Okay, I’ll admit it: when the iPhone first came out, I was among those who asked, “What’s the point?” I wondered why anyone would need all that stuff on a cell phone. Email? iPod? GPS? Come on! Just give me a phone that allows me to call people and I’m happy.

Then, at some point last year, I broke down and got one. It started when Verizon, the cell phone company I had been with for years, sent me a circular in the mail offering me the opportunity to buy their Voyager, which seemed to be a ripoff of the iPhone. Trouble was, when I went to the Verizon store to take them up on their offer, they told me that I wasn’t eligible for the offer since my contract wasn’t up. (The circular said nothing about that.) They told me that I’d have to buy the phone for almost twice what the circular said it would cost.

I called that the old “bait and switch.” And I told them what they could do with their little offers. And their phone service.

So, out of spite, I bought an iPhone. I quickly realized that we all actually do need all this stuff in a cell phone. No, really. We do.

If you don’t have one, you’re missing out. Trust me on that.

On the other hand, there is “too much of a good thing.” A recent report from WCBS-TV in New York calls Blackberry (and I imagine some iPhone users, too) have become a little too attached to their gadgets.

Eighty-seven percent of users say they bring their devices into the bedroom. (Insert your own joke here.) Another 84 percent say they check their emails one last time before bed, and 80 percent check them in the morning as soon as they get up.

In my case, it’s guilty, guilty and guilty.

I have a good excuse for bringing my phone into the bedroom now. Since shutting off my land line phone service — because of the New AT&T’s remarkably-inept billing department that debited money out of my account six days before the due date then suspended my service two days before the due date because they thought I hadn’t paid my bill — the cell is my only phone. In an emergency, I want it close by. And if I get a call early in the morning, I want it in the bedroom so I’m sure to hear it.

I also use it as a backup alarm clock. (Yes, it has an alarm function, too.)

As for the email thing, well, not that I get a lot of email, but when I do, I hate to miss out. Especially if it’s from one of you nice readers who have decided to comment on a post I’ve made. (Not that I’m hinting or anything.)

Most disturbing, I think, is the number of people who would choose their PDA over their spouse if they had to pick one or the other. The number’s not as high as those who take the Blackberry into the bedroom, but then it ought not be higher than zero.

So what about you? Do you take your cell phone into the bedroom? Check your email before you go to bed or when you get up? Do you consider yourself a gadget addict?

Yes, Charleston has an Apple Store (complete with a Palmetto tree out front) and today was the big Grand Opening.

Unlike fellow Charleston blogger Jared, I was not one of the first 1,000 to get in.  (My dogs had a vet appointment.)

By the time I arrived there late this afternoon, there were two police officers out front making sure that order was still being maintained.  It was, and while I was in the store browsing around, they left.

It’s nice to have an Apple Store in town.

It’s also a little dangerous.

Yes, finally, Charleston is getting its very own Apple Store.  It’ll be right in the heart of downtown, on King Street, where a lot of historic buildings house shops of all kinds.

Before moving to Charleston, I lived in Richmond, where an Apple Store opened in Short Pump Town Centre.  (Any time a mall can spell center as centre, stores inside suddenly feel like they’re far more high-brow than they actually are.)

But the Apple Store was cool.  Walking into a computer store and realizing that there wasn’t a PC-based anything anywhere in sight was a nice feeling.

I don’t hate PCs, you understand, but it’s just cool to walk into a place where Macs are the only choice.

Charleston’s new store opens this Saturday at 10:00am.  I will not be one of the ones who’ll likely be lined up outside waiting to be the first customers inside.  I’m sure I’ll drop by, but I don’t have to be among the very first inside.  I’ve been inside an Apple Store before; so I’ll let the uninitiated have their turn first.

I’m a nice guy like that.

Hat tip to Jared. 

This quiz was one of the questions in this week’s Saturday Six. My result, appropriately enough:

You Are a Mac

You are creative, stylish, and super trendy. You demand the best - even if it costs an arm and a leg.

Are You a Mac or a PC?

If your email address ends with the “@gmail.com” extension, here’s how you’re described:

“You are internet saavy, and approximately 50% of your inbox consists of Apple updates.  BTW, can someone invite me already?  This is getting ridiculous, seriously you guys.”

If you have a different domain for your email — and I’ll admit to having about four! — read the rest over at College Humor.

I don’t have a .mac email address but I still feel the sting for those who do.

How satisfied are you with your cell phone or service? And when is the last time you saw a survey about any product or service that revealed that almost all customers say they’re “extremely satisfied” with it?

Apple’s iPhone is scoring incredibly high praise from its customers, according to an article from USA Today:

“In one of the first such studies, 90% of 200 owners said they were ‘extremely’ or ‘very’ satisfied with their phone. And 85% said they are ‘extremely’ or ‘very’ likely to recommend the device to others, says the online survey conducted and paid for by market researcher Interpret of Santa Monica, Calif. The firm surveyed 1,000 cellphone users July 6-10.”

I don’t know anyone who actually owns in iPhone, yet, but I know several who want one. And when they do eventually bring one of the gadgets home, they can recommend it to me all they want. But until Apple drops its price from the $500-600 per phone, and until AT&T drops their monthly service fees from nearly $100 to closer to half that figure, I’ll just stick with what I have: a phone that has a camera in it and few other, if any, frills.

I’ve never surfed the net on my cell phone, nor have I ever tried to read an email. I suspect that either would annoy me beyond words.

Still, that high a level of happiness with the iPhone has to have Apple’s competitors scrambling to come up with the “next big thing” of their own.

It’s probably also carries a bit of a sting for Microsoft, whose customers are less happy with the upgrade to the much-ballyhooed Vista operating system.

Theirs will probably be cheaper. But for us Mac lovers, it just won’t be the same.

John Scalzi of “By The Way” has a new feature, giving tips to Mac users who are trying to get the most out of their AOL Journaling experience. He’s facing an uphill battle from the start.

AOL will tell you that 99% of their clients are PC users. That number seems more than a little ridiculous to me, a Mac user, but that’s their claim. It seems apparent to those of us who use Macs that AOL genuinely believes it, and isn’t overly concerned with that remaining 1%.

John’s first tip is one that many Mac users haven’t heard before, but one that some of us had to find on our own out of sheer desperation.

Those of you who use PCs can easily select your entry’s typeface, size and colors without leaving AOL to do so. The formatting buttons are all right there, ready for you to click on them. Mac users don’t see the same thing you do. When I click on my “Add Entry” button within AOL, here’s the screen that pops up:

Yes, all of those nifty formatting buttons are AWOL. To format this journal the way you see it each day, I have to go to Netscape, which gives me the formatting I need. John points out that Mozilla also gives Mac users this capability. He calls it a “good intermediary solution” and he’s right about that.

But I am not convinced that AOL considers this solution “intermediary.” In fact, it has been more than a year since I started this journal and there has been no sign at all that AOL has done anything to make this solution anything other than “permanent.”

It seems that Mac users and AOL customer service are caught up in an endless loop: AOL claims that most of their users are on PC, so it isn’t cost-effective for them to keep everything equal at all times. Mac users, likewise, say that since they’re not getting the same level of service, they shouldn’t have to pay the same price their PC counterparts do.

Two records that never stop, and two record players that never seem to hear each other. That’s pretty much life as a Mac user on AOL. Maybe AOL will listen to John; they certainly aren’t hearing me.