Taking the above Proverb of Hell to heart, I finally acted upon my desires and bought an iPhone this week. I had held this particular desire pretty much from the moment it was announced, but I don't think I started actually nursing it until the TV ads appeared last spring. Before that, I was prepared to be very reasonable: "it's a new product, it will have bugs, better to wait until the second generation, yadda yadda yadda." The moment I saw the ads, all that went out the window. It was pure "Gimme, gimme, gimme! Mine mine mine!" And there were just too few obstacles. I'd been saying I needed my own phone for over a year, and I was already leaning toward something in the "smartphone" category (as an owner of several Handspring/Palm PDAs, I was seriously considering buying an almost-new Treo off a colleague right about the time the initial iPhone announcement was made.) AT&T is, for better or worse, the only cellular carrier in these parts anyway. Add to that all the glowing reviews, the cool factor, and, finally, the price cut, and my desire had become irresistible. I placed my order a week ago Thursday, and by Monday afternoon, I had the object of that desire, at last, in my hands. And while I admit to having slaked my lust a bit that first night, the next morning I found myself stricken with a nasty gastrointestinal infection that put me in no kind of condition for such dalliances for the next three days, and Friday was spent doing little more than digging out from the load of missed work from my illness.

Thus, today was my first "real" day of iPhone use, and I must say it lives up to every bit of hype and praise that has been heaped upon it. The UI is jaw-droppingly beautiful. MobileSafari is terrific (even over EDGE, I find it to be acceptable). Mail works extremely well (I have one IMAP, one traditional POP, and three GMail accounts all on it). The camera and photo features have me suddenly wanting to take pictures (which I otherwise do with some reluctance). I've had to retrain some of my iPod habits to make use of those features, but even that is not really a complaint, just an adjustment (I will say, having the—admittedly tiny—speakers for music playback, is a nice little bonus). I haven't yet dug into every corner of the iPhone, and I know that in time, some of the details like having no text-selection will start to irritate me, and yes, like everyone else, I'm hoping Apple will open it up to third-party developers, but from what I can see, this really is the revolutionary, industry-changing device that Steve Jobs promised. Bravo, Apple.