iPhone 3.0 Slouching Toward the Web

CIO — "And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?" - The Second Coming, William Butler Yeats

Ah, summer in San Francisco: I'm strolling down Market Street toward the Apple Store a few blocks away to pick up my first ever iPhone. I'd whistle, if I could. Never one to bask in the warm rays of ignorance, I decided to guess at the hit on my credit card: There's the iPhone plus accessories and taxes, AT&T's service, MobileMe, and surely a charge for dumping T-Mobile before my contract is up.

Still two blocks away, I fired up my iPod Touch (which I plan to give to a friend) and read a Bloomberg story I'd downloaded yesterday. The story was about the very real possibility that the New York Times will charge mobile readers using an iPhone to access content. Then I recalled a tweet from @Pogue about two new iPhone apps offering turn-by-turn GPS services for $10 a month.

Suddenly, Market Street seemed a whole lot busier.

[ For tech vendors across all sorts of industries and markets, the iPhone has become a market changer overnight, reports CIO. ]

I took a hard left on Second Street and ducked into a Starbucks to clear my head. Apple had sold a million iPhone 3GS units over the weekend. People across the country stood in line for hours to spend $300 during one of the worst economies in recent history. I could almost hear the Apple fan drumbeat heralding the coming of Steve Jobs later this month, when the great visionary returns after undergoing a liver transplant in a Tennessee hospital. And now this iPhone 3GS is shaking up markets around the world.

This was tech history happening right now. I just had to be a part of it, so I double-timed the last two blocks—running smack into the waiting line for the iPhone 3GS. A friendly Apple guy gave me a black umbrella for shade, and a pigeon promptly bombed it. Yet not even a stupid pigeon could dampen my enthusiasm.

We watched in earnest a recurring rite of passage: The Apple salesperson in a light-blue shirt emerging from the Apple store to escort the next customer inside the iPhone 3GS sales area—roped off like some A-list Hollywood restaurant. The salesperson shakes their hand and asks, a little too wryly, "Are you ready?" Like a new parent, the soon-to-be-owner of an iPhone 3GS beams and nods. After waiting nearly two hours in line, I beamed and nodded, too.

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