Now even though I really dig my iPhone, I don’t live for it. I’m not one of those guys that stands around in little packs with other iPhone users and tweets and texts and surfs while ignoring the people right in front of me. But I do think it’s incredibly handy to have on me when I need to check the weather at the place I’m driving to, or need quick directions, or need to find a good restaurant, so I was a little bummed when I dropped the darn thing Sunday night.

I was leaving church and jogging out to my car because Michelle was waiting for me to open the doors and it popped out of my jacket pocket and hit the edge of a curb. At first it didn’t look too bad, just a nice dent in it’s aluminum back and a scuff of red paint from the curb. But I quickly realized that it had internal injuries. The volume buttons no longer worked, and the touch screen would not respond to my loving caresses.

I was bummed. Not so much about the phone, but about the replacement cost. This is no economy to be spending $100 on a phone. At least not for me. So I figured, hey, I can fix this thing! So I grabbed a screwdriver and pried the sucker apart.

I soon realized there was no way I was fixing this thing. After pulling 15 of the tiniest screws I have ever seen out of the innards of my beloved iPhone, I realized I would never be able to get them back in. My fingers are too fat and my eyes are too old to have any hope of getting that thing back together, even if I could magically figure out which component was bad.

But luckily I had a back up phone to use. Unluckily it was my daughters old RAZR; in stunning pink. Yeah, that really bolsters my bad boy image. On top of that, the thing is a piece of hot pink crap. I tried to type a text message on it and suddenly realized why I got an iPhone to begin with. No, I think I’d rather not have a phone at all rather than fight with this hunk of garbage. But you can’t just go around without a cellphone in this day and age right? So I decided to go down to the Apple store and get me a new phone. And this is what I really wanted to write about because the shopping experience at the Apple store is amazing.

I went online to order one and they give you the option to pick it up at a store. I figured that would be better than waiting for them to ship it to me. So I select the store I want to get it from and they ask my name and then tell me when it will be waiting for me.

I walked into the store and told the guy I reserved a phone online. He asked my name and then looked me up on his iPhone. He then tells me to have a look around and somebody will be up with my phone. I drooled over the new 27″ iMac for a few minutes and then a guy taps me on the shoulder and asks if I’m ready to check out. He’s got my iPhone in one hand and a portable credit card reader in the other. He takes my id and punches in a few things. Then he takes my credit card and swipes it. He then asks me if he can email my receipt to me and I say yes. He then hooks the phone up to a computer, activates it and then hands it to me. Done.

Within 5 minutes I had an activated iPhone in hand. No swapping SIM cards, no calling headquarters, no paperwork to sign, and they were FAST! None of the B.S. that I’ve always gone through when buying phones at the AT&T store. And what else was cool is that this is all while standing in the middle of the showroom, they don’t have registers, or lines, at the Apple store. Brilliant.

So I’m back in business with my new iPhone. I gotta say I kinda miss my old one. I really liked the aluminum back versus the plastic back that the new phones have, but it’s way better than the pretty, pink RAZR, that’s for sure.

It hasn’t been a bad laptop, relatively speaking. When you run Windows, you pretty much expect quirkiness and problems. So in that regard, the laptop has not been any worse than any other Windows based PC I’ve purchased or built (that has been dozens). But today I just reached my limit as to what I’m willing to deal with.

Once again I’m under the gun to complete a project and I’m just not up for dealing with flakiness. Today I did what should have been a simple upgrade from Vista Home to Vista Ultimate so I could get the full system backup feature (I just love how MS cripples a program and then charges you for certain pieces of it), but as with Windows, nothing is simple. The machine did the upgrade, then promptly blue screened on the reboot. It would not boot. It would not take a reinstall of Vista. It would not restore from the “recovery partition”, and Dell does not ship recovery CD’s with their machines. So I sat there, completely S.O.L. and facing at least 3 to 4 business days of downtime while I wait for Dell to ship me a factory restore disk.

So I decided to go to the Apple store and get the laptop I should have bought in the beginning. A beautiful aluminum and glass 15″ Mac Book Pro. I bought the top of the line, no more skimping on tools that make me money. I’m so happy.

Here’s how cool the entire process has been so far. I walked into the store and tell the guy what I want. He  grabs one off the shelf, pulls out a little card reading device from his belt, swipes my card, tells me my reciept will be emailed to me, and sends me on my way. Sweet.

I get home and crack the box which is barely bigger than the laptop itself. Inside is the laptop, a power cable, and two RESTORE DISKS! That’s it. I fire the machine up. It asks me my name. It sees my network and asks me for the password. It asks me if I want to copy my files from another machine. I say no because I want to start fresh. It starts up and I’m done. Too easy.

Now I have a wireless mouse that gave me fits on my Dell. I tenderly plug the reciever into my Mac, fully expecting to have to download and install drivers, etc, etc, etc… nothing. I grab the mouse and my pointer moves. No drivers to install??? It’s not even a Mac mouse! Sweet! Next hurdle: Printer.

Printers are an absolute BEAR on PC’s and because this one is wireless, it’s usually harder than normal. It was a beast to get working on the Dell, but after the mouse incident, I’m feeling confident. I open the printer panel, click the plus sign, my printer shows up in the list of available printers. I select it, it automatically picks the right driver. I click OK. Go to Google and print something…. BAM, It works.

Less than 60 minutes on a brand new piece of hardware and I was literally already back to work with Vista installed in a virtual machine for my programming tools and everything. This is how computers are supposed to work. Simple and not a single ounce of technical knowledge needed to get online, printing and being productive. Yeah it’s expensive, but that’s relative. If I can spend more time actually working and less time messing with the machine itself, it will pay for itself in no time.

I don’t know man. To me, this IS the Mac vs. PC commercial except in Microsoft’s version, the cool guy looks up to the geeky PC character. It’s almost like this entire commercial was just convince us that Bill Gates can be cool too, just like that Apple guy. Well I have news for you Mr. Gates. You’re still a goober.

But on the bright side, you’re a rich goober. A stinking rich goober. A so rich you could easily buy a nation of people that would bow down and tell you you’re cool goober. Maybe that would be a better idea than this lame commercial.

Click here to view the embedded video.

I think it’s funny that the industry has put so much focus on building pen and paper replacements. You pull out your stupid stylus and scrape on the screen like you’re writing on a pad. Why? Tell me why! You know why sticky notes and pocket organizers are so popular? Because they are easier and quicker to use than these ridiculous devices. And pads of paper don’t ring in the middle of meetings.

Apple took a better approach. By touching the screen you are doing what comes naturally. If you want to see something, you point to it. If you want to see the next set of items, you brush your finger on the surface like turning a page. If you need more space, you just turn the device sideways and everything flips automatically. It’s so intuitive that there is no manual other than a little fold out card. My Motorola RAZR has a manual containing over 100 pages!

The other great thing about the iPhone is that the implementation of each feature is just done so darn well. Web surfing is REALLY web surfing. No crammed in, miniature versions of web pages. Making a call could not be simpler, and checking voice mail is awesome. No nagging computer lady screaming at you to push 3 for this and 6 for that. No listening through 5 message to find the one you want. No remembering crazy menu options. You just look at a list of your messages and point to the one you want to hear. Simple.

With the iPhone, Apple has done what they do best; simplified the machine down to it’s most important features and presented them in a way that people can access naturally. Brilliant.

http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=1903