My new iPhone

So when I was first getting into podcasting I bought an M-audio MicroTrack. It was pretty good. There were some problems with it and some missing features but over all I liked the device -- particularly when I paired it with a high quality microphone.

What does this have to do with my new iPhone? I'm getting to that. I do want to say though, before you get the wrong idea, that I love the MicroTrack and have bought several since then for my clients. (Although I do use my Tascam when I can.)

So anyway, there were a couple of things about the device that were annoying enough that I went looking around for how other people had worked around them. It turns out that M-audio delivered a firmware update about once a month for the first year that I owned the device. With every update my device got better. It sounded better, it got features it hadn't had before, and it became easier to use. So this device that I had bought and had been fairly happy with got better and better with time.

That was game changing for me. My car doesn't get better with time. My stove doesn't get new superpowers.

My iPhone does.

In January my iPhone was able to figure out pretty much where it was. It's not like GPS was magically added to it -- but with the same hardware it shipped with my phone is now able to figure out roughly where I am at most times. There were some other improvements, but that was the one that I benefited from the most.

And Friday I got a new iPhone. Nope I didn't stand in line. Actually, maybe I did. It depends on how you count the two hours that I was without a phone hitting reload. Maybe that was the virtual and unexpected line that I stood in to get the new and improved phone. Guess I could have waited a day and avoided that virtual line.

About that line --- part of this was my fault for getting out of line. My iPhone updated to 2.0 and restarted. Then iTunes reported that the phone was trying to contact the iTunes store. After that went on for a good long while I quit. I didn't see why I would need to buy apps right away and there was nothing on the screen that indicated this was a necessary step in the authentication process. And so for the next couple of hours I had a bricked phone. The instructions could have/should have been clearer and the servers should have been ready to handle the load -- on the other hand, I could have waited a day.

In any case, I love most of what I have with iPhone 2.0. It feels a bit sluggish --- but really that could be me. I haven't been sleeping well lately. The new App store is addictive and it's way too easy to buy apps. Apple sold a million of the new phones over the weekend -- I'd like to know how many of them were first time iPhone buyers and how many were upgrading.

My daughter is waiting for me to upgrade so that she ends up with a phone that can gain superpowers. My wife just wants a phone that can make and receive phone calls. My daughter's phones is one of those phones that stays the way it was when you bought it. If you want more features you need to buy a new phone.

For now I'm happy with my original iPhone with its new superpowers.