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I've never before obsessed over a product as much as the iPhone. With expectations so ridiculously high, it would be easy to be at least a little disappointed, but I'm not. The iPhone truly is a thing of wonder. I like that if I have a spare minute somewhere, I can easily listen to a song, or watch a video. Perhaps one of the most amazingly beneficial features is the built-in speaker. I'm not going to carry around my earbuds with me everywhere on the off chance that I'll get an opportunity for some extended music listening. The fact that I can watch a TV show, or video podcast anywhere is great. Moreover, I can share the experience with others nearby. For such a small speaker, it's remarkably powerful, especially if you cup your hand and direct the sound towards yourself.

And then there's the internet. Much has been said of the EDGE network. No, it's not very fast, but in my experience, it's absolutely usable, and I can understand the size/battery tradeoffs involved. I would much rather have a super-thin phone that walked through the internet than a brick that sprints. For my priorities, Apple made the right decision. The browser itself is, of course, fantastic. I really love that I can quickly look up something on Google or IMDB when I'm out and about, or even just on my couch. Also, the widgets are nice to have; I like to keep an eye on Apple's stock price (wishing I had some), and also on the weather.

The decision to use glass for the screen was pure brilliance. As soon as I take it out of my pocket to show people, they always ask, "Don't you have a case for it?" I love to take my keys and rub them across the surface to the shock of my friends and co-workers. It just doesn't scratch. At all. No case necessary.

Slightly more than a year ago, I was in a somewhat similar position. I'd been eyeing Macs with unprecedented tech-lust and could not stop talking or thinking about them. Then I finally got one and the situation in no way improved. I'm passionate about my Mac. I love it and still talk about it all the time. I follow Apple news religiously, and stay on top of every rumor.

I own a first-generation iPod mini. It's silver and hold four gigs of music. I do not carry it around with me. It's a wonderful product, but it's no longer right for me for everyday use. I'm no longer killing time between classes or while doing research in the library.

Of particular importance, I'm fanatical about things in my pockets. Notably, I hate to have things in them. I hate to feel my keys against my leg; it bothers me. When I go to work, I leave my phone in my car and my keys in my locker (which, incidentally, I don't lock).

My music library is, at present, slightly more than 5 gigs, and growing. I also have a few gigs of TV shows, video podcasts, music videos, and the such. My poor mini can't even hold all of my music, let alone do anything with my video. I considered getting a red 8 gig iPod nano late last year (an early Christmas present to myself), but persistent rumors of the iPhone persuaded me to wait. The Macworld conference was in January, and there was a good chance the iPhone just might make an appearance.

An iPhone, while perhaps not ideal for many people, is exactly the kind of product I want. Having as few things in my pockets as possible is of crucial importance to me. Furthermore, I want to be able to carry around my iTunes library with me. If I have ten minutes to kill while I get my car's oil changed, I think it would be nice to be able to listen to my music. But that doesn't mean I'm willing to carry around an iPod with me at all times, just in case I get the chance to listen to it. It's a given that I'm going to have my phone with me, and I'm resigned to carrying it around whenever I'm out. The ability to combine the two devices into one is, for me, a monumental advantage.

Of course there's also the fact that the iPhone is absolutely amazing. It's ludicrously thin (again, crucial for me), sexy, and powerful. It's a phone I can be proud to set on the table at a restaurant. (You didn't think I'd leave it in my pocket, did you?) Moreover, I can really appreciate most of its features. The ability to carry around all of my photos (with a screen that can actually show them off), so that I can instantly show somebody pictures of my dog or makeshift raft? Brilliant. Built-in Google Maps with satellite images? Where were you when I got lost in downtown Dallas back in January? A really real web browser so I can look up inane facts on the go? Truly a blessing.

