Shifting technologies

After one week of iPhone use, I can safely say that I can, indeed, spend less time at my laptop. It's become that much more convenient to scroll through email, Facebook and and RSS feeds while lying in bed or on the couch, the only downside being that the accelerometer tends to misinterpret the angle at which I'm holding the phone and flips the display to landscape mode when I don't want it to.

"Has it changed your life?" friends keep asking me archly. In small ways, I think so. I like knowing how long I'll have to wait for the bus, or having foursquare tell me where some of my friends are hanging out, or being able to pull a phone number from an email because I forgot to scribble it down (old school!) or save it on my phone before going out for the day. Not that I couldn't do any of this on my previous phones, which were also 3G and wifi-enabled, but the iPhone just makes it that much easier.

It also happened this week that I had to send my MacBook into the shop to fix a little something. And then it turned out that the old iBook that's my backup wasn't quite in working order as well. So now I'm using ampulets' spare iBook (thank you, guys!), which is working great. But ...

But.

But the thing is, once you get used to a certain level of personalisation with technology, anything that isn't set up exactly how you want it to be (down to specific Firefox Add-ons or the directory where files are automatically saved) just feels like it's not working right, even though the device is, in fact, working perfectly fine. I said to a friend a few months ago that if I ever took on a full-time job again, it'd be a deal-breaker if the employer had some kind of no-Facebook, no-IMing or no-Gmail rule, or wouldn't let me tweak certain settings for web browsing and other commonly used applications. Because how would I get any work done effectively if I couldn't use the tools I needed? It's as daft as if an employer curmudgeonly insisted that all employees couldn't have a phone at their desk.

Anyway.

So the iPhone's all personalised and I ought to have my MacBook back in a few days' time. Meanwhile I'm reluctant to change any settings on ampulets' iBook since it's not, you know, mine.

Although, um, I did upgrade Firefox and Adium and add the Tab Mix Plus Add-on.