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July 11th, 2008. 7/11. Or what some of us tech-geeks refer to as the iPocalypse. This was the day that my face in the crowd would be attaining the holy grail of communication technology. Some of you may think of it as ’simply a phone’. But the few of us who are either obsessed with the newest technologies or have consumed the Steve Job’s Kool-Aid looked at it as much much more. Ok, so really it is just a phone, but it brings us ahead in the future of mobile communications.

Before I get too far into the details of the day, I’d like to take a moment to explain why its such an important technological device. Up until recently, most have been aware of the “cool” factor of the iPhone. Touch screen, sleek design, large memory capacity for being a portable tune & video powerhouse, and even the ability to unlock or “jailbreak” the phone in order to install custom applications that let you do anything from create a power-point presentation to play old-school NES games on the go are all pretty well known. But what run on sentences and the iphone both had in common was its complete willingness to disregard what most would consider a business rule. Those of you who had the pleasure to toy around with the last generation iphone probobly realized the same things- that it was behind current technology with its EDGE based speed, its GPS was a poor incarnation of what comes standard on other “lesser” devices, and that, most importantly, it was missing the ability to be a fully functioning mobile email tool. Sure you could use gmail, or yahoo mail, or even web-server based mail, but poorly compared to the holy grail of business men and women, the blackberry. Its inability to be synced up with Microsoft Exchange meant that it was a poor replacement for the instant, real-time email, schedule and contact syncher that we had become accustom to with the Blackberry.

Steve Jobs looked down from his post as the technological Fonzy, and smiled upon us. In this newest incarnation of the iPhone, we find all three missing features. A 3g network (roughly 5-times faster than the connection speed of the previous iphone), a more advanced GPS chip for better localization and mapping servicing, and, most importantly a fully functioning email tool in the way of Microsoft Exchange compatibility. There is much much more that was given to us lowly consumers, but for time sake, google those details. With how long its taken me to get even this out, I’m sure you’ll appreciate the brevity of others. And if you aren’t a Mac user, let me help:

brev·i·ty
n.
1. The quality or state of being brief in duration.
2. Concise expression; terseness.

So, kind readers, I’m sure one’s of you are wondering, “why was such a grand day referred to as the iPocalypse?” Apple, in their infinite wisdom, decided to teach us a lesson about patience it seems, wisely making sure they and their partner, AT&T were unequipped to handle the massive amounts of server needs to handle the “activation” portion of the launch. Oh, Apple! Always teaching us! To explain deeper, every iPhone required an activation process to occur in the store where you purchased it, where the sales rep would plug the iPhone into their computers and connect it with those ill-equipped servers. With this process failing completely all over the world at the same time, a few hundred thousand enthusiasts were forced to return home with an effectively useless iPhone. And, of course, even more people went home without any iPhone.

But just as Jobs taketh away, so too he giveth. Within about twelve hours, the servers for activation were up and those few hundred thousand were scrambling to get their itunes up and running so they could activate and impress their co-workers with 3g speed, awesome email management (that makes the blackberry look like an a-trac) and lightsaber duels.