apple

I'm eagerly awaiting the arrival of my newly minted, custom-ordered MacBook Pro. The thing's been built in China and scanned by UPS, but little other info is available to me. My, er, obsessive tendencies of course led me to investigate the possible arrival path of the new machine in frightening detail, as can only be had on the web. For your perusal:

So I have chips missing from the edge near the mouse pad, and as I have AppleCare coverage I can get this fixed for free. I took it into Mac Station and they said the following:

• they need my macBook to order the part, because
• they need to order the part from Apple

Dear faithful readers ( all 3 of you ),

I am ashamed to admit I still do not have an iPhone. It is, as they say, 'in the mail'; I am not strong enough in the Force to endure the gauntlet as Travis did. I can however affirm every last indignity suffered by the fools who lined up at the Rogers Plus store at Broadway and Arbutus to maybe get a phone, at least those I experienced prior to leaving at 9am. A brief synopsis of my own experience:

I finally got around to calling Rogers and seeing what my options were for an iPhone plan. The call of course was largely spurred on by the jaw-dropping shocker news that Rogers was offering a 6GB data option for iphone bought this summer for $30/month:

Continuing on with this week's impromptu blog revival and series of posts about why I'm going to get a 3G iPhone this week, I thought I'd take a closer look at the alternatives to my potentially foolish decision to run squealing like a little fat kid after an ice cream truck on the hottest day of the year into the arms of not just Steve Jobs, but Ted Rogers as well.

So what other options are there? Let's look.

1. "You've got the touch!"

In which I discuss why I'm going to get a 3G iPhone on Friday ( or soon after ), and somehow try to still feel good about myself.

In preparation for the big day, I've been doing some research, crunching some numbers, comparing this and that, and generally trying to rationalize the purchase to myself and my fiancee. It's a whole lot of reading fine print gibberish and boring spreadsheet work, so I won't get into details, but I do have a conclusion.

When I see things like this, it is clear to me how different the iPhone is from any other 'smart phone':

Some background: I am currently a Roger's customer, but am out of contract and ( being a mostly-enthusiastic Mac user ) have been looking forward to seeing a legit iPhone in Canada. Even though I signed the Ruined iPhone petition, I'm probably still going to get one this Friday, but more on that later.