Lessons from a Ketchup Bottle

Many of you may remember the ketchup commercials that said “Good things come to those who wait.” Thursday Sam and I traveled to Nashville for our anniversary. We had a relaxing time away. We enjoyed some good food, a movie, and a chance to sleep in Friday morning. In addition to all this we took a trip first thing Thursday morning that ended a year and a half wait.

January 9, 2007 I was in a hotel in Knoxville for a work trip. That night I watched as Steve Jobs revealed a revolutionary new phone. The iPhone! For the next 577 days I read articles, watched videos, and struck up conversations with strangers that might have an iPhone, basically anything to gather information. I’ve read the negatives, I’ve cursed the exclusive AT&T decision, but some how like a moth to the flame this device continued to pull me in.

You may recall my recent blog about the iPod touch. This device is incredible. So much so that it leaves you wondering why you still carry around another device just for phone calls. I had hoped it would ease my desire for the iPhone but it seemed to only fan the flame. So once again I began crunching the numbers. The deal breaker was when we took Sam’s phone out of the equation. The family plans for iPhones seem over priced! So since sam uses her phone very little we have opted to go with a pay as you go phone for her. This phone is probably still going to be verizon, because of the free mobile-to-mobile minutes. Basically it will only cost on the days she uses it, the others will be no charge.

Enough about the decision process. To my surprise when we got to the store there was a line! The new 3G iPhones are still pretty hard to find. The AT&T stores have none in stock, just the Apple stores. The Apple stores are opening 2 hours early just for iPhone sales. We got there and were really surprised to see a line. It was pretty exciting to stand there and talk to other folks about to buy one. The employees acted really excited for you even though they have done this dozens of times! I guess it is all part of the atmosphere. Richard was our Apple dude. My phone was his 10th one to activate that morning alone. So they were churning them through. After an initial bumpy start I was finally on the road with a working iPhone. They had some trouble initially getting my number ported over from verizon, but luckily it all worked out.

The first couple of days have really been exciting. The most unexpected thing that has happened so far is Sam’s love for this phone. While we are driving down the road, or waiting for food at a restaurant, etc she says “let me see the iPhone for a second” She has sent emails, surfed websites, checked the weather and radar, looked up movie times, updated our calendar, found us with the gps and mapped directions, all without any books, tutorials, or hands on experience. To me that is the beauty of this device. Some may say “well the iPhone doesn’t do anything my treo, blackberry or nokia can’t do. As a matter of fact it can’t do as much.” I can’t deny this statement, but I do know this. You don’t have to be a computer science major to make the iPhone sing and dance. You pick it up and use it. Is it perfect? No not at all, but the phone improves alittle every day. Every annoyance I have right now (which isn’t too many) could be fixed with a free download from Apple with no need to purchase anything new. That was certainly not true of my past phones. Was it worth the wait? Well you know what they say…