Apple iPhone

It's love. First it was fascination, then a crush, obsessive some might say. Struck up the courage to engage in the commitment, and finally consumation. And it is true love.

This is not my first real PDA-type thingy, for I did have a brief affair with a Palm V some many years ago, in a pre-NYC life. It held lots of info, sure, but it never really took. Since then I've hunkered down from the fast evolving techno craze. My last phone did not even have a camera on it, let alone email or internet access. But since finishing school, becoming a licensed professional and having my own business, I figured it was time to get a real grownup techno gadget to fit the times. The iPhone contains everything I need, with that need becoming greater as I lost my orange iPod shuffle and the battery of my low-tech phone started acting wonky again.

With less than 24 hours of ownership with my new iPhone, I find the gadget has been constant source of delight. And utter coolness.

Things I love:

• the usual cool out of box experience that Apple so wonderfully delivers with each new product
  
• the way cool alarm clock dials that resemble the spinning wheels of a slot machine
  
• notes to keep track of my to do's and ideas that always far exceed what I can keep in my head at any given time
  
• consolidation of my phone numbers, emails and addresses plus the means to utilize them in same contraption (tap to call, tap to email, tap to log on and surf)
  
• calendar finally all in one place, that I can sync with my computer, again on the go
• iTunes with me all the time, especially on the long subway ride to and from the burbs or when my iPod runs out on my patients mid-treatment
  
• a screen of beautiful colors, ease of use, nice feel of the machine in my hand
• maps! a must in NYC when one lives out in the burbs and one's office is at home in the burbs while the business takes place in the city.
• the full-on website pages
  
• the cool way you can magnify or diminish the view of pictures, web pages, emails, etc.
• the elimination of the stylus (yeay!)
• the keypad for the phone, because there's something ultracool about tapping on a plain smooth sheet of glass instead of a set of plastic buttons.
  

Have yet to really use the phone, for I'm still waiting for the activation to come through.

Not like:

• the icons on the main screen for some things I'm just never going to use, like YouTube and stocks - not a terrible thing, just a wasted 3/4ths of a square inch
  
• one can say "price" and it is steep, but you know, combine the iPod with phone and internet as well as computer, one would say it's quite the bargain
• can't switch the order of listed cities on the weather feature, so you either eliminate Cupertino or deal with the fact that you'll always know the weather in California before your own city [UPDATE with the iPhone software update to 1.1.1 they've fixed that issue]
  

UPDATED next day: So the phone finally works, and the sound is beautiful, crisp, and clear, at least compared to my old cheap phone. iPhone comes with handy earbuds that not only allows you the privacy of listening to your tunes, but it also comes with this tiny clicky thing on the right earbud cord that you click to answer the phone call that came in while your iTunes was playing, then once you finish the phone call, click the tiny thingy again, and your music resumes. It also doubles as a mic, and from my test run I was told the sound is great, maybe a little too great in that the breeze blowing in from the window was heard by the caller on the other end.

The iPhone is another piece of hard evidence of the thorough and thoughtful engineering of Apple, and why I soon switched to Apple after my first iPod many years ago, when it first issued the iPod for Windows and the stock price was still under $30.