Me, Simpsonized!

Peggle Grand Master

That's right.... Grand Master. Love that game!!

iPhone iN iHand

Geekin' out with the iPhone. That's me, holding an iPhone in an Apple store unaware that Eric was taking this pic with another display iPhone. Pretty decent pic, I didn't alter the colors or contrast prior to uploading it. Actually I didn't realize he took the shot until I checked my gmail and saw a message from "John Appleseed." All gushing aside, how cool is it that they let you use every aspect of it to take pics, send them via email, make calls and send text messages, all with demo units. Apple just does so many things right these days.
Now, anyone that knows me knows that I've been a DOS/Windows guy for all of my life... I just have simply never been exposed to any Apples at all, either in schools or in my professional life. And being a WinGuy, I have jumped on that wagon of giggling at the Mac fanboys of the world.

A few years ago (sometime in the latter half of 2004), Eric snagged an iPod Mini, when the clickwheel was introduced. Up until that point, I was curious about a media player (I had tons of CD's scattered throughout my car), but couldn't get interested in carrying one of these things around. But when I tried out his, and realized how damn easy it was to navigate with that clickwheel, I was VERY interested. I think at this point I was already using iTunes anyway, because, in my opinion, was the best, intuitive media organizer/player on Windows.
A couple of weeks after I tried his out, Apple announced the 4th Gen iPod, with the clickwheel, and a 20GB (or 40GB) hard drive capacity! I talked myself into getting one a few months later.

Honestly, the thing has changed the way I listen to music, and media in general. I would never have thought that a gadget could do that. But I moved almost all of my CD's to it, created a handful of playlists, downloaded audio books (I have an hour commute each way), and was introduced to podcasts. Now, I literally only listen to terrestrial radio MAYBE less than a half hour a week. When I hear any commercial, I change the station or find something on the iPod now.
So, getting back to the iPhone, from a geek point of view, I was psyched in January when Steve Jobs announced the smartphone/iPod/web browser hybrid device. How could I NOT be? This new gadget even had a completely new way of interfacing with it... after all, it's ALL screen, and you don't use a stylus, but your fingertips.
Granted the cost is so high, and I have a phone (that I made smart, but that's for another blog entry), and my 4G iPod which is only 55% full, and I can't fit all my stuff on the iPhone anyway. So I won't be buying it anytime soon. But I wanted to geek out and see this thing in person, I wanted to try out the interface. Let me say, it really is awesome. I loved it.