Ain’t it just my luck. As I was whipping up this graphic:

and this graphic:

I decided to do a little Googling and discovered that not only had I been beaten to the punch, I had also been beaten spectacularly, as this iPhone-based spoof of 2001 shows:

Ah well.

Anyhow, all this is preamble for the best advice I’ve seen regarding the iPhone, especially if you’re in the grips of severe technolust (like my friend and coworker James “For the last time, that’s my real name!” Koole, for instance). It’s a piece by Jeff Atwood in his always-excellent blog Coding Horror titled Why You Don’t Want an iPhone — Yet. If you can’t be bothered to read the whole thing, worry not — the meat of the essay is in this line, which I repeat here:

It’s not my goal to crush anyone’s dreams of owning their first iPhone. I know you’ve heard this a million times, but never, never has it been more true for any technology product: wait for version 2.0 before buying.

This goes double for folks like me, who live in Canada (Toronto, a.k.a. Accordion City, in my case). Even if the iPhone were available in Canada today, the data rates here are just so ridiculous that it’s not worth going online with your phone.

So when it comes to all the hype and cajoling to get my paws on an iPhone, my reply, in keeping with the 2001: A Space Odyssey theme of this entry will be…

“I’m sorry, Steve, I’m afraid I can’t do that.”

(Well, not just yet, anyway…)