Bless The Early Adopters

Eager customers finally get iPhones (AP):

AP - Brandon Saunders, 16, had been saving his allowance and birthday money for months to get one of Apple Inc.'s coveted iPhones. He waited in line with his 70-year-old grandmother for about eight hours Friday in front of a San Antonio AT&T store and left sunburned but grinning, shopping bag in hand. "It's worth it," he said. "It's like Christmas in June."

It truly is.  And in the spirit of the season, I'd like to take this moment to thank the folks who ran out today and bought an iPhone, helping finance Apple's development of the inevitable second-generation iPhone—the one I will wait to buy.

Not that iPhone 1.0 isn't fairly compelling.  I sat through the video tours on Apple.com, last night, and unsurprisingly, given Apple's marketing genius, was seized by gadget desire.  But for me, the deal killer on the initial release is memory capacity.  I listen to a lot of podcasts, and a lot of music, and 8 MB is just not enough room for portability happiness.  For $600 bucks,  I expect my entire library on board.  Factor in the footprint of the TV shows or movies required to make that beautiful screen shine, and here is me, waiting for flash memory to further encheapen.  Show me a 32 GB iPhone sometime down the road, and we can talk about it.

But I'll still be plenty jealous if my boss managed to snap one of these up, as planned.