I Want One

Don't ask me why, because where I live there is no cell phone coverage until a good 900 kms south of here. But I really want an iPhone.

Steve Jobs just unveiled this alluring technological gewgaw during his keynote address at the MacWorld Expo in San Francisco today. It has enough features to curl the toes of ardent technophiles and make them slaver in pre-delivery anticipation.

You can read MacWorld's run down of all the bells and whistles, but here are the ones that appeal to me: automatic WiFi connection; absolutely no buttons to push (touch screen technology); GPS-active; an accelerometer which reorients the screen when you rotate the phone 90 degrees; real Internet browser; email; OS Tiger; and widgets (which those of you who are slaves to Gates will only get to see in Vista).

But what really turns my crank about this baby is its looks - pure out and out sex. Black, thin as a wafer, and something you just want to hold and stroke while chanting "My Precious, my Precious" in low, guttural rapture.

I admit that Apple Inc., as it is now called, has got me hooked. I first started using their computers in 1983 (Apple IIe) and I cannot and will not change my purchasing habits, no matter how badly they screw me over on extended warranties and motherboard replacements. I am their thrall, and I cannot conceive how anyone can function on a Windows platform.

In all honesty I can relate that during the one occasion my Powerbook had to be shipped south for a week of repairs a year back, I was compulsively tracking its progress with waybills and workorders on the phone so compulsively that one shipper promised to call me at home with news of its whereabouts if I would only stop calling him.

So my only problem now is how to explain to the missus that I need a second, a very expensive, cell phone even though we have no mobile service.

I know some of you guys will understand.