A big part of me wants to make up reasons to go out and get an Apple iPhone when it debuts June 29th. Steve Jobs' introduction of the product at Macworld San Francisco, ensuing media coverage and reviews, and the company's recently introduced four commercials touting the iPhone have got me musing ways to make my acquisition of an iPhone make sense. And I can't get there.The iPhone has three major features: A widescreen iPod that plays music and video, a touch-oriented cell phone, and what Apple is calling a fully-featured Web browser, akin to the Safari experience on Mac OS X. But, in order, I have both a 60 Gig iPod and an iPod shuffle already for the music side, and a perfectly capable BlackBerry handset, which gets me e-mail immediately, works well for phone calls, and actually does an adequate job of surfing the Web should I need to. Best of all, I'm not paying for the BlackBerry. Work is. And the BlackBerry service is through Verizon, not AT&T, the sole wireless carrier signed up with the iPhone. So that's two major strikes against my moving to the next awesome product from Apple.
At the dawn of the decade, I probably wouldn't have let that stand in my way. I got the first generation Visor Deluxe handheld when they debuted, the first VisorPhone module that married the Palm OS with the cellphone, and later, the first black and white Treo handset. I also, as noted here before, bought the first generation iPod on the day they debuted.
But now, I'm getting more content with utilizing previous generation hardware. My iPod doesn't play video, and is the 60 Gigabyte model, not 80 Gigabytes. My Apple laptop is a PowerBook G4, not an Intel-based MacBook Pro. Our TiVo is a series one console, and we're not even signed up for high definition broadcast from our cable provider, Comcast. We don't own a video camera, my car is pushing nine years old, and didn't even come with a native CD player, let alone Sirius or XM satellite radio. Sometimes, I even go into Fry's and come out without buying anything. It's as if there's some sort of anonymous group I should be joining...
Inside, I want to spend my money with wanton disregard for budgets and needs. I want to sell recently obsoleted technology on eBay after upgrading to the newest gear. I want to have the newest products before my colleagues and friends even know they exist. But lately, I'm getting more and more content to wait out the first generation until the bugs are out of it, and see if I can get the second generation cheap. It's sad, really. How can I respect myself among my peers now that this is off my chest?