Foot in the Mouth - Sorry Apple...

So - a week has gone by and I have been wondering how to come to terms with the post I'm about to write. Especially after my tirade at Apple and AT&T last week. Why? Because I'm in love with the iPhone. Well, here goes:

I dropped my roommate off at the airport last Tuesday. On the way home, I did a drive by in Burlingame, just to see if maybe the Apple store had an iPhone. Yea, I know, I said I may not get one, but now I was determined. There was no line which wasn't good, but I did notice some people walking out with iPhone bags. I stopped. Low and behold, they had the phones. This was going to be easy. It wasn't. The Apple employees were incredibly helpful. Unfortunately, AT&T had convinced me to buy a phone and get a contract started with them when I first tried to get an iPhone last week. This proved to be a huge mistake. Now Apple couldn't sell me an iPhone at the new user rate because they already had me as a subscriber in their system. Man, what am I going to do? Well - the short version. I was on the phone with AT&T for several hours. I had to leave the Apple store to go back to an AT&T store to return my phone. I had to reverse my contract. I then had to go back to the Apple store - where they had surprisingly said they'd hold my phone. Still no luck. More phone calls to AT&T because my upgrade eligibility was still on hold. Final resolution? I had to get a new AT&T line, with a different phone number from the Apple store. I then had to take my phone back to the AT&T store where they had to switch serial numbers so I could maintain the phone number I've had for years. 5 hours later I had an iPhone with my original number at the $199 price. What a shit show.

But boy was it worth it. The iPhone is absolutely amazing. I wrote an email to my friends last week that said this is probably one of the single greatest voice communication technologies of our time. And I assure you, this is no bandwagon I'm jumping on - this is coming from an Apple hater. From a hater in general. From someone who doesn't see the value of Facebook on a Google like scale or a Twitter business model. What I do see with the iPhone is an incredible platform. The Apps Store is really what makes this amazing. But for now, I'm just going to sit back and enjoy my love affair with my new toy.