If I had a photo of me running with a torch, I would have put it at the top of this post. Alas, I do not. I know lots of you already have iPhones, and you might be shocked, if not stung with a sense of betrayal, to learn that I don't. I won't go into why now. I've already done that in an epic and melodramatic fashion.

But times, they are changing. This morning, I pre-ordered my iPhone 4—a privilege granted me by Verizon, a company I've dutifully pledged part of my paycheck to for years now.

I was hopeful that the Verizon iPhone wouldn't see the same side of humanity that all but required a martial law declaration in the cyber streets leading to AT&T's servers in June 2010.  Fortunately, this chapter of the iPhone's storied history seems more civil.

But we all know that drama shadows the iPhone, and today I found myself standing right in the middle of it.

So, about today

First, I went to Verizon's website. In just a couple of clicks, I began the order process. The experience was clean and easy to follow. There were hardly any fields to fill in. In fact, that was problem: there were too few.

After filling out my shipping address, which was different than my billing address, I saw a glaring error at the top of the page: It told me that I had to enter a company name to continue.  Problem: there was no company name field on the page. I was not alone.

I was doing all this in Safari, so I figured no worries; I'll just try a different browser. Same problem in Chrome. Okay then, Firefox. Same problem. [tap, tap, tap]

Now I don't know about you, but something felt really perverse, even nauseating, about the idea of booting up a PC to try this in Internet Explorer. I was almost more afraid of it working in IE than not. So, sit back down: I didn't do it.

After reading a few message boards, I realized that I could do this through Apple. Why didn't I think of that? Apple will get it right, right?

When I went to apple.com, I again found myself in a clean, calm interface for ordering my iPhone. I just needed to enter my mobile number, last four digits of my social, billing zip code, and Verizon password. Easy peasy. Then: "password invalid." Okay, I'll try again. "Password invalid."

Oh, Apple! Right when I needed you most.

Now, I know there was no way that password was invalid because I had just used it to sign into my Verizon Wireless account in no less than three browsers. What's more, I use 1Password to easily fill or paste passwords, so I was definitely not typing it wrong.

Why me? Why now?

I don't know. I'll probably never know.  But I did get the order in. I decided to call my business address a residential address. That seems to have worked for others. Hopefully it'll work for me.

Oh, and if you're wondering if the Verizon iPhone has anything to do with why I'm moving into OmniFocus, the answer is yes. Yes, indeed. More on that later.