Toys.

When I was a kid I would get excited about some toy. I would project all kinds of things on it. I would get super excited about it, and then I would get it and have heart breaking disappointment. It's a life lesson I guess.

This is why I am really reluctant to buy myself anything that would disappoint me at that level. So I would be envious of other people's toys and live with it, trusting that the grass wasn't really greener on the other side of the fence.

We had one of those RIO MP3 players a while back, it held the equivalent of a cassette tape, it was a real pain to manage music and it was pretty expensive for what you got. I bought it during a lapse in my usual anti-gadget stance. The RIO reinforced the resolve to not buy potentially disappointing gadgets, no matter how good they looked. When the iPod came along I was deep into that zone, nothing could shake me from buying a new music gadget. Yet seeing how other people were really happy with their iPods, wore away at that resolve. Instead of buying one for myself I bought one for Leigh. That way I could get a gadget, and avoid the personal disappointment. She loved it. After that I broke down and bought myself one, along with a laptop, a mac laptop. That purchase created a drastic change in how we do things around here. I use the iPod all the time, it's amazing, I listen to pod casts and tons of music, I work out with it, I ride the bus with it, I walk with it, I work with it. It's my pal. The laptop is our mobile information center, dvd player, music store, development tool (me programming and such, Leigh writing and such), and more. It was also our second computer, which opened things up for us also.

I was really primed for the iPhone. I knew it was going to be great, because the two other Apple products I owned were also great and everyone around me was falling for them. But my suspicion for the hype was still there. I was way over excited about it, it could never measure up to my own hype. It took a while before I was pretty sure it was going to be great. So I recently took the leap and bought two one for me and Leigh. We've been playing with it for a while and I'm really astounded how it fulfills my expectations so well. Leigh is pretty well inoculated against gadgetitis and she loves it, that tells me that it's awesome.

It's beautiful, and I'm glad I have one.