un-early adopter

I’ve just returned home with what is, for me, a new toy: an iPhone. And I’m still pretty clueless about how to use it, though that ought to change quickly. (I’m making this post from a laptop, not from the iPhone. Give me a few days on that.)

Although in theoretical terms I am a great supporter of new technologies and media, in practice I tend to be cautious and dilatory about adopting them for myself. I tend to be immediately excited about new devices, but then to wait and observe cautiously for a couple of years as everyone else figures out the kinks and feeds back advice. I believe the iPhone was launched by Steve Jobs in January 2007. I’ve been pestered to get one ever since by my youngest brother, who is an iPhone consultant for a living, ran Obama’s whole iPhone operation during the campaign, and so forth. So it’s almost a family business, and that was the final factor that made me replace my sadly broken Blackberry with an iPhone rather than with another Blackberry.

The only new technology I purchased immediately, as fast as humanly possible, was an iMac in ’97 or ’98 or whenever that was. (But I’d been a Mac user for years before that and so it wasn’t like adopting something completely new.)

I loved those first iMacs, even though someone really hit the mark when they called the iMac “Barbie’s Computer.” That really is what they looked like.

My color was Bondi Blue.