iPhone iPass
On the day of the Worldwide Developers Conference where MacJeebus Steve Jobs unveiled the second coming of the iPhone, I was following his every word being uploaded by an attendee from Macrumors.com from the back seat of a VW Jetta cruising down Interstate 75 thanks to my first generation iPhone. I read with rapt attention about the new Apps store, the bona fide GPS and the blazing, near-cable like download speeds of the new AT&T 3G network and instantly started a countdown calendar for July 11— the day this new piece of heaven would be available. At $200, how could I not? Well, that was until I discovered that AT&T was increasing the cost of my monthly data plan by $10. But that wasn’t the deal breaker for me. AT&T built a faster network and someone has to pay for that faster speed is understandable. But the fact that they are taking away the 200 text messages included with my current $20 data plan and will require me to pay $5 for that same amount of text messages in addition to the now $30 data plan left me feeling a little...well, violated. And it was this unease with paying $15 more every month that made me take a step back from the shiny, 3G hype and truly examine what I was getting for such a substantial monthly increase in my bill. The result? Not so much really. A GPS and faster downloads WHEN I am not on a wifi network. You see, the new iPhone software will be a free upgrade for ALL current and new iPhone users - so I will have complete access to the Apps store. A GPS? Certainly a cool thing, but in reality —PM’s car already has a GPS with voice prompts that is far more reliable and useful than the blue blinking dot of the iPhone GPS. And the blazing download speed? Absolutely. But I recently checked the amount of data I download from the network and figured out that I do far more web surfing from my iPhone over free wifi than from AT&T’s current network. Atlanta is a pretty wired-up place, so it’s fairly easy to always be near at least one (if not several) available public wifis—and if not—I will hardly die from old age before Facebook loads on the current Edge network. So, yeah. Nice features—but I’m just not convinced I will use them enough to justify paying an additional $15 a month to have them. If my current data plan WITH the 200 text messages had increased by only $10—there would be no question—I would be making plans to be at the store this Friday. It’s just $5, but it’s also the principal of the thing. Isn’t it odd how something that seems outwardly inconsequential like that can suddenly make you put the brakes on and re-evaluate something? I wonder how many other times in my daily life I don’t do that when I should. So for now, I will be holding on to my first generation iPhone (with the upgraded software) and my current plan—at least for another 19 months when my contract expires—at which point, I will re-evaluate my re-evaluation. 3G iPhone,...we coulda had something.
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