bryan stratton dot com

My last two-year service contract with Sprint expired on 2-17-08, a day that I’d been looking forward to for at least eight months. Two days later, I became a brand new AT&T customer with an iPhone. I hadn’t planned on being that early of an adopter, since everyone knows that buying fancy new hardware is the best way to ensure that a newer and fancier version will come out a week later. (In fact, that’s just one of the many reasons that I’m supporting Barack Obama.) I wanted to wait until there was a little more storage on it, and I was hoping to hold out until there was a version with 3G (super-fast internet) functionality. But that meant that I’d either have to get a new phone that I’d only be keeping for six months or so, or I’d have to keep using my clunky, pack-of-smokes-sized so-called “smartphone,” which I’d seriously come to detest.

So I broke down and dropped an embarrassing amount of cash and signed my life away to AT&T for another two years. Two things kept it from being as embarrassing as it could have been, though: First, I wound up paying just slightly more for the iPhone than I paid for the stupid retardo-phone that I’ve been saddled with for two years, and while the iPhone’s novelty will probably wear off before then, it’s unlikely that I’ll ever come to hate it. That’s because — reason 2 — it absolutely lives up to the hype. This is pretty much the best gadget ever developed, ever. If you’ve not had the opportunity to try it out for yourself, do so. It’s a marvelous little device that does a great many things well, and it looks good doing them. Put it this way: I’m so happy with it that I don’t even mind branding myself as a giant nerd with more money than sense!

(PS: Big thanks to fellow giant nerd Rich for preaching the gospel.)