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On this picture you can see the fine example of a superb product wrapping/packaging. Makes you want to keep it…yeah…or to put it in a frame… or to donate it to the local art museum… beautiful…

So it has finally happened. iPhone has arrived. And yes, O2, my new mobile operator screwed up my supposed-to-be-the-happiest-day-in-the-year-of-2008. Doh! In spite of the fact that I made sure to register myself for my new friend the very moment I received an email saying ‘Go! go! go!’, and though the website said ‘yes, your 16G black is still in stock for you’ at that early morning hour, and even though my bank account was credited immediately (thanks guys!), they still failed to deliver it to me on the day of the release. Those were the darkest hours of July 11… Too dark to write about…

The next delivery could only be expected in a week or so, and still that was not the fact. So I mourned for almost two days… And then I found out that Apple store had got plenty of them in stock. The next day I called O2 and told them I did not want iPhone from them anymore, but was going to go down to Apple store and buy it there. And this is exactly what I did.

I made sure to skip my lunch break and thus finished my day earlier. I was in the store at Regent street right after 5 pm. There was a queue of around 15 people on the ground floor, which I joined. After queuing for 45 minutes and already reaching the top of the line I realized that at that point there were already 50 people behind me. I felt lucky. And smart, for coming earlier. At 6pm they stopped taking any more people into the queue, which meant it was going to take up to 3 hours for the last guy in the line before he could actually get his lusted tool of communication.

While moving along the line my heart was being filled with a greater and greater joy. And then I was taken to the top floor and found out there were… another 30 people queuing there, separating me from the Holy of Holiest - IiPhone counter. But the good news was there were chairs for all those impatient consumerists, so the queuing experience just got much better from that point. Luckily I had my laptop with me, so just started answering all the email which were begging for my attention for quite a while. And when I got bored with that I started talking to a gentlemen sitting next to me, who had a Russian name Yuri (actually named after Yuri Gagarin, the first Russian cosmonaut). So, long before we ran out of topics of conversation I was called to the counter. Another half an hour of formalities, credit check, collecting of details and all sort of registrations and finally, it’s here and it is mine! Mission accomplished! Now my life is perfect. My life is complete :)

It’s great, it’s awesome. It changed the way I organize myself, deal with emails and facebook, entertain myself while commuting, search places, navigate in town, traveling, communicating … etc etc etc. Though at the same time it does a fair bit of spoiling me, because now I want more of it: I want copy & paste, I want sync through wi-fi, I want it as a storage space, I want video recording, I want MORE… MORE… MORE… I want it to find me new music I would like, entertain me, talk to me, pay my bills, cook my breakfast, do grocery shopping… Oh… wait…

Yeah, I know what you are going to say… Other phones can do the same things… Yeeees, but it’s not that much about what it does, but rather HOW it does it :) And yes, there ARE things I could whine and complain about, but it is still The Gadget of this year. (It also brought texting back into my life [at this point i am getting quite emotional. Where was my handkerchief?? ] … I hated doing it on a tiny (yes, now it is tiny) Nokia screen with a help of just 10 buttons… I never used more then 5 texts a month out of hundreds available free on my tariff… Ouch. What a waste! …)

And one more thing. The very next day after I told O2 I was getting my iPhone from Apple store, surprise..surprise… I got a text, saying my headset had been dispatched and would arrive the next day. So, basically they were saying, ‘Oh Mr.Skrinda, you know what? We went down to the warehouse and searched it through and oh, wow, we found one more headset right behind those big boxes in the corner! And it’s just like the one you have ordered!” Yeah, right… Sure….

PS. As stupid as it might sound, there was something about queuing there. Something charming. Probably the dedication and excitement of those sitting next to me :) A bunch of morons, you say?