I didn't
need a new phone. My
Nokia 9300 was serving me quite well, even if it was a tad crash-prone. Nice big keyboard (fat thumbs), reasonable Web browser, and solid integration with my work's
Zimbra mail server (sidebar:
Zimbra was recently acquired by Yahoo! for $350M).
... And then I had a few hours to kill in Palo Alto a couple weeks back, and as soon as I got my hands on an iPhone in the Apple store, I was hooked (the
recent $200 price drop sealed the deal).
Like most things Apple these days, the iPhone is a thing of beauty, and using it puts every other "smart" phone to shame. But this isn't just about the iPhone, it's about why buying an iPhone led me to buy some
AAPL as well.
I've bought my fair share of cell phones, both in stores and online, and it's typically a painful experience involving all manner of forms, applications, and other bureaucratic minutiae. With the iPhone, what took the longest was updating my version of iTunes. From there I just told Apple (not AT&T, Apple -- save a small logo, AT&T was essentially invisible) that I was already an AT&T customer, entered my current number and last-four-of-SSN, and then picked out a data plan. Less than a minute later, my new iPhone was active.
Apple turned an annoying, complicated transaction into a couple simple iTunes screens. In other words, they went out of their way to make it very, very easy for me to (a.) start using their product and (b.) feel just fine about paying them for it. And of course I had to buy a case, and a screen protector, and a headset, and a ...
And it seems I'm not alone. Here's
David Strom and
Tim O'Reilly on their own recent iPhone purchases (and a
recent general Apple post from Joel Spolsky).
