Musing and mumbling

Today is iPhone day, they will be on sale— in North America only—starting at 6 pm. My inner geek (never far from the surface) got very excited this morning when he realized that there is an Apple Store in Manhattan just around the corner from our hotel! So I can see a real live iPhone!! And maybe even hold it!!! In only sixteen days!!!!

Woot.

Can't buy one, of course, there is no European service plan nor localized software available yet.

Would I buy one? Probably not. I hate telephones as a matter of principle, finding them intrusive and uncomfortable and interruptive; I much prefer e-mail or face-to-face contact, and am willing—happy—to pay the price of the time delay these introduce. Given that I already have an iPod and a cellphone, further given that I don't watch TV and prefer to see movies on a proper cinema screen, it doesn't seem to have much to offer me. An additional obstacle is that I am a cheapskate and hate giving money to telecom companies, to the point of preferring SMS to speech; when I watch the ads my inner geek impressed by the iPhone's features, of course, but my inner accountant is pulling on my elbow and saying "yeah but how much do they charge for the connection? It's a monopoly service, it's bound to be hideously expensive."

It's possible that this only means that I haven't yet understood what the iPhone really is. I think of it as a telephone with features, and was very pleased to have bought a telephone without features a few months back. Perhaps the name is a red herring and it truly is a new kind of urban enabler as the ads suggest, or a laptop that fits into one hand; both of those might appeal to me.

Today's Friday Favourite is a terrific blues by the late, much lamented Stevie Ray Vaughan, from this album. Enjoy loudly.

And finally to start the weekend off right, here are a chuckler from the Savage Chickens, a lion from Questionable content and a tiny, perfect gem from xkcd. May the blessings of your choice from the deity of your choice be upon you all, my dears.