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I finally swallowed the magic Apple pill and bought my first Apple product yesterday. Now mind me, I've always been a big fan of Apple engineering. They make a fine product that usually looks fabulous compared to their rivals. However, I also always felt that Apple charged a premium for their products even though a premium price was not always warranted. As a result, I usually opted for equivalent item at a significant discount. And until Boot Camp, I would never have considered an Apple computer because I like my gaming too much.

Well today, after much consideration, I finally bought the i-Phone, which is my first Apple product. While I can't yet comment on the phone, I can tell you as a long-time Pacific Bell, Cingular, now ATT customer, I am quite disappointed at ATT's money grab. When I went to activate the i-Phone, I discovered that I had to accept the cancellation of my $6 government discount in order to qualify to use the phone. Given that ATT already requires a 2-year contract and $20+ dollars per month, do you really thing they were going to be hurt by the $6 I'm saving on THREE phones. Yes, that's right! ATT is too cheap to allow a $2 per phone discount to stay in place, even though the net cost of the i-phone is $300 plus $480 ($20/month x 24 months).

While I probably would have benefited more from a smart phone to replace my PDA, I couldn't fathom spending $44 a month on a data plan in addition to the voice plan. Thus, even though I think ATT is a greedy corporation, I have to admit that the data plan seems fairly reasonable. Of course, the data plan is very limited as the phone cannot be used for much other than surfing the web and email, whereas smart phones can be tethered to a laptop to serve as a modem. Either way, I'm satisfied as I'll be able to check email and Blackboard while on the go to keep up with my online classes. In addition, it was time for an ipod, so the i-phone met two needs.