Admittedly there are some features I'm less concerned with. Visual Voicemail? I realize this is incredibly beneficial feature for some people, but I average substantially fewer than one voicemail per month. It's a non-issue for me. Email? This one is so-so. I more or less never email anybody, and only my grandmother emails me. As a tool for person-to-person communication, email is totally irrelevant to my life, but I do still get plenty of emails I want. If someone sends me a message on MySpace (a site which while I mostly hate, I still, of course, use), I get an email notification. Invariably, I could get by with waiting until I got home to see the message; unlike some people I don't go through MySpace withdrawals after half and hour. However, if I'm bored, I can see myself checking my email.

And then there's text messaging. A few years ago, texting was already big in the rest of the developed world, but hadn't really caught on here in the US. I was really into the idea of it, but I didn't really have anybody to text with, because none of my friends were into it yet. I had AT&T Wireless back then, and text messages were free to receive and 10 cents to send. I signed up for text alerts from Yahoo! and stayed on top of breaking news throughout the day. But then Cingular bought AT&T Wireless. When I upgraded to a new phone and signed a new contract, I lost those free incoming texts. Every message cost 10 cents, or you could buy a text plan. In the end, I basically just gave up on texting. What can I say? I'm (selectively) cheap.

Things are different now. My friends and coworkers text like crazy. I participate only lightly, a few messages here and there. At the new 15 cent rate, I still average less than $1 a month on texts. But I'm ready for a change. Just as I'm resigned to carrying a phone in my pocket everywhere I go (except for while at work), I'm already resigned to paying substantially more every month for my cell phone bill. If I'm going to get a fancy phone with great support for texting and the internet, then I'm going to use it; damn the cost.

And back to my obsession. I talk about the iPhone constantly. Every single day. I listen for the slightest hint of a rumor about a new feature, service pricing, and the launch day. Everybody I know knows that I want one and plan on getting it the morning it comes out. A few days ago the month changed to June. "Do you know what month it is?" I asked people. "Um, June." "Do you know what comes out later this month?" "Oh yeah, that phone you keep talking about." It's almost verbatim.

Steve Jobs' Macworld keynote, in which he introduced the iPhone was not made available as a live, streaming video, but I followed along at two sites that had live updates with quotes, facts, and pictures. Then, a short while later, the video was put online. I downloaded it and have watched it again and again, sometimes just looking at my favorite parts. Surely this can't be healthy, but I just want it so badly. The wait is killing me.

Finally, this evening, a new revelation: June 29. Apple finally announced a launch day, and they did it with three new TV ads, all of which are good, and two of which I really like a lot. I'm not so much into the calamari ad, probably in large part because I don't eat seafood. "Never Been an iPod" is the best one, I think. I like the flow; it makes me not want the ad to end (that, and the pleasant music, used in all three).

And so ends what is unfortunately merely a partial exposition as to the extent of my iPhone obsession.

Mac users are known for being a bit, well, fanatical. I'll admit that back in the day, I bashed Macs for a hideous OS, but those were the days before OS X. I never really gave much thought to Macs until fairly recently.

In March of 2004 I got a new Sony Vaio notebook computer, and I was thrilled with it. True, it was a bit heavy (7.3 lb.*), and battery life was nothing to write home about, but it had a 15.4" screen and a reasonably powerful desktop processor (2.8 GHz P4). Back in those days, I was living at home with my parents and going to UT Tyler. We still couldn't get DSL at home (the dreaded "last mile" problem, which in our case was like 5 miles), so I would occasionally bring my Vaio with me to school and use the freely available wifi, especially when I wanted to download anything big.

Seduced by broadband, I downloaded iTunes and bought my first song, Britney Spears's "Toxic." But what does iTunes desperately want to sync with? An iPod of course, and so that fall, I bought a 4 GB silver iPod mini. Oh glory be! Using iTunes was a breeze, and a huge improvement over Windows Media Player. Indeed, everything "just worked." But you know what iTunes and an iPod really want? That's right, a Mac. Sure, a Vaio looks inestimably cooler than before with an iPod plugged into one of its USB ports, but when you plug an iPod into a Mac, you get the synergy of sexiness.

I had long admired Apple's website, a marvel of clean and thoughtful design. I began to spend a little more time there.

