Engadget has the goods.

Those of you without iPhones may not know this, but iPhones, like computers, get software updates which add features. So far, Apple has released one major and two minor updates to the firmware of the device. The previous one, version 1.1.1 caused a massive furor because people who were modding their devices to work on different carriers got locked out.¹ All the noise about how unfairly Apple was behaving tended to obscure the fact that the update also added features like the iTunes Wi-Fi music store and the ability to double-click the button at the bottom of the screen to bring up shortcut menus.²

All in all, the iPhone is a glorious device that just doesn’t seem to get old. And whenever I start to take it for granted, Apple seeds some new features that get my nerd heart a-pumping again. I can’t encourage my friends enough to buy one at the earliest opportunity. I’ve never had a phone that’s been as useful as this.

The Leopard has landed, as has John Siracusa’s excellent in-depth review. Reading John’s reviews through the years has become a bit of a ritual for me. It would be the final step—at the end of months of speculation and excitement—before I’d go out and get the operating system for myself.

When Tiger came out, I quickly installed it on my personal machine and commenced shaking it down, despite various caveats from John. I looked down my nose at the cautious multitudes who were waiting for a few patches to come out before they deployed it on their systems.

“Pathetic pansies,” I thought to myself. “Take your lumps like MEN!” (Yes, I thought this in the context of an operating system. Yes, I know, I’m staggeringly immature.)

Well, here I am, Leopard weekend behind me, still running Tiger. I’m older. I’m more feeble. I can’t risk the upgrade. I’ve heard that Xerox printer drivers need to be updated. I’ve heard that there is some nasty font behavior in Photoshop CS3.

So it goes with aging. We become that which we despised most in our youth.