Do I want one? Hells, yes!
Will I buy it? No.
From everything I've been reading about the iPhone, it's living up to its expectations. I really think that the iPhone will raise the bar for cell phones in general. There's a lot of slickness and ease of use to it that people have been craving in a phone. Look, I like my RAZR just fine. It's a really good phone. But it's lousy at pulling e-mail where it won't read some and won't display attachments. Voice mail is decent, but man the visual e-mail on the iPhone will be so much better, so that I can skip old messages.
Heck, how cool is it that you can just buy the phone off the shelf. No asking Chad to grab a phone from some samples, assuming he's not with another customer, and then begin the long phone activation process. Now you can do that from home.
I think the limitations of cell phones are the keypads. Current cellphones have to make everything work using the number keys and a couple of extra buttons. Think of that T9 for text messaging, or triple clicking a button to get the letter "C". The iPhone dodges that problem by creating a redefinable interface where if you need different buttons, you can generate them. (Incidentally, this technology was the theory behind the displays on the Enterprise on Star Trek: The Next Generation.) I think that's brilliant. And, if you can't text by feeling the buttons, that's okay… maybe it'll cut down on the text-and-drive people.
The other thing about it is that it's not for everyone. If you don't travel, don't have a job where you need an array of communication options, then just get a regular cell phone. But, for those of us that travel to a comic book convention every couple of months and run our own business, the idea of being able to check my e-mail from the shuttle from the airport to hotel it's going to be great.
So you're probably wondering why I don't have it yet, aside from having had plans to see Ratatouille (which, by the way, was excellent) that kept me away from an Apple store? Well, it's a first-generation product. I'll let people shake it out for a while and let the fine folks at Apple make it even better. I don't like that it lack voice dialing features, as that's something I use all the time. Yes, I talk and drive from time to time, and being able to say "Call Dad Mobile". And, I think a physical "press to talk" button will be needed, rather than the touch screen, because you'll need an equivalent of the flip-to-talk feature that I have on mine.
And, my Alltel contract doesn't expire for a little while yet. I need to let that lapse as well. I'm waiting for the next revision, which I think will be killer. And if the next generation comes out before the end of the tax year, so much the better.
So how cool is it to be Steve Jobs this week? He releases the iPhone and Ratatouille on the same day.