Opinion: From cell phone 'Luddite' to iPhone lover

Computerworld - Back in July, not long after Apple Inc.'s iPhone was released, I told those plagued by iPhone lust "to get over it." Alas, I was unable to follow my own advice. That's why I bought an iPhone a few weeks back -- after learning that I could ditch Lotus Notes and my crummy CrackBerry at work and use Apple Mail for work e-mail and the iPhone. That combo proved to be absolutely irresistible.

A bit of background: My wife, Cyndy, got a nice BlackBerry at her job several months ago and it quickly became her main phone. Neither of us was using our circa 2005 LG flip phones from Verizon. I'm a jeans-pocket guy for my cell phone, and the LG phone felt like a brick in my pocket. My older model CrackBerry was great for e-mail, but a very poor cell phone -- so bad that I found myself carrying both at times, something that's patently ridiculous. So we dumped our Verizon phones, and I went to the Apple Store in a nearby mall.

Apple sold more than 1 million iPhones in the U.S. between late June and September.

I had an entirely different experience at the Apple Store. It took me longer to park my car at the mall than it did to walk out with my iPhone; the entire purchase experience lasted about five minutes. There are no decisions to make, accounts to check, contracts to sign. Literally, all the details are taken care of by the iTunes-based iPhone activation software. You have to connect the iPhone to your Windows or Mac computer, download and install iTunes (unless you have it installed already, as all newer Macs do) and then follow the on-screen instructions. Apple's documentation on this process is, well, basic. But then again, you don't really need it. The process of initializing activation required about 10 minutes, and after a little over 20 minutes of wait time, activation was complete -- including the transfer of the phone number from my old Verizon LG cell phone to the AT&T-powered iPhone.