This evening, we drove South on 101 from Palo Alto to Shoreline in Mountain View to catch "Bourne Ultimatum". Mountain View, home of Google, and headquarters for much of the Web 1.0 boom as well (see: Netscape), often provides a great place to mix and mingle with some of the Silicon Valley's best and brightest, even in a very casual setting. As a result, it was no surprise that when we entered the theater early, before previews had begun, we were surrounded by geeks playing with their cell phones to pass the time. In fact, to our right, an entire row of young men were fiddling with their iPhones, unmistakably tapping on the screens with their index fingers, or rotating the views to landscape, only to be followed by more soundless tapping, as they presumably surfed the Web or scrolled through e-mail.What just a month or so ago would be worth posting to Flickr or Digg to announce an iPhone sighting in public is growing increasingly commonplace - though the appearance of four geeks (maybe all Google employees?) using theirs side by side was certainly less ordinary.
Just last Saturday, while some of us stumbled around with our digital cameras to capture Billy Beane and Ken Korach at AN Day 4, or others held up rudimentary cell phones, I spotted a few with their iPhones, taking in the action. The week before, one of my friends seeing The Simpsons Movie had also brought along his iPhone, passing it to me just so I could once again prove my fingers are too fat for the built-in keyboard. And often, while at lunch during the work week in tech geek rich Milpitas or San Jose, I can see iPhones placed on the table, or on the hip - often next to the Blackberry.
It looks like early fears over the iPhone lacking features, needing bug fixes after version 1.0, or even more directly, that fast adopters wouldn't want to be saddled to AT&T, are somewhat overblown. While I'm still holding out, waiting for version 2 or 3, I'm glad to start seeing the iPhone become as iconic as the iPod's white earbuds once were before everyone on the planet had them. That I get to enjoy the sheer geekery of the Valley at the same time is a major plus as well.