It's 2:30AM last Wednesday morning. I wake up in the middle of the night due to a dream:
I am sitting in Steve Jobs' office at Apple HQ and have just been handed my first iPhone. I'm excited beyond belief.
So excited, that it wakes me up and prevents me from going back to sleep. What the heck is wrong with me? My wife says I need serious, Divine help.
I admit it. I want an iPhone really, really bad. With Apple's recent announcement for support of Exchange ActiveSync, remote device wipe, etc., the barriers for me not getting an iPhone are practically all gone. Assuming Microsoft IT will permit it to sync with our Exchange servers, I truly could be down to a single device for everything.
I currently have a 16GB iPod Touch that I love. It has been a great device. It's the de facto media player in my BMW 335i. It's the device I sit with in my easy chair and watch podcasts. It goes everywhere my phone goes ... which is why I'm thinking an iPhone would be a nice upgrade and yield true device convergence.
However, there's a few items that are holding me back:
- I lose my 15% across-the-board discount with AT&T on my existing service by adding an iPhone, though the iPhone data plan is $10 cheaper than what I'm paying now, so it's almost a wash; kicker is that the cheaper plan includes "only" 200 SMS messages a month; I'm not a heavy SMS user today, but I sense the iPhone could increase that usage substantially
- I've so many contacts that my car cannot sync them all from my Windows Mobile device; I've had to resort to the JETware Hands-free Extension from JETware Mobile to filter the contacts that sync with the car's address book; I'm not sure if the iPhone has similar capabilities or not
- It's unclear at this point if iPhone v2.0 meets Microsoft IT requirements for connecting a mobile device to Exchange - though it certainly seems to hit on all the major buttons
- The iPhone is expensive and its clearly a want vs. a need - but my oh my is it a strong want
- What happens if I break the iPhone before my shiny new 2 year contract with AT&T is up? I've already dropped one iPod in a bathtub; does Apple have a replacement plan for dolts like me?
Do I wait until the v2.0 firmware is shipping and have an opportunity to see how the new-and-improved iPhone handles things that my Windows Mobile phone handles so well? Or do I sell the 16GB iPod Touch, buy the 16GB iPhone now and deal with the chance that I could end up with an iPhone acting as nothing more than an iPod Touch with a few extra features?
It may be time for a trip to craigslist.org and see if I can sell the iPod Touch so I can start sleeping better at night ...