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POLITICS 1

I've been pretty much stuck 100% in the Linux world now for around 5 years.  I bought myself a Cowon iAudio X5 media player based on its compatibility with Linux (and its complete lack of anything DRM related) - and I've loved it for the 2.5 years I've had it.

I also had a blackberry which I had used for 2 years, thanks to Nature's Way.  Well.. I now no longer work at Nature's Way (I'll blog about all that later), and along with my resignation, came the termination of my phone.  So...

I was wandering around Wednesday afternoon wondering what I was gonna do about a phone, when I went in to just re-new my blackberry.  It would cost me around $100.00 / month to get what I needed.  I thought that was a bit much, and so I went to the AT&T store, and asked about the iPhone.  The guy gave me the schpeil, and I took about 30 minutes to think it over.  The iPhone would cost me around $130.00 / month, but provide me many, many more options for the price.  I would have to buy the iPhone, which would cost me much more than I was planning on spending, but then I could sell my blackberry to offset some of the cost.  So...  I did it.

I bought an iPhone.  And I simply must say - it blows away the competition.  Seriously.

I'm not a mac-aholic like many people I know, who eat, drink, and breathe the Apple lifestyle (which, in my opinion is nothing more than high-priced stuff made shiny).  I mean...  C'mon.  A laptop for $3500.00!?!?!  Is it REALLY that much better?  I could build myself 2 desktops, and still have enough money left over to buy a laptop with that much money.  Sheesh.  So... anyway... Yeah, I'm definitely not, haven't been, and probably won't be much of a fan of Apple's ideology.

But, then there's this iPhone.  I went all out.  I got a jawbone bluetooth ear piece, a leather case, the car charger, a pretty solid plan, and the 16gig phone.  I'm all set.

During the three days I've had the phone, I've managed to get it synced with all google apps I use, namely:

• gmail - it syncs every hour, and that's because I set it that way.  You can set it to check as often as you like, or not at all.
• google calendar - this is a freaking life saver.  I've been over-scheduling stuff because I have no idea what my wife's calendar looks like.  I now see my calendar, my wife's calendar, and my church responsibilities calendar all on my iPhone - and it syncs every minute or so.  Amazing - amazing stuff.
• google contacts - I tried it, and didn't like it due to the lack of features per contact.  I'll look more into this in the future.

Then there's the app store.  Man, what genius came up with that!?!?  Apart from the generally amazing interface of the rest of the phone, I've never seen anything so intuitive as the app store interface.   The way it displays things through the selection of, installation of, and use of the apps, is simply genius.  Stuff just works, and is easy to use.  Yes, I love that about Apple.  Is it worth the price they're asking?  Yes, for the iPhone, but pretty much heck no for everything else.

Now, one serious gripe which, apart from the general "overpriced" nature of Apple's toys, has kept me away from Apple, is their proprietary nature.  They like to keep Apple's things in Apple's universe.  It's good that iTunes works with Windows, but it's a complete failure with Linux.  And that's a shame.

Also, it seems that half of the iPhone's capabilities are crippled, if not totally useless without iTunes.  Like - I can't seem to put any images on the phone at all, unless I take the image with the phone's camera, or they come through iTunes.  This sucks royally, because I didn't have any Windows installations at all at the time I bought the phone.  So, through a whole lot of grumbling and curled upper lips, I grabbed an empty drive, and a spare copy of XP I had, and spent a good 6 hours trying to get XP installed (The disk was pre service pak 1, so it didn't recognize any of the SATA drives I had).  Man, Windows is a pain.  But, I got it up and running, and got iTunes installed, and my account set up.  So... Anyway...  Despite the few hiccups along the way, the iPhone seems to be a great product.

Anyway... Just thought I'd let ya'll know what I think.