But something shifted a few years ago. She became afraid of talking on the phone. Just hearing it ring could provoke panic. Maybe it was the suffocation of carrying her cellphone all day long. (“There are these tentacles in you all the time,” she said.) But she rarely answered the phone, preferring to text message, and the voice mail piled up like unopened bills dumped in a desk drawer – frightening and unknown and ever present -- until she couldn’t bear it anymore, and in a rush of guilt she would delete dozens of messages that had been left for her without even listening to them.

Sometimes she would text the person to find out what they needed: “Sorry I missed your call,” she would type, although technically she wasn’t, and technically she hadn’t. Instead, like so many people I know, she had simply stopped using her phone for the one purpose Edison intended: to speak to another person.

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So weird. I'd just had it, like, 10 minutes ago, when I checked my voicemail at a friend's place. I started to call her to ask if it was lying around, which is when I realized: Not having an iPhone means you can't actually use your iPhone.

That night, even as rain pelted the windows, my home felt eerily silent. Like so many people, I do not have a separate landline, and I do not have cable TV. Without that small and all-powerful device within arm's reach, I was in exile. Typing emails on my laptop (because I still had wireless) seemed a bit like scribbling on parchment in the amber glow of an oil lantern. I would send the emails and receive nothing in response. Gah, is this thing even on???

The next morning, I walked out to the car to head to my friend's house when I discovered where my iPhone had been all night -- lying face-up on the driveway, inches from the driver-side door of my car, water still pooled on its black screen.

An iPhone suicide.

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New CEO Tim Cook led the show after Jobs, who has been battling health problems, resigned from the post in August.

Cook, wearing a navy blue button-down shirt and jeans, opened by calling his nearly 14-year tenure at Apple "the privilege of a lifetime." Those in the audience clapped as he entered, but the reaction seemed more muted than what Jobs had recently received.

Cook said the latest iPhone, which came out in June 2010, sold more quickly than previous models, but the iPhone still has just 5 percent of the worldwide handset market.

Apple is hoping to grow that with a new model. The new iPhone 4S has an improved camera with a higher-resolution sensor. The processor is faster, which helps run smoother, more realistic action games. It's also a "world phone," which means that Verizon iPhones will be able to useable overseas, just as AT&T iPhones already are.

Apple is including a "personal assistant" application called Siri, which responds to spoken questions and commands such as "Do I need an umbrella today?" It's an advanced version of speech-recognition apps found on other phones.

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Now Joel and his team are about to launch their second program, code name Project Amicus, which has been referred to as a "Grindr app for straight people." "Users can expect a unique mobile app experience unlike anything currently on the market that caters to how women and men communicate together," boasts the press packet for new project. But does a straight version of Grindr even make sense? According to Joel, Amicus will do far more than help people have sex (which he argues is not what Grindr is for in the first place).

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"Angry Birds isn't a video game," I replied. "You only play it on your phone or iPad."

On a more fundamental level, though, I don't believe that one "likes" or "dislikes" Angry Birds. It's more like the drug Substance D in Philip K. Dick's "A Scanner Darkly": you've either tried it, or you haven't. If you've played Angry Birds once, chances are you own the game and your friends have to hide your phone from you so that you'll make eye contact with them during conversation. Perhaps you even wrote a fan fiction about the iOS game. If you haven't played it, you don't understand what's so fun about throwing birds at pigs. So let's be clear: It's not fun playing Angry Birds. You just have to.

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The thing is, at least with that first video two weeks ago – which showed a man supposedly hacking into the billboards from his iPhone via a transmitter and "video replayer" (something that doesn't exist) – we got some good conversation mileage out of it. Yes, we all knew it was a hoax, and most of us weren't surprised to find out it was a viral marketing stunt, but at least it was trying to show us something new. Here, Toronto developer Adi Isakoviis claims to be able to pull off the same trick, except the videos he's projecting onto the billboards are of his dog, and also have a time-lag. And also it's just not as cool, because he didn't even pretend to use magic Internet hacking in order to do it.

