Sods' law came into effect this week. After waiting nearly four weeks for my new iPhone 4 (ordered for delivery to London's Regent Street Apple Store), I finally got the email to say it was ready for collection within the next 24 hours. The only problem is that I am 2,000 miles away in the Greek islands and cannot persuade any of my friends (will they remain friends I wonder?) to trek up to Regent Street and masquerade as MacFilos. Result: Lost iPhone order. Since I cannot order another store-delivery phone without going to there in person, my only choice now is to order on-line for delivery to home.
The dilemma is when to order, since I am still over a month away from being there to receive the package.
It's mildly encouraging, however, to hear Apple's Tim Cook deny that the company purposely create shortages to add to demand: "We do not purposefully create a shortage for buzz. I'm not sure where that (idea) comes from," said Cook. "Demand for the iPhone 4 is absolutely stunning."
So that's ok then. It doesn't help me, though, and it looks like I shall be the last Mac blogger in the civilised world to get my hands on the iPhone 4.
In the meantime, I am enjoying a renewed love affair with the venerable (all of nine months old) iPhone 3GS. iOS4 has transformed it into a real workhorse and, combined with the iPad keyboard dock, it makes a very acceptable portable computer. It's more convenient (dare I say) than the iPad. I love folders, I love the limited multi-tasking (though you have to remember periodically to close down some of the multitude of apps in background memory) and I absolutely adore the unified mailbox. Fortunately, iOS4 runs smartly on the 3GS but (a word of warning here) NOT on the 3G. It turns the 3G into a sluggish device that leaves owners wanting to backtrack to the previous version of the operating system.