Seems like I've ramped up my techno status around a thousand percent this summer. For just as I'm growing more accustomed to my switch over to Mac from an old and doddery, although otherwise perfectly functioning PC, the long and tedious wait for the holy grail of cell phones came to an end yesterday afternoon.
"Your I Phone is in," said the man at the AT&T Store across town. "You're kidding?" I replied. Dead pan. He wasn't in the least bit in the mood for jokes after making it through a month of crazed new 3G I Phone customers, bashing down the showroom doors morning, noon and night. Turns out if I'd fancied myself with a white I Phone I would have been up and running weeks ago. "They sent us tons of the white ones," said the serious cell phone salesman. "Everyone, it seems, wants black." And so the prerequisite one week wait had turned into two weeks, then three weeks, then almost a month.
Oh well. Who's in that much of a hurry? A lot of people, apparently, for the mob scene daily at the Apple Store in Santa Rosa is not a pretty sight. "It's just not a big enough store," explained the apologetic young sales clerk who could not see me getting lucky any time soon with some much needed in-person technical help on my new MacBook Pro printing issue. "It's these I Phones," he said. Apple store customers show up in droves during the morning hours at the mall, hoping that Fed-Ex will deliver sufficient devices for them to wait in line and walk out with an I Phone purchase. Some folk are fortunate, others have to make a return trip to search for the grail the next day.
I've been after an I Phone since I first clapped eyes on one. "Wait for the second version," said friends who had made the first round I Phone purchase. So I waited and waited and waited and saved and saved and saved (actually, cashed in one wedding anniversary IOU, one Mother's Day IOU and one birthday IOU from the hubby, which, I think, in retrospect was not such a bad deal for him seeings as I have expensive taste in all the other sorts of things a girl likes to get for gifts!). And now that I have the new G3 in my hands, I can't seem to pluck up the courage to do anything with it.
It's all a little bit scary for a newly-converted bargain-basement basic cellphone user. I've watched the Apple podcast, seen it in action in the hands of dozens of dedicated I Phone friends, but I'm surprisingly tentative about touching those snazzy on-screen buttons and accidentally bookmarking a load of old rubbish off the internet, or calling busy editors in my address book by mistake. (If you hear from me and I sound a bit panicked -and quite possibly confused -now you'll know why!)
Of course, the kids got a hold of it immediately and kindly took all sorts of outrageous pictures of themselves for my I Phone photo gallery. Oldest son downloaded my nifty and most recently updated address book from the new Mac. I have no excuse not to call. I even took the high road and had the blue tooth in sync by the time I left the AT&T store. No more pulling over illegally on the hard shoulder to take a call on the road. All very efficient. So now I need to force myself to get familiar with the little dear. Push a few buttons and play around a bit.
If I get stuck, I could always call my friend the former NASA scientist who took my printer problem call last night at the Apple Care Call Center in Idaho or Ohio, or somewhere that was still 90 degrees at 7.30pm. Although he failed to fix my issue, he did share some pretty great stories of his experiences in Vietnam, then Princeton, then NASA, and now, in the air conditioned confines of an Apple Care facility for the newly retired rocket scientists. He should know his way around an I Phone. Although who wants to spend all that time talking techno when there are so many more intriguing things to tell?
Until I fix the wireless printer prob (and trust me, I have called in the best. For not only have I talked with rocket scientists, but motion picture film and super-submarine experts too!) you'll find me in the Mac photo booth, messing around with the kids taking all sorts of entertaining snapshots like the one above. Now, how do I send that to the phone?
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