faster than the blog

In case you've been living in a cave, the iPhone comes out tomorrow and I must write about it. No, really, I have to.

About two years ago I bought our first iPods. I thought they were a little pricey and the thought of ripping my CD collection brought tears to my eyes, but thanks to being forced to take it easy for 30 days after having surgery on both legs, I had the time. Once I figured out that I was over thinking the things, working them became ridiculously easy. Seriously, I've never in my entire life had any device work as easily or as well as my iPod. "Intuitive" gets thrown around a lot. That's the way the iPod works.

With the iPod comes iTunes. It's how you manage your music on your iPod and on your computer. Basically, it's a database. I've worked with databases literally my entire adult life. I've never had one be so easy to search. Start typing into the "searchlight" block and the choices become fewer and fewer until you've got what you're looking for, and it happens as you type it. No waiting and waiting and waiting for the program to FIND it, it's just there as you type.

Last fall I broke down and bought my first MacBook. I say my first, because I know there will be others. I've worked with PCs and other computers since about 1987. I've worked in DOS. I've worked in every version of Windows. I've worked with Sun/Unix. I've worked with Linux. For me, there's no simpler operating system than Mac OS X. None. Zip. Nada. The applications that came loaded on the MacBook? I use them almost every day. They're simple. They're easy. They're intuitive too.

Physically the MacBook is much easier to type on than my old Toshiba. The keys are bigger and they're in the right place for my stubby thick fingers. I don't have to be quite as careful when I type on this keyboard as I do even on a standard desktop.

Yes, I've become an Apple fanboy. Guilty as charged. I love everything Apple I've touched in the past two years.

So will I run out tomorrow and drop 600 bucks on the iPhone? Nope. First of all, I don't have an extra 600 bucks. Second of all, I like my cellular carrier just fine. I've never had a dropped call and they don't nickel and dime me to death. Everyone in this area who has ATT/Cingular spits when I ask how the coverage is here. They're not impressed. Adding a bad data stream to that won't help. I'm just guessing there, but ya know?

So I'm gonna wait. I hate the idea. I'm one of those people who believe that immediate gratification takes too long. But I will wait. I'll wait for the price to go down. I'll wait for my cellular carrier to get the iPhone. I'll wait for hell to freeze over because frankly, I can't see forking out 600 bucks for a phone that in two years will be available for 50 if I'm willing to sign up with MY carrier for another two year contract. And I'll wait because as of yet, I really don't need email and web access on my person 24-7.

I'm not sure I WANT to be connected 24-7. Some days I wish I was just hardwired into the net via some sort of thing in my head and I could Radio Paradise piped in when I wasn't accessing my iTunes library...but other days I get sort of a weird chill when I realize just how dependent we are on the signal.