Sound the horns! Release the doves! Call your Mom! iPhone OS 3.0 is coming! Tomorrow! (06/17/2009) There has been so much hype leading up to this release you’d think it was the second coming. But it’s not. It’s the third … coming of the iPhone OS that is. Along with it will come a new iPhone too. The iPhone 3G S. They say the “S” is for speed. I think the “S” is for “Sales” through the roof. Even before its release, preorders are sold out. Undoubtedly there will be lines starting at an Apple or AT&T store near you.

There has been a huge ramp-up for the release, starting long before last weeks “World Wide Developers Conference” (WWDC). The fan-boy blogs and the Twitter-verse has been on fire.

If a picture is worth a thousand words. Then I’ll say no more.

But we both know that’s not going to happen.

I thought long and hard. Hard and long. And it’s time to say … so long iPhone & AT&T. In past posts you saw how I agonized. Rationalized. Quantified & qualified my decision to procure this object of electronic lust. But lust is not enough. Nor is the iPhone.

I’m not quite sure how it happened. Maybe it was a moment of somber realization. Maybe it was a moment of wretched clarity. Maybe I’m the literal fool … soon parted with his money. Sadly that moment has arrived and this fool’s money will be going to AT&T.

I got my first bill yesterday. Or at least the cost was posted … sans invoice. That I might have to wait ten days for, or so the disclaimer said. Imagine my astonishment when the amount before my eyes read …. $229.36!!!!! What the f%*$k!!!! Now I have no reason to complain. There were lasses and chaps out there who’s first iPhone/AT&T bills were in the THOUSANDS of dollars. Adam Aronson for one got a $5,000.00 bill from the Death Star …. AT&T. So I guess I’m lucky?

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!

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.