I got the iPhone
posted under category: Life Events on July 23, 2009 by Nathan
Last month before our AZCFUG meeting, we (the UGMs and ACEs of the Phoenix area) were hanging out with Ryan Stewart (who has an adobe go link now) at Four Peaks Brewery. It became quickly obvious that only Rob Brooks-Bilson (who has his own wikipedia entry) and myself were on dumbphones. Rob picked up his iPhone that following weekend. I held out for 2 more weeks (hey, we had a baby, cut me some slack). My wife & I had planned to upgrade to something, I was leaning towards Android, but, thanks to HTC's mediocre Android devices and my employer's fantastic corporate rates with AT&T, we switched and I got an iPhone 3GS.
I've had it for a couple weeks now, and I've got to say, wow. This thing is great. Really. Everyone should have one. From the seamless phone and ipod controls to the connectivity and web browsing abilities, to the apps and games available, it's been really, really fantastic.
One thing I like the most is that it's easily a hundred devices in one. With nothing added, it's a great phone, navigation system, media player, web browser, PIM and camera. That's just brushing the surface, and of course doesn't cover the thousands of apps you can download, many for free.
Case in point: This last weekend we wanted to play mini-golf with the fam. Alanda (my wife) found an indoor place in North Phoenix - 113 is hot enough to stay indoors! Using the camera and Facebook app, I dropped an adorable picture of Aubri (1 yr, our 3rd child) owning the course. From there, we wanted food. Thanks to the iPhone, we were at in-n-out burger in 5 minutes. Finally, we had to get back to Alanda's Dad's camp trailer. Thanks to the map, we saved at least 20 minutes of driving. As we wound through Fountain Hills, I showed Alanda the Zillow application. She was having so much fun as it showed her the estimated prices of all the houses we drove by, live, as the app tracked us on a map with the iPhone's GPS.
I was especially impressed with how I could buy the device and never need to plug it in to a computer. You can download music, podcasts, movies, apps, games, everything without even owning a PC to plug it into. You'll probably want to, but you don't have to this time. This is in contrast to how my iPod Video was simply a sattelite of the media in iTunes on my desktop.
Repeated conclusion: Everybody should have one. Really.