While I am an Apple fan, and I love everything Mac, I still don't have an iPhone. Why? It just cost too much. I can justify spending the extra $200 to get the sleek look and quality design of the MacBook Pro. I willingly sacrificed a display screen for the compact simplicity of the iPod Shuffle. I even shelled out the extra dough for the Airport Extreme wireless router. But I'm too cheap to buy an iPhone? Ya...

Okay, so the first generation iPhone was way overpriced. I took one look and said, "Ya right..." Then iPhones started showing up in my friend's hands. After my first couple of encounters I said, "Oh, I wish..." So what held me back? The price had fallen, the capacity had increased - they even released the SDK for iPhones. Why was I still so far behind the curve? The iPhone was still too expensive.

So I log on today and Apple's home page displays a new iPhone ad - the iPhone 3G! I think I said something like, "ooOOOOOOoooooooo". At $200, the iPhone 3G costs only a little more than the last phone I got - yet with twice the features and an unbeatably intuitive interface. It even has the rounded back so you can spin it on the table during meetings... So will I get it? Probably not.

What!? It can't be the price. What must Apple do to get my patronage here? Actually, it is the price. The initial cost of the iPhone is only a drop in the bucket in the big picture. Once you sign up for a plan that includes all those features that put the "i" in Phone, you're looking at a pretty fat bill every month. I'm also on the Verizon network. Unfortunately, any Verizon users out there can sympathize with my woe that Apple has remained so exclusive in marketing the iPhone only to AT&T. And although AT&T has good coverage, it's significantly weaker in the area I live. And so this last January, I signed another 2-year service agreement with Verizon. To switch now would cost too much.

So I'll just keep drooling. Maybe one of these days the iPhone you see in my hand will be mine and not a friend's. But for now, I'll just have to listen to my iPod.