It all started Saturday night when I was on Tweetie, an iPhone app for Twitter. After trying to post, my home button on my iPhone wouldnt take me “home”. I pushed the home button repeatedly and nothing. Tweetie is still on my screen – not frozen mine you, it moved around and functioned fine. iPhone just had no interest in taking me to my home screen to perform other basic iPhone functions, such as a phone call. I restart my poor little iPhone thinking maybe he just needs a quick nap to recharge himself. After the short nap, I turn the iPhone back on to reveal a black screen with a picture of the iTunes symbol and the white cord below it – commutating me I need to plug iPhone into my iTunes. WHAT IS GOING ON freak out is slowly taking over me at this point. I promptly get Chaz out to connect iPhone to iTunes and pop open iChat to see if my brother or Jason happens to be online – my go to Mac guys cause really if I was completely honest, Mac stuff still confuses me. A lot. Thankfully, Kenny, my Apple Genius of a brother is on-line and its very nicely coaching me through this process. I have to return my iPhone to factory settings. I have done this with my mini iPod before, so this isnt too scary to me (after I triple check with Kenny that I will still in fact get my personal stuff back). I do this three times before my iPhone catches on and reloads itself. I unplug iPhone from Chaz and think all is good, I did what the little pictures told me to do. BUT WAIT! My home button is still not taking me home. Kenny said he couldnt help me without being on my side of the coastal line so take it into the Apple Genius Bar. I go to apple.com and get myself a little appointment between churches.

I figured out between Saturday night that my Sunday afternoon appointment that everything seemed to be working fine on the iPhone cept for the home button – so I could say go text someone, but if I then wanted to check my email I would have to shut iPhone off to get to that function, and so on for each different application I felt like using. Lovely, right? Oh and then, Jason called me, and I could hear him just fine but he couldnt hear me. Great. Everything on my phone is working fine except for my phone part! Mr. Genius told me to fix my iPhone it would be $200, which is a cost of a new 3G phone. I was sad of course at this news. I love my iPhone. It had been so good to me and really, this is the first real major problem any of my Apple products have given me. Jason and I talked about it and he thought I best wait till June when there is a strong chance that they’d release a new iPhone instead of buying a 3G. Which by the way, I held a 3G in the store and I didnt even get excited about it. I didnt like the thing. I know most dont see the difference, but there really is (theres the little bit of geek in my shinning through in that comment). But the idea of having a “normal” AT&T cell phone till June…. I dont know how to explain it other than this: do not get an iPhone unless you are ready to never go back a normal phone ever again. I say this as someone who never saw a need for an iPhone. Jason talked all about it when he was a MacWorld when they announced it. Willing to break his current Verizon contract to make it happen. I didnt know what to do with all the crazy talk but got him to wait till our contracts where up to get them. Yes, I know I will live not having all my networking at my finger tips for a month. Just understand, when you are used to that, its hard to let go of it. Im also one who doesnt mind keeping her phone in the other room and forgetting about it for hours. I may really like this time of lack of technology.

But then I sent my brother a whiney IM: “Poor dying iPhone!” Kenny promptly asks me what color of tee the Genius was wearing, rich blue, which apparently is a real Genius (why would they let nonreal Genius behind here I wanted to ask). He told me that he understands my woes by saying he would swap out my dying phone with the same generation of iPhone for me until June. So really, I dont have to use the very nice AT&T phone that my friend loaned me for a whole month because my brother understands that once you have an iPhone, there really is no going back. This sad story isnt just to tell you how I can not live without my iPhone (I could of!). Just to warn the rest of you noniPhone users – do not get one unless you are ready to never go back. And that I still love Apple, even they are over my head most of the time.