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The iPhone debuts this Friday, but you can't buy one in Vermont (unless you have friends or family in other states who will order one for you and send it up).

We don't have AT&T wireless here, and though you can supposedly use the iPhone here, you can't actually purchase it here (this is according to the sales guy I talked with at Small Dog).

In lieu of writing about the iPhone, I interviewed Burlington designer Jerry Manock on Friday. He lead the Industrial Design Team that produced the original Mac.

I've known of Jerry Manock for years. Until March, his consulting business was located in the office next to Seven Days in the Indepedent Block on South Champlain Street. In March, he moved out, and our office expanded into his old space. Plus, his talented daughter Abby has long been a 7D illustrator.

But I didn't know anything about Manock's Mac connections until Meghan D. forwarded me an email about a talk he gave earlier this month.

Luckily he was in town and agreed to a hastily scheduled interview.

We talked for over an hour, and I had to cut our talk down to just 1800 words or so. Sadly I had to leave out the story he told about Joan Baez visiting the top-secret Mac offices. But you can find it here.

Here's my story, with a PC or Mac poll. (Photo by Matthew Thorsen).