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The deal would reduce the number of wireless carriers with national coverage from four to three, and is sure to face close regulatory scrutiny. It also removes a potential partner for Sprint Nextel Corp., the struggling No. 3 carrier, which had been in talks to combine with T-Mobile USA, according to Wall Street Journal reports.

AT&T is now the country's second-largest wireless carrier and T-Mobile USA is the fourth largest. The acquisition would give AT&T 129 million subscribers, vaulting it past Verizon Wireless' 102 million. The combined company would serve about 43 percent of U.S. cellphones.

For T-Mobile USA's 33.7 million subscribers, the news doesn't immediately change anything. Because of the long regulatory process, AT&T expects the acquisition to take a year to close. But when and if it closes, T-Mobile USA customers would get access to AT&T's phone line-up, including the iPhone.

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Still, there seems to be little oversight at the company with regard to religious intolerance and homophobia. Exodus International, a group that claims "freedom from homosexuality through the power of Jesus Christ," proudly released an app last week to serve as a "useful resource for men, women, parents, students, and ministry leaders." The app received a 4+ rating from Apple, meaning that Exodus' application contains no objectionable material.

A petition from TruthWinsOut.org demands that Apple remove Exodus' program, saying:

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Schedule:

9 a.m.: "Crowdsourcing Interactive Strategic Content Design and the Ubiquitous User Experience" (lecture) -- Learn this year's hottest empty buzzwords to use in presentations to possible investors of your start-up from the leading self-proclaimed experts in the industry, none of whom you've ever heard of.

10:30 a.m.: "Malcolm Gladwell: Genius or over-rated hack who has no idea what he's talking about?" (panel) – Several professors and more experts you've never heard of will tell you exactly why it's not cool to like "The Tipping Point" anymore.

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Brilliant? Dangerous? Is this even real? According to the user who uploaded the video, BITcrash44, the whole process was relatively simple:

the way it works is pretty simple: plug in my transmitter into the iphone 4 and play back any video clip. you can play it through the ipod feature or through the camera roll. the transmitter instantly sends the video signal to the video repeater and the video repeater overrides any video screen that it's being held next to. it doesn't matter what shape or size the hacked screen is because the hack video will simply keep its correct dimensions and the rest of the hacked space will stay black.

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In a blog post, Consumer Reports said it put the Verizon iPhone 4 through the same battery of tests it uses with all smart phones, plus some extra ones it used when the original iPhone 4 for AT&T Inc.'s network drew masses of complaints about poor reception.

The researchers again found that covering tiny gaps in the metal band that runs around the skinny edge of the Verizon iPhone caused "meaningful decline in performance." In conditions where cell signal was weak, the Verizon iPhone 4 dropped calls when the user covered the gaps by holding the phone in a specific -- but natural -- way.

The results were similar to what Consumer Reports found in its original iPhone 4 tests last year. Apple had changed the way it designed the smart phone's antenna starting with the iPhone 4, incorporating it into that band on the phone's outer edges. User complaints and Consumer Reports' tests showed that holding the phone in a way that covered up a spot on the antenna would cause the number of "bars" shown on the display to fall.

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However, news of the company's monster success, accredited largely to holiday sales of the iPhone4, iPad and Macs, was overshadowed by the disclosure that the company's CEO, Steve Jobs, is taking medical leave.

Jobs has suffered pancreatic cancer in the past and took six months off in 2009 when he underwent a liver transplant. He has provided no timeline of when he'll be back to Apple, if at all. Apple's COO Tim Cook will take over the day-to-day operations of the company.

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So whether you own slash love your iPhone, can't wait to get one on the Verizon network or really just don't understand why any of this matters, read on. Or just skip to the end where I listed the key details.

First things first. The Verizon iPhone 4 is almost identical to the AT&T iPhone 4. No new whistles, no new bells, and perhaps not even an improved antenna. Same price, same screen, same restricted app store. It's sexy because it's Verizon. (Yes, that's the last time I describe Verizon as sexy, but some people are seriously excited about this.)

