So I waited in line all day, starting at 8:00 AM. I was the first person in line at the Waco Dr. Cingular/AT&T store, and the first to walk out the door with a phone. Along the way, I met several great people, including Michael, who acutally makes his living blogging about Apple products (what a job!). He sat next to me while we waited all day.
On first impression, this phone is solid. No freezes or hangups yet, which is already a million times better than the Cingular 8525 the iPhone replaced, and it does what it does very well and…dare I say it…prettily.
Below are some unboxing images for those of you who haven’t seen what the whole shebang looks like yet.
The only feature I can say so far I’m really going to need is a way to easily turn off the email notifications when I’m asleep, while keeping the ringer active if a call comes in during the night. So far, the only thing I’ve figured out is to go into settings->sounds->New Email and turn it off, then back on in the morning, which is a little too much of a pain to be a good long-term solution. Ideas, from any other iPhone users out there?
posted by zoocat at 2:59 pm
So I was listening to NPR’s Fresh Air podcast yesterday, and something occurred to me. You see, I was listening to an interview with Dion, the doo-wop singer from way back in the day, the guy who sang “Rosie”, “The Wanderer”, and many other famous hits.
Dion told a story of travelling on the road back in the old days, before music stars had entourages and large private charter busses. He was on the road with several other musician friends of his doing a tour, ostensibly for their music label, and they were traversing the country with naught but an old school bus to carry them. Being an old school bus, it was given to breaking down frequently. So, some of the guys he was with got sick of it, and chartered a flight to their next stop to guarantee they got there on time. They tried to get him on board to split the cost and save a bit, but it would have cost him $36, which was exactly the rent money he remembered his parents arguing over as a kid in the Bronx, and he couldn’t justify spending an entire month’s rent for a short flight.
So, Dion hopped back on the bus, while Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and The Big Bopper hopped a flight that barely got off the ground.
What does all this mean? I don’t really know. It just got me thinking that sometimes it’s the little decisions we make, the ones we think so trivial, that can make a big difference in our lives. I’m not saying it’s a good thing to spend hours laboring over whether to get french fries or onions rings every night at dinner, but it at least puts things into perspective. We spend all our time worrying about the “big decisions” about careers, major financial outlays, family planning choices, etc. ad nauseam, but sometimes we are terrible judges of which decisions really will have a major impact on our lives.
Food for thought, at least.
posted by zoocat at 6:36 am