Despite my previous exhortation not to purchase a generation-one iPhone due to Apple’s lack of third-party applications (among other failings), I woke last Saturday from literal dreams about the device and purchased one myself. I caved. I thought it important to point out my own hypocrisy.

After a couple of days using the iPhone and a little distance to mull my poor impulse control, I have isolated my primary purchase impetus: I actually enjoy the first few months of a product launch when I have faith that the manufacturer will be improving the product. The typical gadget lust was a factor—I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy showing off my new toy to my neighbors last night, watching one of their friends in anguish as he described what his Treo was supposed to do, if only he could figure out how—but I also felt like I was missing out on the ups and downs of a new, important computing platform. If the iPhone was a disappointment as a device I’d probably feel differently about it, but as it stands I’m content with the unit’s launch functionality. (It also doesn’t hurt that my current phone is still going for upwards of $300 on eBay, even used, so I felt like I could subsidize the iPhone’s ghastly price by selling it before it became another junker on the pile.)

I won’t bother with my per-feature impressions, as smart takes abound. In short, it’s the best mobile internet browsing experience yet, a nearly-perfect iPod (syncing could be more granular), and a fun, able PDA platform that feels like it will only get snazzier in time. And you can make phone calls on it. (And the crappy camera is sort of crappy.)

Instead, the problems I had, as those seem more important: It took me several hours to transfer my mobile number from T-Mobile and activate the iPhone, including at least a couple of hours on on-hold time calling various customer service agents. I was finally able to get my service activated by asking to speak to a woman’s supervisor when she informed me my service could not be activated until Monday. She then confided in me that she was technically able to activate my account, but her office had not been authorized to do so.

If you’ve gotten drunk with me then you’ve heard me rail on the poor state of customer service in this country. (I started Consumerist in part to address this part of the retail process, a banner which Ben Popken now proudly carries with more stamina than I’ve ever mustered, bless him.) One of the key failures of modern customer service organizations is the lack of “one-stop care,” especially in Byzantine mega-orgs like telecommunications companies. In my experience working as a CSR for (believe it or not) AT&T in the past, this happens primarily because modern customer service agents receive minimal training, the better to make them a disposable or outsource-able function of a company’s “retention” burden. It hasn’t always been this way; as recently as a couple of decades ago phone support was a highly-skilled, well-paying career, with legendarily good pensions, pay, and benefits.

To staunch this digression, my point: there’s no reason why I should have had to beg someone to activate my phone when they had the technical ability to do so. There’s also no reason why my iPhone’s functions should have been locked until I activated the phone with AT&T. For anyone who was afraid that Apple’s relatively good reputation for customer service would be sullied by partnering with a phone company, let me assure you that it has been. One call should fix any problem and Apple needs to do everything they can to get AT&T to their level of industry-leading-but-still-kind-of-bad customer service.

I also had Safari, the iPod (still not comfortable referring to the iPod as a piece of software), and the GMaps application crash on me repeatably until I reset the phone. Frankly, this didn’t bother me that much, as stability bugs come with the early-adopter territory.

I would recommend the iPhone to anyone who enjoys being in on an exciting new gadget platform, warts and all, but would like to assuage the lust in others that I was not able to resist. The idea of a synergistic, all-in-one device has been a long time coming, and while Apple isn’t the first to attempt to create one, the iPhone is currently the finest example of a convergence device yet. If stating that implies that future models of phones from other manufacturers will not meet or exceed the iPhone’s capabilities, or that previous models of phones or combinations of devices could not meet the same bullet lists of functionality, then you’re falling into the same false “rawx/sux” dichotomy that burdens most discussion of technology on the internet. The iPhone and similar devices are the future of mobile computing. If you’d like to play along on the current edge, with all that implies, pick one up and enjoy if you can afford several hundred dollars to dabble. If you’d rather wait a year or two for the inevitable price drop or are content with your current technology solutions, that sounds prudent to me.

A final note: Even ignoring the “no third-party apps” situation which is of legitimate concern to me, buying the iPhone does come with its share of issues with regard to consumer and personal freedoms. Sometimes I want to believe that Ol’ Uncle Apple is giving us a wink while it slaps the backs of its media and telecommunications buddies, but I think that history has shown that it is naive to presume any company will look out for consumers all the time. That’s why I’ve taken the occasion of buying the iPhone to reactivate my membership in the Electronic Frontier Foundation as a sort of sin tax (inspired by this comment), in the hopes that the EFF may be able to protect me from future rights restrictions that I may have just funded with my purchase.