If you’ve heard me make comments about Apple, you might have thought I would be one of the last people in the world to get an iPhone. I might have thought so too.

Ever since I had a few bad experiences with Macs back in college (late 90′s), I have pretty much avoided and looked down on anything with the Apple logo. In the last couple years those annoying, misleading, and downright false Mac-vs-PC advertisements have only reinforced that tendency. On top of that, I can’t stand the zealotry that Apple seems to inspire in many of ill-informed its users. And that branding strategy of putting a lowercase-i in front of any common word to make it their own? iHateIt.

But aside from their marketing I do have to admit that Apple has come a long way in the last 10 years. They have a real OS that runs on mostly-standard hardware components, their hardware engineering is very impressive, and they seem to be very in touch with what is important to mainstream consumers. So given all this I finally had to ask myself… Was I as big of an anti-Apple zealot as the pro-Apple flock I looked down on? Certainly not. :) But… was I being unfairly close-minded toward Apple? Probably.

When the original iPhone came out last year, I was aware of the hype but I mostly ignored it for its Appleness. Anyway that wasn’t hard to do because while it looked slick, it had far less functionality than the phone I already carried. But the new "iPhone 3G" changed that in a few important ways: (1) I can sync my work (Exchange) email and calendar over the air. (2) 3G data speeds for fast web browsing. (3) The platform is opened up to 3rd-party developers to write new applications.

My overall impression after using it for 3 days is that it’s clearly a leap beyond anything else currently available. You can be sure that competitors will be playing catch-up for the next couple years — initially with some thin shells on top of the same old thing, but eventually with some real advances. Isn’t competition great? You can read plenty of people’s impressions on the web so I won’t repeat everything, but I’ll point out a few things that especially disappointed or impressed me. For comparison I’ve been using Windows Mobile phones for the last 3+ years.

Bad:

• No flags in email. I rely on flags to track which emails I need to follow-up on. I’m still not sure what I’ll do instead to track my important emails.
• The unlock/home screen doesn’t show upcoming appointments and unread message info. I have to unlock the phone and open the calendar app to see where and when my next meeting is.
• No support for sending or receiving picture messages (MMS). Very strange for a device which is all about multimedia. Yeah you can use email as a substitute but only if the person you’re sending to or receiving from has email on their phone.

Good:

• The headphone jack works with ordinary headphones. This shouldn’t even be worth mentioning except that many phone manufacturers persistently use proprietary connectors.
• The screen is big and beautiful while the overall phone is still small. It can get VERY bright and is unusually readable in direct sunlight.
• As advertised, the web-browsing experience (over 3G or WiFi) is remarkably great for the size of the device. It’s the first phone I’ve had where I might use it to browse the web not out of necessity because I’m out somewhere, but just because I don’t feel like getting up and walking over to the PC in the next room.

Support for 3rd-party apps means there is still a lot more in store for the iPhone. The SDK has only been available to developers for a few months and already there are some pretty cool applications. The user base of 3 million+ iPhones (and iPod Touches), combined with the store integrated into the phone in a way that makes impulse purchases VERY easy, will ensure that many developers will want to target the platform.

This past weekend I drove down to Portland, Oregon for the Portland Lindy Exchange. A "Lindy Exchange" is a type of big swing dancing weekend event hosted by various cities around (and outside) the country. It’s basically an excuse for lots of out-of-town dancers to converge in one place to meet and dance with everyone else. There are typically no classes or workshops — just big dance floors, great live music, and more DJ’d music late into the night. This was the first exchange I’ve been to, although later this year I plan to also go to at least the ones in San Francisco, Vancouver, and of course Seattle.

I’ll spare you all the boring details and stick to a couple of the highlights. One neat part of the weekend was dancing in Pioneer Courthouse Square on a sunny Saturday afternoon in the middle of the city with lots of people watching. This was one of the planned events so there was a DJ and sound equipment there and plenty of others to dance with. I’ve never before danced outside in broad daylight, or had a large audience of non-dancers like that, and it was kind of fun to show off.

On Saturday morning I took the express bus into downtown Seattle and got off at King Street Station. It was a really nice train station… 100 years ago, but the years of neglect definitely show. They’re trying to restore some of the original finishes now, but it will never return to its former glory — especially with the new Link Light Rail line stopping at nearby Union Station instead.

Anyway, the station served its purpose well enough, and I got on the Amtrak train which left on-time at 7:40am. Overall, my impression of the train ride was… not bad. The seats are big and comfortable with plenty of legroom. The upper level of the central car (of three) of the train has floor-to-ceiling windows with unreserved seating facing outward, allowing some decent views of the coastline of northern Puget Sound. However I spent most of the time sleeping or reading. (Fortunately I don’t have any problem with motion sickness from reading on a train or plane, though while riding in a bus or car I get terribly nauseous from reading nothing more than Trivial Pursuit cards every few minutes.)

