I’m just waiting on an iPhone.  (With apologies to Mick, Keith, and the boys.)

Okay, I’m a gadget junkie; I admit it.  That’s why I’m a contributor on this here Web ‘zine.  I bought the PalmPilot 1000.  I have spent hours and hours pouring over specs for PDAs, and personal media players, and “Origami” devices, and tested eBooks and convergent devices (like the O2 XDA Exec device-of-a-thousand-names).  So bear that in mind.  But I am not–not Not NOT–an Apple acolyte.  I like their products, and I admire them, but I’ve never owned them.  Never.  So bear that in mind, too.

But I’m waiting on an iPhone.  And I have gadget lust bad.

For one thing, I need a new cell phone.  I’m limping along on a Motorola v180.  It’s okay; I like flip phones, personally, and it’s small, and light, and pretty battle-hardened, but it’s showing its age.  It’s time for an upgrade.  And now here comes the iPhone, just in time for ol’ Doug to upgrade.

For another, I need a new PDA.  Desperately.  I loved my old Tapwave Zodiac, but Palm has really dropped the ball on development.  I mean, I would stick with Palm until doomsday, but where is the developer heat that we saw in the late 90s?  It’s gone, baby, gone.  I see plenty of development on the Windows Mobile platform (ugh!), but not much on Palm.  Not to mention which, the eReader software is much nicer on WM–it has those nice, textured backgrounds, where the Palm version doesn’t–and I read eBooks a lot.  eReader runs on Macs these days.  Maybe my new PDA will be a Mac-based one, nu?

And there’s other factors.  I’m a Cingular customer, so I’m good to go on that end.  And June, coincidentally, is my birthday month.  Happy birthday to me, man!

The other feature I would love to use my PDA for is watching movies.  If you read my reviews of PMPs, you’ll see I’m big into watching movies on PMPs, and while the iPhone is a wee bit smaller than the other PMPs–a 3.5″ screen rather than a 4″ screen–it has a 480×320 pixel resolution, and Apple has, to put it mildly, a good reputation when it comes to making quality displays.  And while I have enjoyed my little Archos 604 wifi tremendously, it would be sweet to have a PDA and PMP in the same device.  (And a cell phone, too?  I dunno, but it’s worth a try.)  And finally, now that the library of T.V. shows has grown to a respectable size, it would be very sweet to be able to download episodes of “Heroes” and “Monk” and watch them on my little device, instead of going around the barn trying to convert them from Apple’s proprietary MPEG-4 video format to something my Archos can understand (like AVI or DivX).

And I have to admit, there’s the added attraction of having a full-on Mac device in my hand.  And I would no doubt spring for the extra 100 clams to get the 8 Gigabyte version.  (And I have to say that it is absolutely mindbending to think that one can now get an 8 Gb Mac that you can hold in the palm of your hand that is also a phone and is also a movie viewer and is also a web browser.  I love the 21st century!)

Will the lack of a stylus drive me nuts?  Will my finger oils make the screen unusable?  Will all the “automatic” software that rotates the screen and turns it off close to your face and so on drive me nuts?  Will I be able to upload my movie and (non-iTunes) music library to the device?  Will the lack of an SD or other expansion slot make me nuts?  Will the screen scratch easily?  I dunno, and won’t know until I get my grubby paws on one.  (And will I even try?)  And you know where that leaves me.

I’m just waitin’ on an iPhone.