If you move in certain circles, hardly anything makes you cooler right now than having an iPhone. I found this out firsthand yesterday in a meeting where I had the only iPhone. When this fact became known, the start of the meeting got derailed by 5-10 minutes as I had handed the thing around and gave everyone there their chance to oogle and click.
It feels simultaneously cool and embarrassing to be in that position. Cool because, hey, you have this thing that no one else does and everyone wants. That’s neat. Embarrassing, though, because it feels like a spotlight is being shined upon you and now you need to perform some neat trick with your fancy doohickey.
I feel much the same way when I use the iPhone out in public. I feel cool, but also fear a bit that someone is going to notice that it’s an iPhone and come talk to me about it, want to use it, etc. Of course, I’ve been using the iPhone in public for 5 days now and no one’s done that yet, so maybe that says more about me than anything else.
Still, the coolness of the iPhone, and the first impression it makes, seems to indicate that it’s going to be quite a success. In the meeting yesterday, when each new person held it and then lit up the screen, their reactions ranged from being nearly speechless to marveling at how pretty the display is. And they’re right about that. Almost every person I’ve shown mine to has commented on how good the screen looks.
That kind of visceral, emotional first impression — the thing that subconsciously convinces someone to spend the $600 – is powerful. That I’ve seen almost everyone have that response tells me that many more people are going to have $600-shaped holes in the bank accounts in the near future.
