You know when you've been iPhoned

And so, finally and inevitably, I have been iPhoned. It’s been a long time coming, and I’ve really got no excuses. I was absolutely wedded to Apple products in the 1990s, using an early Mac laptop to produce magazines on Quark Express, and counted myself as one of the IT rebels proudly resisting the Evil Empire of the Microsoft Death Star.
A senior bean counter put paid to all that, and it wasn’t until probably four years or so ago that I came back into the fold and bought an iPod Touch. It was a revelation, partly because – incredibly – I had no idea when I went to try it that you could hook up to the web. 

At last, the Nokia nightmare is over...

Ever since, my early morning routine has begun with a ritual shave, mug of tea and a gaze at the headlines on the iPod.

May be the fact that I’d got music and the web on the iPod was the reason I didn’t bother with an iPhone. Either way, I stumbled badly on my last two contract renewals with Orange, signing up first for an LG Viewty (early touchscreen, great video, appalling phone/text functionality, slow processing and a stylus which wore out after only a few months) and then a Nokia E72 Blackberry lookalike (decent phone, great texting, slim enough to fit in a pocket, screen way too small for the web, Twitter and LinkedIn).

Last Thursday was the deadline for the Nokia to be pensioned off (and just to mark the occasion the text icon stopped working). I’d thought for sometime that I’d take the plunge on an iPhone this time round, but wavered momentarily thanks to my wife’s Samsung Galaxy. It’s slightly bigger than an iPhone, has a brilliantly vivid screen and made my Nokia look like the cretaceous-era relic it really was. I was almost tempted.
It’s really thanks to the Macoholics among Nottingham’s surveying community that I resisted the siren call of Android (Google is now right up there with Microsoft in my book). I’ve seen the likes of Innes England and FHP bustle round town armed with iPhones and iPads, dribbling like a schoolboy as they bring CGIs and site plans up on screen in coffee shops while I scribble prehistorically into a notebook.
Recently, it’s got worse. My colleague Richard Tresidder spends more time working on his iPad than he does on the office desktop juggernaut, and while I was over at MIPIM I was in the company of the High Priest of Mac, Tim Garratt. I put years on waiting for my Windows laptop to fire up while he was already blogging, and felt so ashamed of my Nokia I had to go into quiet corners to make calls.
Anyway, the technoshame is nearing an end. Yesterday, I came out of Carphone Warehouse in Newark the proud owner of an iPhone 4S. It’s heavy, chunky...and beautiful to use. Twitter and LinkedIn are now an icon away, the screen is luminously sharp and I’m trawling the App Store for stuff which is going to come in useful and wondering where I can find a decent case (any suggestions gratefully received).
I’ve only scratched the surface of the iPhone’s functionality, but the intuitive simplicity of the device just keeps opening doors to new stuff.
The only issue is when it’s going to be joined by an iPad. May be then I’ll feel like the years of Windows start-up yawns, tedious system updates and all-round Microsoft serfdom are finally over.