I bought an iPhone

During my previous gig at the Chicago Poker Classic I was able to visit my daughter, Mary, who is attending Saint Mary's College in Notre Dame.  She had her new iPhone with her.  She loves it.  She told me, "Get an iPhone.  It will change your life."

My wife bought one and was hinting that I might want one, too, "We can have video calls with each other while you are in Vegas!"

So I broke down and bought an iPhone.  It came in very handy during my Seminole Hard Rock gig.  This iPhone is very cool.  The camera in the iPhone is very good. It even has a flash. It also works as an iPod music player and syncs up with my computer. I played it through my car stereo all the way from Hollywood to Tampa and had all kinds of battery left over.  Text messaging is on it is just elegant. It saves the messages in a thread with your replies so that you can easily see messages going back and forth to someone. Each person you text starts its own thread. It also does email really well - for a phone. I was surprised at how well and easily it handled email. I can see people just doing all of their email on the iPhone as long as they aren't like me writing 400 word notes to people. You can even browse the web, Google information, get stock quotes, access your financial accounts, and it even has a GPS map to provide directions and nearby points of interest. It has a compass. It has an appointment calendar that syncs with your PC. It functions as an alarm clock. It works as a pocket calculator, a very nice one basic straight up or turn it on its side and it becomes a scientific calculator with trig functions and exponents, etc. It has a voice recorder so you can make yourself voice notes and a nice simple notepad for jotting down things when you don't have a pen or paper. I added the Nook app and I can read all the ebooks I purchased.  Whew! It's the Swiss Army Knife of electronic devices.

Just think. You go out of town and forget everything and you leave home without your laptop/netbook for email, your compass, your Garmin (GPS), your appointment book, your alarm clock, your pocket calculator, your eReader, your legal pad, your favorite pen, your tape recorder and your camera. But if you have an iPhone, you have them all with you.

People think an iPhone is expensive, but if you avoid buying a Garmin, an alarm clock, a calculator, a tape recorder, an appointment calendar and an MP3 player, it's cheap.

It is a huge step up from the candy bar phone I have used for the last few years.

Please note:  This is not a paid advertisement for Apple.  I suppose you can do everything above with a Samsung, Ericsson, Nokia or other Android or Windows phone.  Our family just happens to have settled on  Apples.