I think the breaking point was the introduction of the iPod nano. No, I didn't buy one, and am still using my two year old mini, but I did watch Steve Jobs introduce it in his keynote address. The man is a marketing genius. When he pulled that "impossibly small" nano out of his coin pocket! I had already read about it and seen it on Apple's site, but the showmanship was just incredible. I started watching the other keynotes available on Apple's site.

But the Apple bug still hadn't truly bitten me yet. Perhaps I had ventured a little further into the forest than planned, but I could still see the forest edge, and world of Windows in which I had been raised. Then I watched the introduction of the new Intel iMac, with the built in iSight cam, FrontRow, and the remote control. That was pretty sweet, but I'm a notebook kind of guy. I want to take my computer with me, even if it's just to my living room.

Then came the announcement of the MacBook Pro. Hmm. Notebooks just don't get sexier than that. I think it was at this point that I decided my next computer would be a Mac. I figured that day was still safely off in the future. I certainly couldn't afford (or justify) a computer that starts at $1,999. And besides, I still had a quite capable computer. Sure it was two years old, and maybe it had a bit of a heft, but the specs were still quite acceptable.

Regardless, I started to research OS X more in depth. I spent hours at a time on Apple's site. I read and re-read about features. I watched video clips and demonstrations. Every time I discovered a cool new feature I excitedly told my brother about it, who showed no interest. In the first few months of this year I subjected him to hours and hours of Mac trivia, tips, and features.

Suddenly the rumor sites were discussing the successor to the iBook, presumably called simply "MacBook." The speculation still pointed to something a little out of my reach, financially. Apple surely wouldn't want to cannibalize sales of the MacBook Pro, and there's no way I'm ever going to buy a bottom-of-the-line machine, even if it is on a higher level. But then, quietly, in a press release of all things, Apple introduced the MacBook, on a Tuesday. The prices were about what I expected but the specs were much higher. On the same day, they also bumped up the specs on the MacBook Pro. Still, the MacBook represented an amazing value.

On that Thursday, I finally talked myself into buying one (with a little cajoling by my brother, who knew I wouldn't shut up until I had one). And now I'm the proud owner of a 2 GHz Core Duo MacBook with 1 GB RAM and an 80 GB hard drive.

But where's the zealotry? At work. My brother wasn't the only one to hear me raving incessantly. Poor coworkers heard about (almost) every feature and rumor too. I talked at length about Macs, and that was before I had one. When I finally ordered mine, I made sure everybody knew. Then was the glorious day that it came! I had even more to talk about.

All Macs come with Apple stickers. I've now got their logo plastered on my car's back glass. I still, months later, talk about my Mac all the time. Today I decided to contribute to our break room's aged supply of magazines. What did I bring? MacWorld of course (in addition to a Nintendo Power among others). While eating my lunch today at the break room table, I evangelized faithfully: "Vista? Tiger's already better than Vista will be, whenever it finally comes out, by which time Leopard will be out, which is even more advanced than Tiger." That sentence then required a couple of minutes of explanation. It seems not everybody knows the big cat nomenclature of OS X like I do.

* In the second paragraph of this post I said my Vaio weighed 7.3 lb. On my MacBook, I have a PDF of the spec sheet for my Vaio (don't ask why). Using Spotlight, I was able to immediately pull up that spec sheet to find the exact weight.

I'm excited, nervous, nauseated, giddy, and impatient. For months I've been talking about wanting a Mac. I've thought about it constantly. I've salivated over them; I've spent countless hours reading about them, looking at pictures, watching Steve Jobs's keynote addresses. I've talked about them to all of my co-workers. I've told friends about the latest releases (and there have been many with the move to Intel processors). My brother, poor Chad, has had to listem to me incessantly for these past several months. I've been telling him about them literally every single day. I tell him features, keyboard shortcuts, technical specifications; I've gone mad. He's long been a Mac-basher, but he's been telling me lately to just buy it. Though I think it's mainly to get me to shut up, I think he's intrigued.

