InnoWiser

Tomorrow’s Friday the 11th. Nothing too significant about it, except it means it’s time to open up the wallet to the fine folks at Apple. Having already plonked down a couple of grand on a new Mac laptop, I am totally in the zone - the so-called "reality distortion field" whose rays are close enough at the local Apple store in Clarendon.

I am in the market for a smart, chic, mobile-web capable phone, and having held out for so long for the faster version of the iPhone, I think I will hold out just a little bit more. Not for me the midnight vigils, shivering in the cold, as some of the NZ folks did [via Kedrosky ]. Not for me the early adoption of iPhone 1.0 and the subsequent post-purchase dissonance anger at the $200 price drop. I like my hardware tried and tested, though I’m game for early software.

So.. as a result, I will not be in the line for iPhone tomorrow. However, I just might be in the store on the weekend. Let’s see the likes and dislikes.

Likes: Faster, cheaper, better. Lots of software. The AppStore is already open and folks have already downloaded, ahead of the release of the phone itself, plenty of games and applications. Super Monkey Ball? Hmm. Maybe worth buying. Facebook mobile and Google Mail? Definitely.

Dislikes: Total Cost of Ownership. Let’s see how this stacks up.

Phone: $300 (I like the 16 GB model)

AT&T Plan: an extra $30 for data (that’s 10 bucks/month more than iPhone 1.0)

Text PlN: $5 (for a paltry 200 texts), to $20 for unlimited. This is, as others have pointed out, an extortion, in which all carriers are quite happy to participate. At 20 cents/text, up from 15 cents/text, this would amount to almost $1500/Megabyte . Yikes!

In the US, texting has caught up in the last 2-3 years. And there is little alternative if you maintain a really mobile lifestyle. Which is why carriers have upped the prices in the past 2 years. Let’s hope some new apps will reduce the burden of (vastly expensive and inefficient) texting.

Total operational cost: $1,080/ year, not including taxes.

Here is more on what the iPhone will cost.