Asavin Wattanajantra recently wrote a list of things he’d learned in his first 7 months as an IT journalist. Which pretty much covers it, but since this week marks my second full year working for Micro Mart, I figured I’d, er, shamelessly steal the idea and write my own list.

1. Free stuff is great. I utterly agree that we love getting free stuff, particularly when you don’t have to give it back.

2. You rarely get the free stuff you want, though, because everyone else wants it too.

3. PRs often have a radically different idea of what constitutes a “high-res” image than we do.

4. Nothing you’re actively looking for, be it story, specifications, or pictures, will ever show up until after the deadline has passed.

5. … but on a weekly magazine you can usually just use it next week, instead.

6. Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.

7. Anything that can’t go wrong - because it’s all sorted out, everything’s fine, everyone knows what they’re doing and there’s loads of time left! - will go wrong. Things that will easily destroy any sense of organisation: illness, injury, weather, trains, and babies.

8. Speaking of trains, somehow you still always manage to go through a tunnel at exactly the most inconvenient moment in a mobile phone conversation.

9. I will never learn to carry a laptop around. Those things are heavy.

10. Apple product launches are hypnotic (and people will re-fill your wine glass when you’re not looking, which adds to the effect). If Steve Jobs is enthusiastic about it, I will want it. The effect takes a couple weeks to wear off.

11. … admittedly, I’d still quite like an iPhone, though, so that’s not really worn off at all.

12. Just because a product is billed as the fastest/most efficient/quietest/smallest/etc, doesn’t mean that’s actually true. And even if it is, it’ll only stay true for about a week.

13. Making puns based around Flash Gordon references for stories about flash memory stops being funny really fast.

14. Getting noticed by Google News is awesome.

15. The more often you update your blog, the more attention you’ll attract. (Actually, I think I learned this one from just blogging, generally, in a non-work sense, but shhh.)

16. No matter what you write about, someone somewhere will disagree with you.

17. But hey, at least that means they’re reading!

18. I really don’t understand how or why to use Twitter, but I’m sort of trying. In between waiting for it to stop being broken.

19. The best sentence I’ve written so far is “Take these rats off my Internet face!” Context? Er, no. I’ll just let that one stand alone.

20. There can never be enough coffee.

Steve Jobs keynote speeches are always exciting. Even if I know there’s no way I’m ever possibly going to buy whatever it is he’s going to announce, I’ll still be a bit excited to watch the show. (You only have to look at previous entries in this blog to know I’m a bit of a Jobs fangirl, in spite of my best efforts to resist his charms.) I’m not entirely sure why, but there don’t appear to be scary brightly coloured spirals spinning round in his eyes while he’s on stage so I’ll assume it’s down to charisma rather than brainwashing. It’s safe, then, to say that whatever new product Steve flaunts tonight, it’ll be achingly cool and desirable as all hell.Those in the know are predicting that there’ll be some kind of new ultra-portable Mac announced. Ultra portable is, as they say, hot right now; solid state drives and touchscreens are everywhere, and Apple definitely knows its way around both of those. So there might be some new mini-laptop or tablet PC style thing on the way.

Another logical, sensible prediction is that there’ll be an upgraded iPod of some sort on the way - maybe a new Nano, with increased storage capabilities, probably 16GB. Slightly less likely-sounding rumours include the iPhone getting 3G capabilities, or possibly a bigger hard drive; or, that Apple is about to include WiMax on Apple notebooks.

Obviously there’s no way to know for sure. After all, this time last year the announcement of an Apple iPhone seemed pretty unlikely, so there’s always the possibility that Jobs could throw us a complete curveball. I’m not going to make any promises to eat various items of clothing live on telly or anything, but here are some things that almost certainly won’t be announced tonight (but would undoubtedly be cool even if they were):

- An Apple games console. Because if you think about it, the kind of thing Apple would be likely to create in the gaming arena pretty much already exists in the form of the Nintendo Wii.

- A toaster. Because that’d be daft.

- A Polaroid camera. Ditto.

- A new range of home furnishings - in a range of metallic colours, and also available in classic Apple gleaming white.

- A helicopter.

Time for a cup of coffee, now, I think. Apple probably won’t be announcing that, either.

So, now we know when we’re going to be able to buy an iPhone in the UK, and how much we’ll have to pay for the pleasure. (9th November and £269, respectively, in case you didn’t actually know that and I’m talking nonsense.)

The new question is, then, do we still want one?

Over a million of the things have been sold in the US, and the price has already been dropped, so some of the brand newness of it has worn off a bit even though it hasn’t been out for very long. But we’ve known all about the iPhone (its shiny looks, its stunning capabilities) for months and months and months, and the hypnotism of the Jobs has had time to wear off.

Personally, although I desperately wanted an iPhone when I first saw one… I don’t think I do any more. Part of that is because I’m just quite miserly and unwilling to shell out that much money for a phone, and part of it is because I already have a perfectly serviceable phone and MP3 player. But part of it, I think, is because the novelty’s worn off. Yeah, it’s super cool, but … who’s going to use all of its features, anyway? Certainly not me. What I would probably do with it would be to drop it, and then get mugged.

Not ideal.

You’d have to be living in a cave not to have noticed, really, but just in case: the iPhone has gone on sale in the US now. People queued for hours and days to buy one (even though it didn’t sell out) and despite all the stalking by people from the Internet, most of them actually managed to get home with their iPhones intact and unmolested.

It’s strange, because you’d think that all the hype from Apple - starting months and months ago! - would have lead to some kind of media burn-out. By now, people should be glazing over at the tiniest mention of the iPhone’s name, but they aren’t. They’re still excited, and willing to part with hundreds of dollars for a phone whose battery life is… well, less than ideal.

It’s probably not surprising, though. Apple can do no wrong these days. Despite my usual anti-Apple stance (I resent the smug tax you have to pay on all of their products) I can’t help but drool whenever I see an iPhone.

How, exactly, are they doing this? It’s almost scary.