I had heard whispers in technology circles (this means my friend’s Dave & Dave) about the Iphone and it’s virtues. And now that I am an older I guess, I at first, could not give a flying …. So I ignored them.
Let’s back up a bit… Around the time Dave & Dave were telling me about the great iPhone, my wife was chiming in to me how they are fantastic, etc. etc. Still I did not listen, nor did I have anytime to think about it. I just figured it was something similar to an Ipod, which I had used and basically it was not for me. There was a bit of argument over the Iphone with my wife, because I did not listen. Well I probably should have. A year later, Dave & Dave were extolling the virtues again, when I began to listen.
Finally my orange Palm Treo began to fizzle out. It was dropped, beat to a pulp, and none of that mattered to me. It did the job of calling and emailing (very badly), and it somewhat worked. So why was I carrying around 2 cell phones? It was simple. I got one for my day job and I figured I would use it for work email. So for 6 months I kept two cell phones in my pockets. This was pretty much an exercise in radiation therapy for my hips. I knew something was wrong with this. Forget about putting my work, exchange/microsoft onto my personal phone. Isn’t that what a blackberry is for? Well did not have a blackberry. I had a microsoft based HTX phone. And seemed good.
Anyway, one day my palm phone stopped working. I mean I could not stop phone calls. The keypad just went dead! I was kind of screwed. When I called people, I had to ask them to hang up for me. I could use the touch screen, but that was it. So I was determined to get a new phone.
That’s when I remembered there was this guy in mid-Boca who ran an independent cell phone store which had a pile of old phones on a shelf behind him. I figured go over there and grab one, pop in my tmobile sim chip, which was 10 years old and get right back to work. So I stopped by Smart Communications. This began a whole saga of getting a new phone through the backdoor, I guess. I had purchased an orange unlocked Palm Treo on eBay, so what the hey. I might as well do it again.
Mark showed me all the newest stuff. An Android phone, new Google offering, which I considered. Then there were palms and blackberries and other HTX’s. I had already an HTX flip in side pocket, so that was out of the question. I looked them over and then I looked at the iPhone. He determined right away it was not for me, from an expense standpoint and he declared “its a toy!” Anyway, I called my wife, and she said why don’t you get it! Hmm. That was the key words for she wanted it for herself… So I decided to go for it. Now mind you this is putting an iPhone on Tmobile, a bit of a tricky deal. It was a bit clandestine, because apparently this is an anomaly, since at&t has some exclusive contract with apple. Anyway, I purchased it.
This started the second part of the saga, the painful part. The actual iPhone was something like version 2.6 and that meant that you needed to unlock the thing with a turbo thingy. Looked like a piece of foil that goes behind the chip. He said it came from a guy in Hong Kong. And guess what as soon as I walked out of the store, it immediately stopped working… So I went back. Here is where I made up my mind to get the darn thing to work. My 10 minutes with the iPhone had converted me, and I was now determined. So I went back to the guy and we tried this and that, and upgraded. I even went into a Tmobile store and got a new SIM chip. Just told them it was no longer working… Now I am carrying around 3 phones. My work, HTX, the iphone and my treo, just in case to pop the sim back. My pockets were hanging low and I expected a banana joke at anytime.
Finally, Mark told me to give him the phone back and wait a week. A guy in HongKong was going to break/unlock the newest 3.0 iphone load. I was suddenly feeling like a junky waiting for the new shipment. And I put up with wait, another week. In the meantime my wife told me I was fooling myself and to give up. Finally I went back and he said not ready. I was thinking Android on that day, trust me… But I had patience and the guy from hongkong did the job and the old phone, non 3g got updated. I was able to get the iphone working… In the end I was able to get rid of all my phones and move to a single phone. This was a long time coming. and now I guess I am an iPhone advocate. Even thinking about being an Apple shareholder.