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But for several reasons, the iPhone's arrival to Verizon would be poorly timed, and Verizon's gains won't be as clear-cut as one might believe.

There's no doubt a Verizon iPhone would attract millions of buyers, and it would give the country's largest wireless carrier a chance to catch up with AT&T in attracting high-paying smart phone customers.

Since the iPhone's debut in 2007, AT&T has been its exclusive distributor in the United States. That means, for the most part, that the iPhone doesn't work with other carriers, and anyone who wants an iPhone needs to get service through AT&T. Many people held back because they already had service with Verizon or another carrier they liked or were apprehensive about congestion on AT&T's network, particularly in New York and San Francisco.

Rumors about a version of an iPhone for Verizon have swirled for years, but they have been rising in recent months. The Wall Street Journal has reported that an event Verizon is holding Tuesday is indeed for a Verizon iPhone, to go on sale at the end of the month.

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Path, as it's called, comes from Dave Morin, who played a crucial role in developing Facebook before he left the company in January. Unlike Facebook, which encourages people to expand their circles of contacts, Path is focused on sharing with just your closest friends -- and, for now, just photos.

Launched Monday, Path is a free iPhone app that lets you share photos taken with the phone with up to 50 people. Versions for other phones are coming.

Though there are other sites that let you share photos, Path sets itself apart by keeping things simple and only between friends. To start, Path will ask you to set up an account using your e-mail address and phone number, the latter so that people who have it can find you on the service.

Once you're set, tapping a green camera icon on the bottom of your iPhone screen will bring up the gadget's camera function, so you can snap your picture. Rather than adding a caption, you can add three types of tags -- people, places or things. If you tag a person, Path will give you the option of sharing the photo with just that person. Otherwise, you're sharing it with all the people you've preselected.

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"The results tell us a lot about mobile phone users and political trends," said Erin Lehane, CALinnovates.org Executive Director. "Now the next time you are on a plane waiting to take-off, you can just look at your neighbor sitting next to you tweeting on his iPhone and know that he is more likely to be adding applications to track where the nearest Tea Party rally is than your neighbor to the left of you typing away on his Blackberry."

Zogby online polls tend not to rank among the most reliable in the world of opinion surveying, and my gut sense on reading the press release was that it was highly unlikely that Californian iPhone users were gung ho Palinites. Indeed, as I was searching through the CALinnovates Web site to learn more about the organization, I learned that earlier in the year, the group had been touting a California-specific poll that found iPhone users more likely to support Jerry Brown for Governor while Blackberry users favored Whitman. So go figure.

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More scuttlebutt surrounds Apple's negotiations with the TV networks to offer new episodes of hit shows less than 24 hours after they've aired -- with no commercials. Consumers could rent the programs for 99 cents, and the "à la carte" option would help Apple compete directly with Netflix and Hulu. Not everyone thinks Apple will be able to dominate television with its usual steamrolling panache.

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Sales of smart phones in general rose 50 percent in Q2, and Fortune predicts phones will outsell PCs in short order. CNET details the rise in HTC device sales, and Fast Company takes a look at Motorola's weak results, despite its Droid phones.

In other smart phone news, India has reached the end of its rope with BlackBerry over monitoring within its borders, PC World is talking about the development of a phone for gamers, and ZDNet is covering the Samsung Epic 4G pre-orders that begin tomorrow.

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These wins for customer freedom center around a technology broadly known as DRM, which stands for Digital Rights Management -- methods used by hardware and software companies to allow customers only certain rights. It should more properly be called Digital Restrictions Management, because that's the real aim of DRM. People have found ways to break or work around DRM, but federal law makes it illegal to do so in most circumstances.

The cracks in DRM's legal facade are starting to grow, too. On Monday, the Copyright Office and librarian of Congress said, among other things, that it's OK to A) "jailbreak" your phone, thereby letting you install software not approved by the phone seller; and B) use brief excerpts of DVD videos in other works. Renewing a previously granted exception to federal copyright law, the office also said it was OK to unlock your phone so that you can use it with a different mobile network.

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