Everyone’s heard about the iPhone by now. I’ve already had to field a common question a few times–”Why would anyone pay $500 for a phone?”
I think Apple has done this potentially amazing product a disservice by labeling it a phone. When you think about it, the iPhone is really a tiny, feature-packed computer. One of those features happens to be mobile telephony. Maybe the pending patent infringement suit from Cisco over the name will be a blessing in disguise–and just as Apple gave meaning and ubiquity to a previously meaningless word (ahem, iPod), they could come up with the new word and the new standard to which all other mobile communication devices are compared.
Anyway, when the day comes that I pick one of these up for myself (it really is a question of when, not if), the phone function is probably the one I’ll use the least–though it is a necessity these days. In the end, I’m looking forward to dumping my Palm, phone, iPod, and point-and-shoot for one convenient device. The drawback is that I’d have to switch carriers. I’m not particularly in love with my current carrier, but I hear negative after negative about Cingular. The timing’s not great, either–I’ve got about two months left on my current contract and could go month-to-month until the iPhone’s release. But my current phone is on its last legs. Do I keep it together with paperclips and duct tape or settle on a Windows-based smart phone for a year or two?
