When the iPhone first came out, I was interested but not quite interested enough. It looked good, I couldn't deny it, but it looked a bit like a toy. I went, instead, for a Blackberry and didn't really regret it. I'd had a few Windows Mobile PDAs in the past and the Blackberry made a nice change. It spoke of business: it meant I was serious.
Fast forward a few years and things had changed. The iPhone had evolved and the BlackBerry had stood still. I swapped to iPhone - an iPhone4 - and I was hooked. A MacBook, an iPad, an iPad mini and an Apple TV followed in relatively short order.
And I was happy with all that. Occasionally it did occur to me that I had walled myself into Apple's ecosystem but it didn't bother me too much - I didn't like Android and there was no other game in town.
Fast forward another four years and things have changed again. Apple has stood still - iOS looks the same today as it did when I first switched on my iPhone all those years ago - and now there are alternatives. I still don't like Android (it just seems too cartoony for me) but now Windows have woken up and produced an OS that looks genuinely attractive.
I first came across this,funnily enough, when working at Microsoft itself where a large number of the group had some very colourful Nokia phones. A swift Google and a trawl of YouTube later and I realized I was falling in serious lust with the 920.
Yes, it was "big" (well, bigger and a bit heaver than the iPhone) but these things are relative anyway; it didn't give me arm-ache and the OS just looked so sexy... The "flat" design (none of this faux leather and fake stitching nonsense) and the live tiles had me smitten. Last weekend, after weeks of hemming and hawing, I succumbed and bought one.
I can't lie to you - I checked out whether I could transfer my SIM card between one and the other first: I wasn't ready to make a one-way trip. No bridges were burnt. But now I've been using it for the best part of a week and my first impressions are good.
I love the live tiles and I love the ability to dicker around with the look of the thing. The animations are quick and slick, the screen is pretty and typing very easy. The "people" thing that WM does is bloody brilliant and I especially love that. A lot of things aren't easy, though: syncing with my calendar is a nightmare (I eventally had to sync iCal with a new Google calendar, and sync that way) and I've lost access to a stack of apps in the move. Those that I've retained have, in many cases, lost functionality.
Deep in my heart, I suspect this won't last. It's a passing affair and eventually I'll move back. Windows Mobile is sexy and new and at the moment I'm quite smitten but that will wear off and then I'll remember all those things that iOS and I used to do together so quickly and easily. I'll remember all the apps and the convenience and the ability to organise my podcasts into playlists and about a dozen other little niggles that have nothing to do with Windows Mobile itself but which will probably, eventually, kill it for me.
Which I think is a real shame because this time, I honestly think that Microsoft have got it absolutely right and that WM8 is actually serious competition for iOS. Perhaps the recent announcement that WM8 had pinched third place in the market from BlackBerry (albeit with a vanishingly small 3% of the market) might be a sign of better days ahead. I hope so; I like Apple but I have a feeling that, over the last couple of years, they've become a bit complacent. I'll be watching the announcement of iOS7 with a great deal of interest - I genuinely think they have some work to do.
