Damn you Steve Jobs, damn you, damn you, damn you

My wife needed something from the Apple store yesterday.  I didn’t want to go because I know how I am about new technology.  I told myself, “I will only look” and went so far as to leave my wallet in the car.  I told my wife, “I just got that new Blackberry and it’s really good”  and “I bet the iPhone is more hype than reality” and “I will only look.”
She just laughed at me.

While my daughter hunkered down at the kid’s playstation to play Dora the Explorer and my wife and son did their business, I casually picked up the iPhone.  “Hmmm” I thought, “It’s smaller and lighter than I thought it would be.”

I switched it on and poked around. I tried some typing, since that was my most obvious “out” based on the complaints people had.  Pretty easy, really, and not hard to imagine a software patch that would make it even easier.

Then I tried the web browser, opening up my own web site using iPhone’s Safari.  When I managed to close my mouth (my jaw had gone slack from the complete paradigm shift Apple has created in the mobile computing market with Safari on iPhone) I heard myself say to the nearest Apple store employee “I will take one of these, the really expensive one please.”
Damn you, Steve Jobs.  Damn you, damn you, damn you.
I didn’t need a new phone.  I didn’t need a new carrier.  I didn’t need to cancel a brand-new contract with Sprint.  I didn’t need a new iPod.  I didn’t need a new digital camera.  And I was completely helpless to do anything but pull out my credit card and pay the man.

My wife was laughing, openly.  “You are such a geek” she said.  Then I showed her how it works.  Now she wants an iPhone too.

Damn you, Apple.

If you haven’t seen it yet, don’t look.  Because if you’re like me, you will immediately recognize that for all the faults it might have, the iPhone is at least as revolutionary as everyone has said, perhaps more so.  The device itself is incredibly cool, it passes drop tests and scratch tests that I would never have tried with my Blackberry.  But it is the software, and just knowing that the entire thing is powered by code, that makes it disruptive.

As in disrupted my pocketbook to the tune of over $1,000 in about 5 minutes.  Damn you Steve Jobs.

I’m gonna go and place calls now, but I’ll leave you with this:

Apple iPhone, 8GB version: $599.00
Cancelled Sprint contract: $200.00
New AT&T contract: $119.00 (per month, plus taxes)
Not having to envy someone else’s iPhone every time I fly: PRICELESS

Damn you Steve Jobs.  Damn you for being such a visionary and for understanding the relationship between utility and uber-cool.  Damn you, damn you, damn you.