iPhones, ski passes, and credit cards

Yesterday The Steve announced that the 8GB iPhone only costs $399 now. When I bought it a couple months ago (early July, to be exact), it cost $599. Yeah, $200 price drop.

The thing is, the iPhone is a 100% gratuitous purchase. I shouldn't have spent 1 penny on it (because, after all, you can get cell phones for free and I already owned an iPod nano). For some twisted reason, that makes the price drop not annoying at all. What's the difference if I blow $600 or $400 on something? It was still a stupid purchase that I totally love and don't regret buying in the slightest. So yeah, if I'd known this would happen on September 5, I probably would have waited. But if I knew when the next-generation iPhone was coming out, I'd probably wait for that too. C'est la vie.

But thanks for your concern, everyone! :)

In other news, I recently also purchased a Winter Park ski pass for this year. Yet another totally stupid purchase that I won't spend one day regretting.

At some point the credit does run out, though.

Coming out of the closet

Not that I'm really in the closet, but I am admitting it publicly now. I'm an iPhone fanboy. They rule. I love mine to a perhaps immoral extent.

However, I do have a few gripes. Just so everyone knows I'm not a complete fanatic. Or something...

• Gripe #1: No bluetooth syncing. Sweet merciful lord Jobs, why the hell can't the iPhone sync over bluetooth!? My MacBook Pro has bluetooth. My iPhone has bluetooth. Turn them both on, and they'll even see each other. But that's as far it gets. Awkward sidelong glances all night, but nobody sacks up and asks the other one to dance. This match made in heaven doesn't even get to first base. That's just... cruel.
• Gripe #2: No multi-recipient SMS messages. OK, this is dumb. My Motorola V220 (huh? exactly.) that I bought 2.5 years ago can do this. The phone I had before that, some black on green screen Nokia job, could do this too. Sending text messages to a whole group of people all at once is just about one of the most convenient things in the universe when you're trying to get a whole mob to descend on the bar for a critical night of drinking, for example. Sigh...
• Gripe #3: No third-party apps. This one ain't gonna last. Mark my words, the iPhone will be opened to third-party apps. It's just a matter of time. It may not be this revision, but it will happen. In a perfect world, Steve Co. would announce that only open source apps are going to be allowed on the iPhone so Apple can scour the source code all they want (and hell, they can even control distribution for all I care). That'd be sweet, but seems pretty unlikely. I've tried some of the web apps that are supposed to be the band-aid for this gaping wound. Some of them (such as the BeeJive IM program) are pretty cool as far as web apps go. But it's still nowhere near the experience you can get from a real, honest-to-goodness native app (especially when you try to use that shit over EDGE, which stands for Slow As Frozen Molasses, somehow).
• Gripe #4: It's a cell phone. OK, so that's not really the gripe. But it is indirectly. AT&T (the new Cingular, the old SBC, the old Southwestern Bell, the old AT&T) is one of the most vile companies in existence. I loathe that my money goes to them every month. This is sort of a meta-gripe, because it leads to all kinds of things I hate. For example, we'll probably never see the ability to make phone calls via WiFi and VoIP because of this satanic soul-selling. Not to mention the whole telecommunications monopoly resurrection thing. Looks like it's back to the bad old days. Thanks pro-corporate Republican administration!

I'll probably come up with more...

And yes, this is a tactic to lower the market value of the iPhone so I can more easily afford to buy the revision 2 one that's coming out right before Christmas with 3G data support!!! OMG!!1!!!one!!!