBook, as well as its plans to license out the Mac OS to third-party manufacturers.
Steve Jobs, meanwhile, would still be running NeXT, and not yet a billionaire due to the fact that Pixar hadn’t yet made a splash with Toy Story and subsequently been taken public.
By the time Friends went off the air in 2004, Apple fans would have been saving up their money to buy one of the swanky new iMac G5, its distinctive all-in-one white plastic iMac that looked like the world’s biggest iPod. While there wasn’t yet an iPhone, Apple was already dipping its to into the burgeoning smartphone market by teaming with Motorola to release the ROKR E1, the grandfather of the iPhone and the first Apple-sanctioned cellphone to run iTunes.
Now whether no Friends episodes due to the iPhone would have been better or worse than what we got depends on whether you’re a fan of the show.
Interestingly, Seinfeld — a.k.a. the other sitcom which defined the 1990s — went out of its way to embrace Apple technology, although it was off the air long before the iPhone debuted.
For the record, while Friends may have been no fan of the iPhone, its cast had no problems shilling Windows 95 back in the day. Sadly this didn’t lead to endless Central Perk conversations about the Blue Screen of Death:
Source: Thrive Global Podcast
Via: MTV
Luke Dormehl is a U.K.-based journalist and author, with a background working in documentary film for Channel 4 and the BBC. He is the author of The Apple Revolution and The Formula: How Algorithms Solve All Our Problems … and Create More, both published by Penguin/Random House. His tech writing has also appeared in Wired, Fast Company, Techmeme and other publications.
4 responses to “Jennifer Aniston says iPhone would have ruined Friends”
And what a loss *that* would have been. Truly, a national treasure! Thank god we didn’t have the iPhone then…
If I had to guess, escaping memories of ‘Friends’ may be one of the things that drives people to their iPhones today.
Jennifer Anison’s viewpoint is ridiculous. While some people may have their heads buried in their phones at coffeeshops, it could have easily been written into various episodes of “hey, I just got a text from…” which would have been fodder for a whole series of episodes. Having the ability to make and receive cell phone calls could have easily become part of “Friends” just like it’s become part of life for us all. Phone calls could have been written into the show’s plots just like they are today in modern sitcoms. The only problem here is that Jennifer can’t seem to think beyond people looking at their phones, which then means no one talks to each other anymore. This is obviously not the case, as life and personal communication still goes on in real life. The iPhone (and all the Android and Windows Phones) are valuable tools that people use every day, and the writers fro Friends would have definitely been able to make them part of the show. If Jennifer was right, the Big Bang Theory’s success should have never been possible.
Norway just did a megahit with “Shame” (Skam), iPhones, texting and images via phones are an integral part of the plot, all the time. That and the series focus on young persons and taking their lives seriously – not making it look awkward and cheesy… – a hit.
Aniston by the way don’t even change haircut for a role in a movie.