The free iPhone that I tweeted about last week arrived yesterday. The box is so beautiful that I might just have to look at it for awhile. And I might as well because I have to figure out some things before I can activate it.

I have to come out of the closet and admit that I am still running OS X 10.3 on my PowerBook G4. Yes, it is a bit long in the tooth. But I did not want to upgrade the OS when I heard of heating problems from others when they did so.

But the point is OS X 10.4.10 is a system requirement to use the iPhone. I have an OS that is just over two years EOL and can’t run an iPhone on it. Forget the fact I need a computer to use a phone, how iTarded is that? Well about as much as calling a new computing platform a phone.

This line of thought leads to Apple’s sloppy branding, which others have noted. Panther, Tiger, Leopard. Who has the time or inclination to remember point release associations? And yes, we are talking about something that is defined as a point release preventing me from using the iPhone. Which is not really a phone, I mean after nearly two months on the market I have yet to see someone actually talking on the thing. But I digress.

Can you believe that Apple has much better support of Microsoft’s OS then their own? I can sync the iPhone with my seven year old XP box currently running as a backup server but can not use a two year old Apple OS X on a laptop I use everyday. Why?

An obvious forced upgrade. So I need to either go out and buy a whole new machine (which I want anyway but am waiting on the next upgrade cycle including OS X 10.5). Or go out and buy an OS that is going to be retired in less then three months.

It seems my options are to choose one of the above, take it to the Apple store for activation (and in which case it won’t sync, which makes my Treo a preferred device), or wait. Any advice on how to activate with XP and then switch the phone to fully functional with OS X 10.3 or otherwise workaround?

Then again, the box is so beautiful that I might just have to look at it for awhile.