It’s been almost five years since I first told my blog readers that I wasn’t going to be buying the first iPhone. Perhaps you remember that post? I put forth my “alternative,” the MyPhone.

In 2008, I again posted that I wouldn’t be buying the iPhone 3G, although I did buy an iPod touch at that time. I updated that post a year later to say that I wouldn’t be buying the iPhone 3Gs.

Since those posts, many things have changed. We’re in a significantly different place, financially, than we were five years ago. I’m no longer as put off by the price of the required data plans as I was back then. The iPhone has become more and more compelling and capable with each release. I’ve upgraded to an iPod touch 3g, and Rebecca got an iPod touch 4g, so iOS has been making itself a part of our lives. Finally, Sprint now supports the iPhone, one of the biggest hurdles, meaning that we could buy it without terminating our contract and with the benefit of the Sprint upgrade discount.

So, today, Rebecca and I bought iPhones* – two iPhone 4S models. Rebecca’s is white, and mine is black, and we’re having a great time learning all of their in and outs, and sending each other silly videos via MMS, and texting with those cool iChat-style bubbles.

iPhone

The iPhone is certainly no longer the hot new thing. At work, nearly everyone in my department has an iPhone. Most of the people I know in Build Guild have one (or if not that, then some sort of Android smartphone). A number of people at church have them. As I think of it, I’m not sure I know of anybody in my family who has one, but there are probably a few. But I’m no longer the guy who is known for getting the hot new technology, and I’m okay with that. If I wanted to buy one just because “everyone else” had one, I would have done that (and spent a ton of money to do it) years ago. Even the iPhone 4S started shipping almost five months ago!

I’m going to go chat with Siri now, but I’ll leave you with Etta James.

*I will say that the process of buying them at the North Shore Mall was a bit of a hassle. We spent a while at the Apple Store, picking out the models we liked and looking at cases, and finally going to talk to a specialist to purchase the phones. But when we got to the activation process, the Sprint activation network was down. So they told us they couldn’t help us, but sent us downstairs to the Sprint store. That should have been quick, but as it turns out, we had some features set up on our Sprint account that they were having trouble removing so that they could convert us to an iPhone-approved account. So they had to make some calls to Sprint service to get that all fixed up, then we went back upstairs to buy the cases we wanted. They were busy at the time, and the lady I talked to had me download the Apple Store app on my new iPhone, and use the Easy Buy feature to buy the cases. But that wasn’t really an “Easy Buy,” because it couldn’t scan the bar code on my case. So one of their people ended up having to do that. And *finally* we had everything. I guess those are the perils of buying a Sprint iPhone? The guy at the Apple Store said that most of their customers are buying AT&T iPhones, so I’m sure they don’t have as much exposure to the Sprint process.