Why I Bought the iPhone Now

I caved in and bought an iPhone yesterday. I do not have it yet, but the good people at FedEx should be dropping it at my front door by Saturday. If you asked me two months ago when I would buy the iPhone, my answer would have been, “not before next year, and maybe not before the second generation of the device.” So what changed?

The $299 iPhone
No, that’s not a typo. I really did get one for $299 and you can too if you are lucky (and quick). If you rush over to an Apple Store or the online Apple store (bottom-right corner), they are selling the discontinued 4GB iPhones for $299.

Now that was a price I could justify with a two-year contract. While there isn’t a device on the market that can truly be compared to the iPhone, the Palm Treo and quality Blackberry devices already cost upward of $200 with a contract. Add in the advantages of the iPhone (do I have to list them?), subtract the disadvantage (I will list it: it’s locked down), and $299 is not all that bad.

The Market
I have been in the market for a good Internet-capable mobile phone for a while now. I have investigated everything: the trusty (but WiFi lacking) Treos, the addictive Blackberry, various HTC devices, and so many other Windows Mobile phones. I did not want to spend more than $200, but was not averse to extending my contract with Cingular (no, their marketing has not gotten me to call them AT&T yet).

Everywhere I looked, I was led back to the same conclusion—this phone is nice, but it’s not the iPhone. I could not find a single phone that had all the features I wanted for a decent price with a cheap data plan for my limited use. My choices were to buy an expensive phone with an expensive plan (iPhone, Blackberry, Treo 750) or a cheap phone with a cheap data plan. For some brain-dead reason, most major cell carriers will not give you their cheap data plans on their expensive phones, without the “let me speak with your supervisor” tone on their customer support line.

On AT&T, it was either the iPhone (or Treo, etc.) with a $20 data plan or something laughable like the RAZR with a $20 data plan. Who designs these plans?

On T-mobile, they have a $6 data plan, but they claim that it won’t work with PDAs or Smartphones. Then why call them smartphones? In any case, they lie. It does work with any phone, but it involves convincing your sales person of this fact (or lying) before they will agree to sell it to you.

It was as if the universe was conspiring to make me buy the iPhone. As you may have noticed, I enjoy assigning blame for my expensive decisions on the universe.

The Wall Comes Down
I am uncomfortable with the fact that there is locked hardware in this world. I shake my head at the fact that there is locked software. Most of all, however, I despise the fact that there are laws that prevent me from opening the locks on products I have purchased. I despise the fact that unfeeling code is used to enforce nuanced laws and that ambiguous laws are used to protect the unprotect-able bits.

Having said that, the iPhone is not quite as shackled as it used to be. In recent weeks, the iPhone has been been unchained from AT&T (hurray!) and third-party applications are cropping up. While I will enter into (another) 2-year contract with AT&T when I activate my iPhone, it is an important milestone and plays no small part in my decision to buy one. The next step is to legally disseminate this information to the mass of (wo)men (who live in quiet desperation).

Third-party applications are cropping up all over the place and it is only a matter of time before nifty little office/productivity applications show up (if they haven’t already). With the new Apple PDA (iPod Touch, they insist on calling it) released yesterday, the surge in new applications for the device will only grow.

And so now, for me, the time to buy the iPhone was right. Price, circumstances, community, and (marginally) ethics came together for this device in a remarkably short time—just over two months after its launch—and I might just have an iPhone in my hands before the weekend.