Okay, I’ll admit it: the iPhone is kind of great. (Come on, you knew this one was coming.)
Bear in mind, I never owned a Blackberry, so this whole notion of being able to check email on my phone is new to me, and I’m enjoying it like crazy--particularly since I’ve been away from home a lot recently, and it’s nice to know things I wouldn’t ordinarily know unless I was at home--how well Zen Noir is selling today, for instance. And when our composer, the estimable Steve Chesne, sends an email with a question, I can respond right away.
Plus, you know. It’s a toy, and toys are good. Didja know you can download this free application that’ll make your iPhone sound like a lightsaber? That’s awesome! And the “More Cowbell” application is so silly it’s sublime.
The question is, was it worth standing in line for three hours? (Particularly after my little diatribe several days ago.) Well, see, here’s the thing: those lines are deceptive. No, really. I happened to be in Century City last week, so I wandered by the Apple Store. There were fewer than ten people waiting outside and I didn’t have to be anywhere so I figured, What the hell? Got in line, the line soon edged forward a little, so it wasn’t moving fast but it was moving. Enough time had passed since the chaotic launch of the phone, surely the wait wouldn’t be so bad these several days later.
Of course, there were about thirty people already inside the store. (The window advertising pretty well obscured what was going on inside.) Then something happened, with the servers or whatever, and suddenly the line wasn’t moving at all, for an astonishingly long time. (The Apple employees blamed AT&T, and AT&T put out a press release that essentially said it was all Apple’s fault.) Now, by this point I’d already been there for a while and was invested in the time. It felt like an even worse crime to discard the hour I’d already spent waiting, so I waited yet longer. At least there were some entertaining folks in the line around me, and by the time we were done we’d all gotten to know each other reasonably well. And of course we were all questioning our sanity by then, but hey, at least we all got iPhones.
And as I say, it’s a pretty incredible little object. The secret key is also joining MobileMe, Apple’s online service. I don’t need their me.com email address and haven’t given it to anyone, but MobileMe is what allows my email to find me on the phone without actually syncing the phone with the computer. It does the same with my contacts and calendar items as well, so that I can add something to my calendar on the iPhone and it’ll automatically add itself to my desktop computer’s calendar as well, and vice versa. As things get busier, this alone will become invaluable. Plus there’s the GPS-in-a-phone thing, which will help when I get lost and am not in the car where I’ve already got GPS. I get lost easily, see. My sense of direction is permanently discombobulated now that I live on the west coast and the ocean is on the wrong side.
Plus, the toys. Eight gigs of music that now come with a phone, web browsing at will, the whole deal. I make no secret of being a bit of a gadget freak (yes, the Engadget site is bookmarked), and this one is I think up there with the TiVo in terms of general terrificness. Does the iPhone fit anywhere on the chart of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs? Of course not. But still. Toys!
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