Wet and Wild: The iPhone is Genius [Part 2]
Biding my Time
I recently stood in a line for a total of nine hours. When I got home, I told my wife that, “even if they announce they’re handing out gold bars from Fort Knox, I won’t be standing in line again for nine hours.”
My rehabilitation from my Achilles’ Tendon injury basically shot my ability to satisfy my other addictions; mountain biking, road biking, squash and swimming. I had been watching DVDs of professional squash matches, and the telecasts of the Olympic swimming trials and the Tour de France, but all of that simmered my frustration much like a convict serving double life in Jacktown,1 subscribing to Playboy.
I am a gadget addict, and I had been monitoring the iPhone saga since v 1.0 arrived last year. Steady readers of this column know that cellular technology has been both a vice and a habit of mine for some time. My first phone was a slim and trim Audiovox that probably cost more than $500, and had a scratchy Earth-to-moon kind of reception. I worked my way through Nokia and Motorola phones, and for the past few years had centered on the Motorola Razr for my cell phone needs. But Web access on the Razr was a joke, as is using its Bluetooth connection to enable the Razr as a modem for my Palm Pilot to sweep up e-mail. While working in Puerto Rico, the stifling humidity seeped into the Razr and it went into a bipolar rant that included snapping photos of things by itself, and wouldn’t allow me to quash it without removing the battery. Well, clearly I had to euthanize the thing, so I looked up the ATT store in town and walked in.
“I need a replacement phone because this thing died and I need one for a week.”
“Well, we have several models,” said the excited salesman.
“You don’t understand. I’m waiting for the iPhone 3G to come out, so I’m not getting into a contract on a new phone. I need something quick and dirty.”
“We have this phone for $94.”
“Okay, let me make this a little clearer. Give me the cheapest phone you have. We’ll pull the SIM out of the Razr, and I’ll be on my way. Just give me the one the drug dealers buy for a couple of deals before chucking into the ocean.”
“Excuse me?”
“Your cheapest phone.”
Disappointed that I knew my cellular phone tricks, he pulled a box from beneath the counter.
“Here’s a Motorola.”
“How much?”
“$29.95.”
“Now that’s what I’m talking about.”
Ten minutes later, I was in the rental car with my “disposable” phone in hand. It wasn’t bad either — certainly a bargain for 29 bucks. The phone of choice for pushers everywhere.
I was waiting for the iPhone, though. Yes, I fought the urge when the iPhone came out a year ago. I knew before it hit the stores that it was slow, it had weird, atypical (for Apple) design flaws (such as a recessed headphone jack), and didn’t serve the business user well.
The original price was a fiasco too. With two models available, nearly everyone jumped on the 8 GB model at $600. With sales shockingly below projections, a week or so later, Apple made a panicked price slash of $200, offering the phone for $400, and offering rebate checks to the early-adopters who snapped up the 8 gig phone at the premium price.
So, I sat back, never tempted to get the original iPhone. The moment it was leaked last December that there would be an iPhone that could operate on the ATT 3G network, I began to scan the discussion groups and news services to see when it would be released. Of course, Apple was too cunning to give any dates, though they sure as hell knew when the iPhone 3G would be ready. Finally, Apple silently began to no longer ship the original iPhone to Apple and ATT stores so as to clear out their inventory. With the cat out of the bag that iPhone 3G was coming, Apple now faced a gap in sales between the time the original iPhone shipments were halted, and the appearance of the new iPhone 3G.
Everyone in the industry expected Steve Jobs to announce the release date of the iPhone 3G at the Apple World Wide Developers Conference in early June, and he did. Well, if original iPhone sales were slow in May, they came to an instantaneous brick wall of a stop in early June.
Part 1 – Intro, aka Technical Swimming Talk
Part 3 – i-Day
Part 4 – Worth the Wait?
Part 5 – Movies, TV and More
Part 6 – Surf’s Up
Part 7 – Conclusion
