I recently broke down and purchased an iPhone 3GS . I resisted to become enslaved to another electronic leash. For those that don’t know what I mean, it is the nickname for the BlackBerry that I carried for almost two years in my prior job. I saw it as a leash because of the blinking red light. For the uninitiated, it is the indicator light on a BlackBerry for new email messages. Like many others hip carrying users, I initially fell in love with my BlackBerry device because it allowed me to peak at my inbox. The pain of spending 5 minutes waiting on my laptop to reawaken from standby, log into the corporate network and fire up Outlook went away with a BlackBerry. But before I knew it, I was trained like Pavlov’s dog to look for the blinking red light. It was a vice that I was glad to be rid of for good, or so I thought.

As I debated the purchase, I wondered if my crackberry habit of checking my email would resurface. I knew that I was somewhat safe because Apple didn’t put an indicator at the top of their iPhone. Also, the iPhone has an option to turn off the sounds when a new message arrives in the inbox. It was amazing how I could be in control — I could set aside time to look at emails instead of stopping whatever it is that i was doing and rushing to my device to look who wrote me or what blew up (if there’s an emergency, they can always call!).

So at this point, I’m only a few days into this “experiment” but I’m already realizing why so many people are fans of the Apple brand. It managed to be totally focused on serving consumers like me.