When the iPhone came to market a year ago (July 2007) several of my friends asked if I was going to get one. If I had still been an Apple employee my response would have been, “Probably by Labor Day.” But, my response was: “It’s too expensive, doesn’t have enough features and runs on a slow network that’ll be upgraded by next summer.”

I missed the mark about Apple employees getting their iPhones by a few weeks; they got them later. But, I didn’t miss the mark on my personal thoughts. The first iPhone was too expensive for me, didn’t have many features since you couldn’t add applications and AT&T did roll out their 3G network. Now folks with the first generation iPhone have a nice iPod that’ll browse the web, send and receive email, use the concepts of a PIM, and has a set of speakers, which a real iPod doesn’t have.

My getting an iPhone is also linked to another fact of life -- Martha. It was actually Martha that said she was ready to get a new phone and was willing to consider the iPhone. Well, she being the benevolent queen she is, also granted me permission to get one.

And so it was on the morning of introduction of the iPhone 3G that I went to Oxmoor Center to wait in line with a few other anxious folks. I got to the shopping mall about 6 AM after driving past two AT&T stores where lines had formed. The local radio and TV stations had already interviewed folks standing/sitting in line.

The doors to Oxmoor Center opened at 7 AM and we were allowed to line up at the store and wait for an early opening . Here’s when you appreciate being an Apple customer: Those of us waiting in line were treated to bottled water. That’s something AT&T didn’t do for their customers. Of course, they may not have “loyal customers”.

I got inside the doors of the store 40 minutes after opening. In another 40 minutes I got my phone (see photo above). Then the waiting started. Though I had a phone there was difficulty in getting connected. After about 75 minutes of waiting and talking I was allowed to go home with my purchase and try connecting from there.

I tried several times throughout the day. I even drove back to an AT&T store to see if they could help. Unfortunately, they couldn’t. In fact, they had run through their small allotment of phones. I did learn something, however. I was told the response was so overwhelming that Apple couldn’t handle the load. The sales person said connecting before 10 AM EDT wasn’t a problem. Then, he said, when the phones went on sale in the Midwest things got sluggish. He noted that when stores in the Mountain time zone opened things came to a halt.

The good news was that Apple corrected the problem and by 3:30 I was using my new tool. And, at 7:30 PM I was back in line with Martha to get her phone at the Apple Store. By 10 PM we were heading home with both of us as proud new owners of the neatest piece of technology to come out in quite a while.

The story doesn’t end there. Jeremy called nearly every hour on Monday and Tuesday for the opportune time to get his phone. Jody got one, too.

What’s to like about the iPhone? I can answer that easily. What’s not to like?

The network speed is quite acceptable. It’s also a handy thing to have when you’re traveling; especially when you’re stuck in an airport terminal. The camera is an excellent, three-megapixel camera. Getting your email delivered to your phone moments after it has been sent is very handy. The GPS works quite well (who wants to pay more and get less?). Having your calendar and contacts sync up with your laptop is very nice. And these are just the standard things.

On top of the above I’ve added several nice applications.

• Pandora, for listening to the “radio stations” I’ve designed.
• TripLog, for keeping track of business, medical and charitable mileage, which you email to yourself to place in a spreadsheet.
• Voice Dialer, which takes your vocal input and matches it to a person in our contacts list.
• MobileFamilyTree, which syncs to MacFamilyTree for genealogy purposes.
• Remote, for playing what’s in my iTunes library remotely (AirPort Express and speakers not required but most helpful).
• Vicinity, for seeing what businesses are near your current location; handy for finding restaurants and gas stations when traveling.
• Evernote, about the most handy of them all. With it I’m able to make photo, voice or text-based notes and sync them to my computers. The Evernote server also grabs the text from the photos and images so that they, too, become searchable. On top of all that, notebooks can be shared via the web. Oh, there’s also a web client for Evernote so you’re never far from your “brain”. In fact, the folks at Evernote refer to the product/service as “your external brain”. That works for me and not just because it’s free. By the way, you can take a look at my FileMaker notes I’ve made publicly available using Evernote.
• Bible, presenting the ability to access a preferred version of scriptures within seconds. I settled on this version by YouVersion not because it was free but because it was full-featured. Not only are English translations available but also translations in other languages. It’s a revolutionary online Bible that will enable community and collaboration like never before.

Tags: Apple iPhone