iPhone 3.0 Slouching Toward the Web

26.06.2009
"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 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 in a Tennessee hospital. And now this iPhone 3GS is shaking up markets around the world.