The Americanization of Devon, England continues apace. Here in sleepy Exeter we’ve long had a MacDonald’s, more recently a Starbucks, and this month a sparky transatlantic style shopping mall. All we need to complete the process is an Apple store.

You’ll never guess what I disovered this morning while walking through the new shop zone? …

Well waddayaknow! I wonder if Steve Jobs will open it in person. Exeter’s geek community can hardly wait.

The upshot of all this is that we’re going to get iPhone availablility on our doorstep before Christmas. In my mind’s eye I can see the long line of people snaking down Princesshay and right out of town as we queue for a limited supply of these must-have gizmos.

Maybe there’ll be the iPod Touch too — great for web browsing, we’re told. And, of course, that other agonizing decision : to become a Macboy — or not.

I’ve used Windows PCs for years because life is too short for chopping and changing operating systems. Yet, almost my first serious computer was the earliest Apple, the Lisa. I already had the IBM PC in my office where I worked as a marketing manager for British Telecom. Those were the days when you had to input strings of code to do anything with it, and the WP was Wordstar, which operated solely from the keyboard.

Then the Apple Lisa arrived complete with built-in dot-matrix printer. I don’t think it was called a Macintosh in those days, but it had the very first use of “windows” as a feature, plus icons operated by a mouse.

Microsoft soon purloined these ideas, of course, launching its now dominant OS, Windows.

However, I got there first. I launched a series of publications for BT using a system of icons and a kind of window-like presentation. It was all in print, of course, but I did actually steal Apple’s clothes before Bill Gates did.

I think a statue should be erected somewhere, don’t you? Maybe outside the new Apple store.

England strikes back.

I like to post a serious, reflective piece on Sundays, so today I’m going to write about my discovery of the first machine-washable cellphone.

Incidentally, I never use the term “mobile” phone because they’re not actually mobile — they don’t have wheels or wings. They are in fact “portable” phones, but nobody would know what I was talking about, so I’ll settle for the American “cell” instead. Actually, that’s what they were called in Britain before “mobile” became standard, so don’t think I’ve gone all transatlantic.

The trouble with summer is that the drastic reduction in the amount of clothing worn means that objects get put in unusual places. Last week I went on a long, sticky walk in the heat with my nearly-new Motorola cellphone in a shirt breast pocket. When I got back I took the shirt off and put it straight into the washing machine and switched it on.

An hour later I was passing the laundry room only to be assailed by an ominous clanking sound as the machine went into top spin mode. A vision of the phone leapt into my mind’s eye.

I hastily retrieved the now very shiny object from the tangle of damp clothing and found it was totally dead. Being an optimist I opened the clamshell and left it in the sun to dry out.

Two days later it was still dead. I’d been using my old Model-T Ford phone for two days and was ready to take a decision to buy a new one.

A couple of hours later, I returned with a brilliant Sony-Ericsson portable phone. It had cost me a heavily-discounted £105 ($210), so I was pleased.

I was about to throw the nearly-new, bedraggled phone away when I decided to check it one more time. In the process, I wiped over the battery terminals, which were suspiciously cloudy, and turned it on. Hey presto, it jumped into life as if nothing had happened. It was like a corpse leaping out of a coffin in the rudest of health.

So now I’ve got two new phones and never know which one to use.

I doubt though that phone salespeople will be persuaded to use the line : “It’s completely machine-washable, Sir/Madam, and comes up like new time and time again. In fact, it’s superior to cotton, wool and polyester. We recommend Daz washing powder for the brightest wash.”

Well done Motorola. Hello Moto!

Last month I did a little piece on Tony Blair’s departure from office. I mentioned in passing that he was a something of a techno-dummy [British understatement].

I remember him at the British launch of Windows XP stumbling through a speech of eye-watering ineptitude. When he came to the bit where he had to explain what XP was, his wife had to step in and describe the product. Sooo embarrassing.

Anyway, now that he’s left office, more news of his monumental ignorance reaches Syntagma’s ears. It seems he’s bought his first cell/mobile phone — ever. It’s a red Motorola, which sounds like a freebie from Richard Branson to me.

After taking lessons in how to use the thing, he eventually managed to send a text message. The reply came back :

“Who are you?”

Perhaps “Take me to your leader” might have been better.

Back to the drawing board, Tone. No iPhone for Christmas for you.

Good news for those of us in Britain delicately poised between buying a Blackberry (I know I’m behind the curve here) and waiting for Apple’s iPhone to arrive. O2 is about to sign the much sought-after contract for the UK and may have it out for Christmas.

It means switching mobile networks for me — I’ve always bought Richard Branson’s Virgin-Motorola phones, and stuck with BT for broadband and landlines. O2, which started off at BT when I worked for them, is now owned by Spain’s Telefonica.

The BBC posted this at midnight last night, after spending most of yesterday at the top of Techmeme :

The agreement with O2 is reported to include Apple receiving a continuing share of the revenue generated for the network operator. The handsets are expected to be sold for about £300 and O2 will be hoping that the lure of the fashionable phone is enough to win customers from rival networks.

It certainly will — has done in my case — and will be a terrific boost to lacklustre O2.

I’ve been watching the hysteria around the iPhone in the states, and read so many reviews of it through the usual suspects, it would be hard to ignore the tiny beast when it arrives. And £300 is only $600, a smallish premium on the U.S. price. Normally, we can expect to pay double.

I wonder though why we have to be so far behind America in these launches?

Update: The Register has just published a piece claiming that the components in the 8Gb iPhone cost $220. That makes the expected UK price of $600 pretty fair taking everything into account. The $220 doesn’t include the cost of assembly, shipping, marketing, or the price of the software that makes the iPhone work. Clearly Apple is relying on lifetime revenues from O2, and sales of other media to make its fortune with this gadget.

Update 2: Bob Cringely is now reporting, “It is my understanding that Apple and AT&T are planning a fall rollout for full 3G iPhone service.” Let’s hope O2 is up to speed on that one.