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.