The lines are queuing up outside the Apple stores. You would think it was the week before Christmas and the real Santa Claus was inside. Except Santa doesn't charge 500 bucks for his goodies and Steve Jobs does.
I'm six months into my two year contract on a Blackberry. The carrier doesn't matter. I hate my carrier just like I'm guessing you do. There are two qualities that made me spend the money to drop another contract midterm: (1) One letter on one key makes it faster to send email, and (2) The damn thing works everywhere. If you travel internationally, having a Blackberry has been an asset.
The downside is that a Blackberry is an ugly tool. It has a bulky form and a user interface that feels like 1995. Sometimes when I'm using it, I feel like Maxwell Smart talking into his shoe. Most things that are as solid as the rock of Gibraltar tend to be on the homely side.
And when you think about it, the iPhone and the Blackberry still have the killer app that Alexander Graham Bell came up with: You can talk in realtime to an actual human being--provided corporate voice processing systems don't block you.
But I have iPhone envy. I also have Nokia N95 envy. Imagine before I break down and break my contract and buy one of these new beauties, there will be 5-6 other new models with varied nifty features all of which are primarily used to talk with people.
So what's the big deal? There are several, but the one that strikes me is style matters. The handheld devices is growing more powerful. It is allowing all sorts of mobile capabilities, none of which should surprise anyone in the tech sector.
But Apple is known for making elegant things that work well. People want to have gadgets, clothing, cars and other stuff that make them cool in their own eyes as well as the eyes of their peers. We spend lots of time using our phones and we spend lots of time being seen using our phones.
Today, iPhone is the cool that rules.
