myPhone: Joys of moving to an iPhone

I have been able to stay Apple-free up to this point in my life. I have used a Palm pda for at least the last 5 years. My mp3 player is a refurbished Sandisk Sansa running Rockbox. I have resisted installing iTunes on my computer and instead use HappyFish as my podcatcher software. I don’t even install QuickTime as a matter of principle (and an unhappy experience trying to untangle if from an office computer years ago).

Our 5th 2 year commitment with U.S. Cellular was up so it was time for a new cell phone. The Palm Pre came out this weekend, so a quick stop into the the Sprint Store showed that the little keyboard would never work with this old geezer’s fat fingers. Besides, they were out of stock with a waiting list and only a hope that they would get more in this week.

Next it was the Verizon store. They had the Blackberry Storm which looked pretty good but their rate plans just didn’t make sense. U.S. Cellular gives us free incoming everything.
All incoming calls, texts, whatever are free. So our 4 phone, 2,000 shared minute plan would be equivelent to a 4000 minute plan anywhere else. 4,000 minutes at Sprint was quite a bit more than we were paying.

Well, off to U.S. Cellular. Looks like we will have to decide between a Blackberry Curve and an HTC TouchPro. Before making a final decission, decided we should go back to the office and see if Google can help us choose. Interesting. I could not find anyway to find out what apps were available for the Blackberry without buying a Blackberry! Maybe I missed something but all I could get were the ‘hype’ pages telling me that thousands of apps are available but no links to any descriptions of actual apps. Time to go back to U.S. Cellular and ask the salesman some more questions.

Our salesman was at lunch, so after playing with the units for bit we decided to get some lunch at Red Robbin. As we pull up my business partner asks why we are not considering AT&T. I told him it is because they carry Apple. But then again, maybe they carry something else. Maybe they will have a phone plan that will be competitive with U.S. Cellular. We looked at the phones and ended up playing with the iPhones. While we were looking a salesman came around and said Apple just officially announced their new phones and cut the price of the current phones in half. Temptation… I could feel the dark side coming over me but when we see the rate plan we are able to resist. Let’s go get that lunch.

Over lunch we discuss possibilities and how the iPhone was an incredible phone. My business partner says he wants one just because it has that Carpenter’s Level program shown on the TV commercials. Safeco, one of the companies we represent, has discounted AT&T rate so we went back to the office after lunch and find out if that rate will make the deal. Yes, 20% off the regular rates will help. So it is back to AT&T and make a final decision.

Well, I am Apple-free no more. myPhone is now an iPhone.