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Saturday, June 6th, 2009

iPhone Impressions

I am very sorry to say that I am now in possession of an iPhone.

It was totally not my choice, but a required thing for the project I’m on with work.  My first impressions were horrible, to relay the experience.  As it turns out, the iPhone is exclusively with AT&T.  To find one, you actually have to go to an AT&T Corporate Store… you cannot get them from authorized AT&T stores.  The corporate stores are rare, the authorized ones are prevalent. 

So to start, they essentially limit the availability by simply providing iPhones at as few places as possible.  If you want one, you must go in search of one.  You cannot procure one through happenstance, it is a cognitive move.

So I’m in the AT&T corporate store, and this cell phone maven comes up to me and takes my name.  She literally signs me in on a waiting list.  I sit down on the trendy waiting benches and watch as the high pressure salespeople do their best to try and get retirees to buy as many 30 cent pieces of crap, er, I mean $19.99 exclusive accessories, as they can.

After a 45 minute wait, I’m tendered up to the counter where the salesjackass mocks my vocal inflection.  I hate it when people do that.  Yes, I annunciate my words.  It doesn’t make me Thurston Howl the Fourth, f**kwit.  You don’t have to talk to me with pinkys up.  “Oh yes, of course, indeed, quite right.”  Die in a car fire.

It takes a good 10 minutes to figure out whether or not I will be able to make calls on my current plan to and from work or if I can even receive them.  He brings out the iPhone, which is situated in the most assuming box ever built by mankind.  I already feel like an elitist buying the damned thing.  I realize that the screen, touch-based, is likely to get pretty screwed with the way I treat phones, so we go over to look for a case.  My 48 cent case, I mean, my $29.99 custom iPhone exclusive leather holster in hand, I check out after the number is transferred.

So here’s the bad news.  The iPhone is actually cool.  I adore the apps, the interface is elegant, and I can actually type faster on the touchscreen than I could with my blackberry’s qwerty.  I am disgusted at myself for liking the damned thing as much as I do.  It’s so trendy and hip and ugh.  No one as uncool as me should have something as cool as this.  With it, I feel like I should own some bohemian loft apartment and watch indie flicks with my art clique shovin’ buddies.  Dark earthtones and soy chai latte’s pervade.