Lord there goes Joey Appleseed …

Here I sit waiting to get loaded. Or maybe waiting to come down. I sit in front of this wall of aluminum & silicon dioxide and wait. It’s so very black and shiny. But it’s not a monolith. Or is it? Something is changing blocking my view, yet I’m seeing much more clearly. It’s so stunning it almost hurts. It did hurt a bit. But only in the wallet.

Here before me stands my shining new iMac. Never in a million years did I ever thing I’d own an iMac. Starting to see a pattern here? I said something similar about owning an iPhone. But there they both are. In all their black and silver shininess. Peering back at me with all their SiO2 glory … and clarity.

Wow! I can’t believe it’s been two weeks since I got this thing. I can’t believe I tried to start writing this on my iPhone. I first tried to write it in Safari. That didn’t work too well. For some reason Safari wasn’t auto-suggesting anything in WordPress edit/post mode. Hmmm. Then I figured … okay I’ll try in iPhone mail and post via mail. That didn’t work too well either. No keyboard action in the horizontal mode. Even in the verticle mode I had ‘issues.’ Though that was more my shortcomings than iPhone’s. I’m still not to accomplished on the iPhone keyboard … yet. Unlike JoeyGadget A.K.A. Joe Hutsko, who wrote his most recently published feature article for MSNBC, about iPhone, on his iPhone. The first draft at least. I say kudos to that man and his presti-digital dexterity! You go Joe! I feel humbled and shamed. Oh well this too shall pass. Practice. Practice. Practice. But if someone was paying me to write an article … I’d hunker down too, and become accomplished in the presti-digital arts.

Now I can’t blame this issue on iPhone. Let me say this at the beginning. This issue actually started several weeks ago. I had to do a reset on my Motorola SLVR … was having problems. Went to use iSync to re-sync Address Book & iCal. But no matter what did … I could not sync my phone with iCal. Went through a whole litany of steps to try to fix it. Thought it was a problem with particular calendars in iCal. Had had that issue when I first got my SLVR. Nope … nothing I tried worked. So I just left off my calendar dates. That was a drag.

Okay. It only took seven days for me to break down & bite the silverish bullet that is the iPhone. I ranted. I raved. I kvetched. Then I broke down and bought one. Told you I was only human!

Dale from Crow’s Nest has that ‘extra’ one still kicking around … and I convinced myself … with a little help from Edie. She’s the office manager at the Seattle office. It had gotten to the point where so many people were asking me how to do ‘something’ on the iPhone that I figured it was ‘my duty’ as an informed Apple consultant to have one of these babies to call my own. Of course I made this purchase solely in the name of research. Yeah research. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it!

So yes …. Mr eMac Consulting now HAS an iPhone. Woo hoo!

Now that I have one let the research begin!

Wow. Six whole days have come & gone and I still don’t have an iPhone. But there certainly are a lot of folks out there that do have them.

One of them is a writer for MSNBC. Joe Hutsko … he’s getting lambasted in “comment hell” on his blog JOEyGADGET for writing a story about his failed iPhone and his experience getting a replacement. I wrote a little blurb yesterday about a client of mine that had ‘his precious’ overheat. Jilted Joe is a writer for a company that partners with Microsoft (MSNBC) and he wrote about his experience with AT&T and Apple support. No matter what this guy wrote short of slagging Steve Jobs or his mother personally … um … let’s cut Joey boy some slack!

We all know the iPhone has been another ‘hot’ product for Apple. From reports flying around the web, some 700,000 iPhones sold in just a few days. Pretty impressive. But we’ll leave it up to Mr Jobs to colorfully ‘interpret’ that data for us all in his next keynote … whenever that might be.

Had a client call me today to tell me how HOT his iPhone was. And I don’t mean in a Paris Hilton (retching) kind of way, but a degrees Fahrenheit kind of way. Seems he was carrying ‘his precious’ in his pocket. Now Dan’s a stylin’ kind of guy …. so I can’t imagine him wearing wool knickers, or insulated shorts even on a cool Seattle summer day. No. Just pulled it out (the iPhone that is) to make a call. Let his fingers do the dialing/tapping. Just as he was leaving a message the iPhone froze. There was the button to let him end this call … but tap tap tap as he might … nothing. So here’s Dan … expletives flying … trying to figure out how to hard reboot his iPhone. I’d hate to have been the person on the other end getting that message! =:o

It’s day four of “My So-Called Life Without iPhone.”

On this 3rd day of July in the year of (my atheist) Lord two thousand and seven … I am on the cusp of independence. No. Not that kind of independence … iPhone independence.

It took an entire list of rationalizations … one even larger than my last post … to see I CAN be a whole person & not own an iPhone. My whole existence is not defined by the objects that I communicate with. That my fingers are more than mere pointing, dragging, & pinching implements. They … and I are so much more than that!

Okay. It’s been only three days since the launch of the iPhone & I’m ready to cave in. Am I on crack you ask? That very well could be.

I’m a Macintosh consultant. So today I got a call from Dale @ Crow’s Nest Yachts. “Hey Joe … can you come set up my iPhone for me?” Hmm. Without skipping a beat I blurted out … “I’ll be there by noon.”

When I walked in the door there were two people in his office drooling over his mondo-boy-toy. When I walked in the sea of bodies parted and I got right to work. I couldn’t allow anyone to see I was just as excited … IF NOT MORE … than they might be. I asked Dale, “So where is mine?” He replied, “well you ‘ll need to set up Dan’s tomorrow. So between the two of us … you’re on your way to owning one. Hmmm.

No … I didn’t stand on line. No … I didn’t brave the crowds. No … I didn’t have the money. No I didn’t have ‘room’ on any of my credit cards … they’re ALL maxed out. (But that’s another story for another day.) Does that make me less a man? Less a consumer? Less an American? Less an Apple evangelist? Less a Macintosh consultant? These are the tough questions I will be asking myself over the next few days … months …. years?

This is the first day of the rest of my life without an iPhone. There. I said it. Out of the mouth of babes (or at least this 50 year old man) and into the ears of an atheist god & for all that “feel me” (cough cough) on this one.

I don’t think my Steve Jobs ‘anti-reality-distortion field’ was up any higher than normal. Though over the past several months it has been put to the test. It’s soooooo hard to resist. But resist I must. I don ‘t think I’m in denial. Of course … I WANT ONE. Hmmm …. sounds like a new topic of discussion with my current therapist. But there are so many reasons … NOT TO.