Can you take still more sensuality and spirituality from the blog?

The third generation of the iPhone is indeed here. The adepts at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco have seen the revelation: The new iPhone 3GS goes on sale on June 19th at $199 for 16GB and $299 for 32GB–with video, new autofocus camera, faster processor. “Must have!” as Steve Sande of TUAW writes. (That’s “The Unofficial Apple Weblog,” for the scognoscenti.)

Yes, the buildup has shades of the Burnt-Over District of New York State, circa 1840. But rather than the Millerites, the iPhonatics appear to be mollified by the announcement that the latest incarnation of what is often called “the Jesus Phone” will emerge from the heavens in less than two weeks. Promise.

Is this a classic case of cognitive dissonance? My wife dearly hopes not. As luck (providence? intelligent design?) would have it, her iPhone completely crapped out two days ago, and it turns out it was the battery. Just over a year old. You can’t replace the battery, you get a whole new phone, of same vintage, or pay a bit more get a new one. She almost got a “new” one yesterday, but ATT’s online account center was down, so we had to wait. Only after leaving the store in SoHo did we learn a new one was coming out today–not that anyone in the dang store would have clued us in.

So she is atwitter, you might say. Can she make it until June 19? Yes, we can.

Question is: Can I? Almost the same time she got her iPhone, I went the smartphone route with a BlackJack, which I like very much. The poor man’s Blackberry. But it always looks so dull next to the iPhone. The screen is going blooey, now, and soon there will be so much more than ever that she can do and I can’t.

And then–here’s the sexy part–you walk into that Apple store and you are enveloped in a cloud of sensory marketing. It is all so gentle, so sweet, so sleek, so easy to use…How could I not convert, yet again? PCs are Protestant, as I’ve written before, and Macs are Catholic. Even Pope Benedict XVI–the iPope owns an iPod–knows that. And I was once Protestant…

How long can I hold out?

Perhaps I should wait for the next Second Coming: That is, when and if Steve Jobs returns at month’s end from is unexplained medical leave. Religion is mystery.