All through December my wife picked up on my nudging hints of her getting an iPhone for Christmas. Her responses were always, “No, it’s too expensive,” or, “I don’t need one.” But that one time she was looking at my Inbox while I was at the Apple Store picking up myself the Shure iPhone adapter and the receipt came in, she said she was excited when she saw it appear right there before her eyes. I called her on her excitement and teased, “See, you do want one!” “No, no, no, I don’t,” was her poor poker face reply.

Well, needless to say, I did buy her one, from the AT&T store so no receipts would wind up in my Inbox for her to find, and sure enough, she lit up like a Christmas tree when she saw the iPhone box peering out from under the wrapping paper.

The first thing she just sucked onto like a junkie? SMS. Who would have ever figured that my wife would become an SMS junkie but by the end of Christmas Day, she had probably sent me more text messages than I had received from my field crew the previous two weeks! I have found that since our oldest is starting to learn how to spell that SMS makes for a good way to communicate things to my wife right before her ears. Parenting through short messaging. Brilliant.
I got nervous on the SMS thing, thinking my wife had already used all her alloted 200 message, so I contacted AT&T six days after Christmas. She had already sent 119 messages when the account was looked up! And since her account was being pro-rated, she had long gone over the limit. Thankfully, the customer service rep was on it and caught it when I told him all those where from/to me only. “Really? We have an unlimited plan for in-network messaging for just five dollar more,” he told me. “Dude, sign me up yesterday,” I told him!

Her next discovery was the Podcasts. Now were ever she is, she can stuff in her white ear buds and start listening to something encouraging from John MacArthur or listen to the previous Sunday’s sermon for true digestion for the week.

Along with Podcasts, she has also latched on quiet nicely to the iTunes Store. I’m wondering why I got the $50 iTunes card for Christmas when she alone has spent $40 in a week on her iPhone alone. Yes, iTunes on the iPhone is dangerous. You’re such a smug, Steve!
The camera is another favorite along SMS for my dearest. She says it takes better pictures than our Nikon S1 point-and-shoot. In perfect conditions, it does take remarkable pictures, but my money is still on the Nikon for overall quality. I think what captures her, forgive the pun, is its ease of use, extreme convenience, and ability to quickly add photos of the day to iPhoto. No sweat photo taking.

With the inclusion of YouTube, well, things were just so completed for her and her iPhone. Watching everything under the sun (she found this really funny comedian ventriloquist that has a terrorist dummy…it is a total gag!) from TV shows to trailers to just off the wall stuff, she just loves, loves YouTube. Heck, she doesn’t even watch it on her Mac but the iPhone? As Vanilla Ice use to say, “Yup, yup.”

Other new loves are Google Maps and Safari. With the ability to easily find a store and it’s phone number within a few seconds and then being able to add it as a contact with one tap is just a fun exercise for my wife.

She chuckled at Stocks, questioned where Copy and Paste were, and is getting over the initial typing learning curve, but those are her only complaints. She absolute adores her iPhone. When I asked her if she liked her Christmas present the other day while she cheerfully played on it and responded, “No. I love, LOVE, love it!”

Just tonight she was telling me how remarkable the phone is. She teased me and told me that I don’t appreciate mine as much as she does her because I don’t talk about it enough. I reminded her that it was me that got it for her because I knew just how much she would indeed love it.

I guess to basically summarize it all, we could end on what Rebecca, her sister, said two nights ago. “It’s a portable computer!” Indeed, it is. Why would you need anything else?