Lori Newton twittered or tweeted about having iPhone craving as being irrational. I can understand the craving but it is not irrational.
When the iPhone appeared last July in Canada it was a foregone conclusion that I was going to get one. It was getting painful carrying the iPod Touch and the Motorola cell phone at all times and having to use the two devices to do some simple things. The question that loomed is how would this device help the credit union I worked for? We are a Mac credit union and it was pretty clear that it would fit in well with what we were already doing. So all of the staff, that means everyone, got an iPhone. I didn’t realize then that it would be an exceptional fit. It was one of the better decisions we have made. As part of the compensation for working for the credit union the only charge would be to pay for those services that you use outside of work i.e. data roaming when in Europe, ouch.
What have we learnt? Well first of all anyone that has left the credit union wants to keep the iPhone and have the service transferred to themselves personally. When I have asked the person what they wanted to do there was no hesitation in stating they were keeping the iPhone. People really like this device and have found so many pragmatic uses for it. It is addicting. Secondly this device has given us an unbelievable opportunity for communication amongst ourselves 24/7. We have the ability to easily, and that point must be stressed, easily, call or email or SMS each other. No one finds a simple SMS an intrusion to get an update on some pending manner. A telephone call can be viewed very differently. Sometimes a call is just a plain pain in the neck. The synching of your contact information with your desktop adds another easy solution of finding the number to call and knowing who has called you. Having something this small and connected to the Internet either by wifi or 3G is another huge plus. By the way our plans included data transfer maximums. No one has come close to their data limits. Why? A lot of the time you can connect via wifi, much more than you think. But watch out when traveling, it gets unbelievably expensive to use American or European networks. There seems to be more apps than one can imagine so if there is something specific you probably will be able to find it in the App Store.
One hears about Apple fanboys and the zealous cult following this company has. I wouldn’t put my view of Apple in those terms. It would be summed up in something simple like ‘a happy customer’. In today’s marketplace with so much lipservice for product and service it feels pretty good to just be happy about something you use all the time. Try the poll.
Tinfoiling 
I’ve been using Apple products since before Macintosh. (My friend up the street had an Apple II that we played Wizardry on.)
Indeed, I don’t love Apple because of any slavish cult-following tendencies. I love Apple because they keep making best-in-class, game-changing products. Products that are easy to use, and are, for the most-part, crash-free. Products that let me focus on my work (computers and laptops), or my music (iPod), or just let me live my life untethered (iPhone). All of these products absolutely rock my socks.
With this history of solid, easy-to-use, revolutionary products, is it any wonder we get excited about the company and what it has in store for us next?