I've had to wait, however. The first of the new line was the iMac, but I definitely want a notebook computer. Having acquired my current computer March '04 (a Sony Vaio), I can't imagine going back to the stationary detention of a desktop. I like to be online in the living room, on the porch, or in my bed, not to mention the ability to take my computer with me to places. This, incidentally, brings up another problem: my current computer is not in need of replacement. Indeed, it has a 2.8GHz Pentium 4 and, as a Christmas present, was upgraded to a gig of RAM. Those stats mean it's still more powerful than most notebooks advertised today. How can I justify a new computer purchase when my current one is so capable? It's hard, but OS X is vastly superior, and Macs are gorgeous.

So a few months ago Apple comes out with the MacBook Pro. Alas, it starts at $1,999. There is absolutely no way I can justify that. And so I waited. If that's the Pro, where's the regular MacBook? Why it came out on Tuesday. Rumors had abounded in the last couple of weeks about it. The announcement was a dream come true. The MacBook was better priced and had higher specs than I expected. Suddenly there was a configuration available that I could actually afford, sort of anyway.

And so, I finally relented. The process itself took quite a while. I added it to my cart hours ago, then saved the cart. Half an hour ago I logged into my bank account and looked over my funds again. Then I pulled up the cart again, and re-confirmed the selection. Apple already has my credit card # from my iTunes account. As confirmation, I had to put in my security code from my card, so I put it in, and shut my computer's lid. Then a couple of minutes later, I opened it back up. I still wasn't totally commited to buying it. I moved the cursor over the "Place Order" button, then waited some more. Finally I pressed it. AHHH! A full re-telling of this story must be done in person to accurately convey my hyperventilation, shakiness, and generally shock. That's a lot of money. A lot.

Anyway, here is what I actually bought, copied directly from my order confirmation page:

MacBook 2.0GHz Intel Core Duo - White
Part Number: Z0D5
SuperDrive (DVD±RW/CD-RW)
Keyboard/Mac OS - U.S. English
2.0GHz Intel Core Duo
80GB Serial ATA drive
1GB 667 DDR2 SDRAM - 2x512

I chose to upgrade the RAM to one gig (anything less is absurd) and also decided to upgrade the hard drive to 80 gigs from 60. My current computer has 40 and I've determined that to be hopelessly inadequate.

Apple has created a new ad campaign that replaces its "Switch" campaign. Now they have commercials with Justin Long (Jeepers Creepers, Dodgeball, and Herbie: Fully Loaded) and some guy who looks vaguely like Bill Gates. The campaign site, apple.com/getamac lists 14 reasons to get a mac, plus has another six pages that cover possible concerns, such as compatibility. You can also watch the six TV commercials (in gorgeous QuickTime, of course).

I want a Mac so badly. I think this is a well-done campaign and if I weren't already a convert-to-be (pending $$$), this would make me one. As it is, I've begun spending an inordinate amount of time thinking about Macs. I talk about them all the time; I read about them all the time. Can owning one live up to my expectations? I think so.

Alas, Apple products always carry a premium. Are they worth it? Absolutely. Does that mean I can afford them? Sadly no. I would love to have a new 15.4" MacBook Pro with a 2 GHz Intel Core Duo processor. Do I have $2,500 to spend on something I don't need? Not on my salary.

The good news is school is almost out. That means it's time for back to school stuff to start coming out. This certainly includes an Intel-powered successor to the iBook, presumably called simply the MacBook. If I could get a 14" model with a Core Duo processor at, say, 1.66 GHz for only $1,499, I might actually be able to afford that.

My biggest problem is that I don't actually need a new computer. I've already got a Sony Vaio notebook computer that's barely more than two years old. It has a 2.8 GHz Pentium 4 and a gig of RAM. It's not quite "bleeding edge" but I think it's at least a paper-cut worth of blood. It's hard to justify a new computer purchase when my current one is just fine (at least by PC standards). In short, I'll have to run into some serious bank if I'm going to be getting a Mac this year.

As an added bonus, I should point out that Apple has used the phrase "Get a Mac" before. It's the title of this 1995 commercial, which is pretty funny: live.watchmactv.com/?p=60