So, I stood in line with about 100 other people outside my local AT&T store just under a week ago, in order to be one of the first to get my hands on the 3G iPhone. It was hot, and we were lined up down the side of the building in which the AT&T store is housed, which had a bright white wall, nicely reflecting all that heat back onto the waiting hordes, causing a nice sunburn and considerable discomfort. But, in the end, I got one, and almost the model I wanted - they ran out of black 16GB models just before I got inside, so I got a white one instead.

So was it all worth it? Well, as one man standing behind me in the line (possibly a Rabbi - in the center of the picture below) said:

You have to do something insane once in your life!

And that was more or less my opinion too - I don’t often stand in line for these things, but once in a while you want to be part of something like this. I sat out the first round - no 3G, stuck on a Verizon contract, don’t buy version 1 of anything and so on - but wasn’t going to do the same this time around.

I love the device. It’s a fantastic experience, and certainly the most fun I’ve ever had with a new phone. To date, I’ve downloaded and installed 23 applications, requiring four home screens altogether on the device (I have a separate one for web clips). I did have activation problems on the first day, along with everyone else, although they were relatively minor and solved by the evening.

I’ve read a lot of articles denigrating the iPhone in pretty strong terms over the past few days - two examples. The thing that strikes me about these articles is that they seem to assume that the iPhone is taking over the world. The Lifehacker article is titled, “Why You’re Better Off Avoiding the iPhone” and the other suggested the iPhone is going to kill the Internet.

Let’s tone that done a bit, shall we? For starters, Apple sold a total of 1 million phones in the first weekend and has since been largely sold out. Compare that with Nokia, which sells more devices than that every single day of the year, and you are quickly reminded that Apple does not dominate the mobile device market (or even the smartphone segment). Secondly, no-one is being forced to buy an iPhone - you have a choice about buying it as you do with every other device out there - and as a consumer you will weigh the pros and cons as you would with every other device. If you don’t like the relatively “closed” ecosystem and approach to applications, you don’t have to buy the phone. But, if you want the design, interface, web browsing, ease of use and so on and think the closed application environment is a small price to pay, then you’ll want to buy it anyway.

The most alarmist and hostile stuff I’ve read comes from the Free Software Foundation, which seems to have a definition of “free” which is much narrower than most people’s would be. But again, it seems to somehow assume that Apple has some kind of monopoly and that everyone is somehow tied into the Apple model whether they want to be or not. The Apple DRM approach in particular has come in for a lot of criticism, which is funny since it’s done at the behest of the record companies rather than any particular agenda Apple has. In order to secure for itself a strong position in online music sales, it acceded to the requests of the record companies to provide adequate copyright protection for their music. As the record companies have become more enlightened in their approach, Apple has begun releasing music in non-protected formats. But again, you have a choice - Amazon, Rhapsody, Napster and plenty of others offer alternative models for purchasing digital music online, and files bought from all those companies will play on iPods and iPhones.

Overall, I think Apple is adding a lot more to the mobile industry than it is taking away, and on a personal level I love the device and especially the ease of use of the device itself and the process of adding applications and media to it. It may not be everyone’s cup of tea - the FSF recommends the Free Runner, which strikes me as being an utterly uninspired (and uninspiring) device. But whatever floats your boat - and that’s the real point here: you have a choice. Stop moaning about the way Apple does things, and find a company that does things the way you like, and buy their stuff instead.