Today’s the day everybody’s been waiting for! Yup, we’re little more that twelve hours away from the release of Apple’s new iPhone! Some are queueing up for them already, some will be ordering online, and others yet are prepping to rejoice over the impending flop.

I highly doubt the iPhone will be a flop. Yes, I love Apple’s products (a lot) and, honestly, I’ve been loving them more and more recently, even with the occasional intentional limitations that Apple builds in so that they “just work” (which the iPhone seems will have many). The more things “just work” the easier my life is and the iPhone looks to be one of those things that “just works”.

Oh, and yes, I’ve been reading all the articles, all the FAQs, and watching all the videos (these ones as well), and generally drooling over the iPhone. It looks beautiful, functional, and, most importantly, extremely intuitive.

I want one! Hell, everyone I know wants one.

I Live in the Boonies

Unfortunately, while everyone else is trying to get out of their cell phone contracts so they can get an iPhone, I can’t get one. At all. Trust me, I’ve tried to figure out a reasonable way.

You see, I live in the beautiful state of Vermont and while AT&T, which has an exclusive on the iPhone, covers most of our state, they only do so by partnering with existing in-state GSM carriers (e.g. Unicel). If you go to their Coverage Viewer and enter “VT” for the state (no other address data required), you’ll see what I mean.

Then zoom out a little and look at the surrounding states. Hmm, we’ve probably got a better coverage percentage than Maine, New York, and Pennsylvania¹, in general, but they’ve all got that deep-orange color in them (meaning they have a true AT&T network). We don’t.

That’s okay, I can always go buy it out-of-state and just “move” back home and keep using it, right? Well, unfortunately, as a couple of my coworkers have found out, they cancel your contract after a few months because you’re always roaming. Oh, right, “mov[ing] to the boonies” was one of the ways to try to get out of your contract for just that reason.

But I don’t want to get out of my contract, I want to keep it and use the iPhone. But, it wouldn’t be so bad if I lost my contract right? I mean I could still use iPhone as the coolest iPod ever and an awesome portable browser, right? Oh right, that was in David Pogue’s FAQ:

Do I need an AT&T account? Yes. The iPhone won’t work at all without a two-year AT&T voice-plus-Internet plan (and no, you can’t use it as just an iPod, no matter how tempting the bigger screen and longer battery life is).

Now, he doesn’t specifically say what happens when your contract expires (forcibly or naturally), but trying and finding out doesn’t exactly seem to fall in the “reasonable” category for me.

Ooh, but I could just get a Unicel contract & phone (as much as their pricing sucks) and pop the SIM card into my iPhone, right? Actually, I didn’t even think that one would work, and it won’t. Sure, eventually someone may figure out a way to unlock the iPhone, but it’s risky, the setup isn’t going to be smooth, I’ll lose visual voicemail, probably the EDGE support (as slow as it may be), and it’s going to cost me a lot more to set up and use. Nope, that doesn’t qualify as “reasonable” at all.

Uh oh, this doesn’t bode well for me, nor the rest of Vermont’s residents. Well that’s definitely disappointing, and Don agrees, as well².

I guess I’ll just have to wait until AT&T comes to Vermont. Hopefully it’ll be a shorter wait than that of our friends to the North or those over in Europe.

Always Look On the Bright Side of Life

However, today’s a day I’ve been looking forward to for the release of another Steve Jobs-related (in a way) masterpiece anyway! Pixar’s Ratatouille is opening today!

Honestly, I would have had a hard time deciding which to wait in line for… an iPhone or Ratatouille, Ratatouille or an iPhone. You can bet I’ll be in line for Ratatouille at the Palace 9 tonight!

However, all is not lost, the truth is I wasn’t quite ready to try to give up my Newton MessagePad anyway. I would have missed having my financial software, to-do lists, and notes with me wherever I go. Of course, I could find web-based alternatives to most of these functions, such as Remember the Milk, stikkit, or the iPhone-intended OneTrip. I’d also have missed being able to use my cell phone to get online with my MacBook Pro in a jam, that also won’t be a feature of the iPhone.

However, not having to cary my pager, my cell phone, my MacBook Pro, and my Newton around with my all the time would have been nice on my back. And yes, I’d still have been able to access servers in an emergency thanks to the iPhone’s VPN support and a dedicated server running AjaxTerm, but I’ll live. C’est la vie.

¹ Granted, they’re all much larger states and said coverage map is a poor estimation.

² Although the article states that Vermont is the only state without any AT&T coverage, I have a feeling that Montana and the Dakotas may be in the same boat.