Once we got out of the Seattle metro area, which admittedly takes a while, the train actually moved pretty fast: the GPS on my phone measured it at 77+ mph at multiple points along the way. I thought we were going to arrive nearly on time in Vancouver until the train stopped for about 15 minutes just before the bridge over the Fraser river into the city. We had a similar stop before that bridge on the way back, when they announced they had to pick up or file some paperwork or something before crossing the bridge… which doesn’t make sense… and anyway couldn’t they take care of that stuff ahead of time??

So the train finally arrived at the Vancouver station just before noon, about 20 minutes late. Fortunately the customs process was fairly quick. (It’s always easy to get into Canada.) My first swing class, starting at 12:20, was a 15-minute walk away. I walked into the studio with just enough time to put on my dance shoes before the class started!

I thought the series of swing and related classes on Saturday and Sunday (8 hours total) were mostly very good. I polished up some of my basics and learned several new moves and techniques that will definitely stick with me. And I had fun dancing with a lot of new people, as well as a few that I sort of knew who were also from Seattle or had visited recently. There was a great band for the Saturday night dance at the Grandview Legion Auditorium. While that venue doesn’t quite compare to Seattle’s Century Ballroom in size or atmosphere, it was a fun night, and Vancouver clearly has a decent Lindy Hop scene.

After the dance Saturday night I took the nearby SkyTrain to my hotel and got a good night’s sleep. After checking Sunday morning I had a few hours to kill so I took the SkyTrain into downtown Vancouver and walked around the waterfront and shopping areas. From that perspective it seemed like a nice and pedestrian friendly downtown. It’s clear the city is doing a lot to prepare for hosting the 2010 Winter Olympics. (While all the snow sports will be up at Whistler, I guess Vancouver is really the "host" city.) Among other things, there’s a huge new convention center under construction, and a major shopping street in the middle of downtown is a big long hole where they’re building a new (misnamed?) underground SkyTrain line to connect to the airport.

From downtown I took the SkyTrain back to East Vancouver where the classes were that day, then after classes I took the SkyTrain (see a pattern here?) back to the train station and caught the 6pm train back to Seattle.

I slept most of the way back. The only annoying part of that train was U.S. customs. We had to go through customs before boarding the train. Fine. But then the train stopped at the border while customs agents went through the train and questioned everyone and checked passports again. Of course for me it’s never a problem since I look like an ordinary white American and I’m gainfully employed and I don’t mention the fruit and livestock I’m not transporting back into the states. But it takes a little while for the two agents per car to get through everyone. Still, it looked like a much longer wait by car to get into the U.S. (The train tracks are adjacent to the Peace Arch I-5 border crossing.)

My train arrived at the Seattle station at around 10:15pm, only about 10 minutes late. But my weekend was not over yet! Sunday night is swing night at the Century Ballroom, and there was even a live band playing that night! Now well-rested, I hopped on a bus to Capitol Hill and proceeded to try out my new moves and dance the night away.

I’m taking the Amtrak Cascades train up to Vancouver, BC for a weekend of swing classes and dancing. There’s a special series of Lindy Hop workshops held by some famous instructors there this Saturday and Sunday, along with a great swing band playing Saturday night. Conveniently, all venues are within walking distance from the Vancouver Amtrak station, so I can make it a car-free trip! And the Vancouver SkyTrain is right there too, which should give me a chance to explore the city a bit during a few free hours on Sunday morning.

The Amtrak tickets cost me about $20 more than I would have paid for gas to drive up there, and it will take about an hour longer (4 hrs vs 3 hrs, including stops and border-crossing). But I expect it will be worth it just for the stress-free comfort — I can sleep, read, watch the scenery, or get up and stretch my legs any time.

I’ve never taken a trip by rail in North America before (beyond metro transit systems), so I’m curious to see what it’s like. If I like it, I may take future trips like this to Vancouver and Portland. I’m sure it won’t compare though to the speed and convenience of the trains I experienced in Japan.

The reason for my interest is that I’ve been quite amused and impressed by my own modest athleticism over the past couple years. It’s not vanity if you understand that I was never athletic at all throughout high school and college. It was only about 2-3 years ago that I started getting more seriously into racquetball and ultimate, and now a lot of my friends and co-workers and sometimes teammates seem to perceive me as a very athletic person, which is really a new and strange identity for me.

Still, I’ve never trained much separately from just playing sports (a lot), and now I wonder, could I take it up another notch if I actually did put in some real, dedicated training time? I figure if I ever want to find out what I’m capable of, now is the best time to do it, before I get any older.

One reason for hesitation at the moment is that I usually try to avoid the throngs of uncommitted resolutionists that crowd the gym during the first few weeks of every January. But maybe the Performance Center would be more sane than the main gym.