Why I Won’t Be Keeping the iPhone I Stood in Line For Eight Hours to Buy

Giving Us a Demo While in LineI wanted the iPhone. Really wanted it. Lusted after it. So, when Dan asked me if I wanted to stand in line with him yesterday at the Millenia Mall for one, I said “hell yeah!” or something to that effect. That was a week ago.I currently have a Treo 680 and my first concern with the iPhone was no 3rd party apps which meant I wouldn’t have an SSH client or Terminal Services client on my phone like I do now. I manage servers so these are handy. As I thought about it though, I’ve used each of these apps once or twice in the past couple years so this wasn’t a show-stopper.

As last week went on and more info. came out I got even more excited and was going to buy one. Then David Pogue’s FAQ came out on Thursday and I found out that you can’t use the iPhone as a bluetooth modem. Uh-oh. I travel for work about once a month and have a fairly flexible vacation schedule that means I’m out of town for long weekends nearly that often. When I can’t get an internet connection, the slow EDGE dialup through my Treo saves me.

I can’t give this up so I asked the Apple Store employees who were going through the line yesterday after their afternoon briefing answering questions about this to confirm it. Sadly, it is true. This is the show-stopper. My time in line wasn’t wasted since I had already asked my Dad if he wanted one if I got one so I’ll be taking that over to him today and living vicariously through his activation and awe.

I know some people think I’m crazy (hi, Mom!) for standing in line all day for something I won’t even keep, but I had a blast and would do it again in a similar situation. The Apple Store employees were awesome and kept the Smart Waters and Starbucks coupons flowing and were eager to help us out and answer any questions they could.

As soon as Apple enables the iPhone as a bluetooth modem, I’ll buy mine.

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This entry was written by Chris Scott, posted on June 30, 2007 at 10:48 am, filed under Apple, Tech. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post. Both comments and trackbacks are currently closed.

5 Comments

  1. Alex Rudloff
    Posted June 30, 2007 at 12:01 pm | Permalink

    I’m kinda with ya.. Bluetooth, or even tethered like my verizon q, is an absolute requirement. I’m already shaky on EDGE over 3g as it is.. I’ll probably wait for both features.

  2. chris
    Posted June 30, 2007 at 5:07 pm | Permalink

    @Alex: I’m waiting for the bluetooth tether. After seeing someone in line yesterday go through two batteries in their 3G phone w/pretty minimal usage, I think I’ll be happy w/slow speed but good battery life for a while. Now, if ATT would get a USB 3G modem for Mac…

  3. Chris Husein
    Posted July 20, 2007 at 9:33 am | Permalink

    Chris, nice meeting you today at likemind. New feature for the iphone, video backgrounds, who cares about battery life

  4. chris
    Posted July 20, 2007 at 11:01 am | Permalink

    @Chris: Likewise! I want full HD video backgrounds with sound and an API to tie into the vibrate mode :-)

  5. Brian
    Posted August 31, 2007 at 11:06 pm | Permalink

    For terminal access have a look at this…
    http://www-personal.umich.edu/.....index.html

    I believe it is bundled with IPhone Remote
    http://code.google.com/p/telekinesis/

    iPhone as a modem…
    http://cre.ations.net/blog/post/tether-your-iphone

    scary, not for the faint at heart