Stylish look is the 60% of the value to the customer. Soon it'll get to 80% or 90%.

I don't care about specifications. I care about the design. They all have music players? Nope. They have crap you just can't use after iphone's player. Oh, yes, it 'kinda' plays music.

What can you compare mobile Safari to? Is there such mobile browser out there? Yes, technically they do web browsing for years, and yet they all are light years behind the user experience Safari on iphone provides.

Technical specification development is a thing that is getting slower with time. Actually I believe that time is Now for mobile phones. What Really New features will they deliver in next 5 years? Oh come on, they do have those cameras and etc. already. More megapixels?

The biggest feature of 5-10 ahead is the design. It's the interface, 3rd party apps.

And who's that second one iphone competes to? What's that second phone that has SDK and an army of developers around with all those tools and stuff with their own WWDC or similar conferences? Nope, don't see such. Do you?

I haven't had a chance to use the iPhone yet but I'll definitely get it once my current mobile subscription plan ends. I think what really excites me is the possibility of surfing the net without worrying if the site is mobile ready.

The truth is a lot of what iPhone does and its accompanying infrastructure has been done but has there been an uptake?

For example: Sure we can install apps on our phones already and there are a lot of apps there to be installed. But do we do it? I don't. I'm not sure exactly why but I believe that there is the mental block that the phone is to be used as it is. This is common for the people in my house. I can imagine how the iPhone and its store can make the process painless or at the very least less painful to encourage greater use of our phones and its functionalities with more applications.

They've focused on the hardest bit - the user. They bothered to ask users what they wanted, and observed how they approach technology - and they've found out that 'toaster' technology is the best. Plug it in, and it works. Wish vodafone would do the same.

Remember to stick to the talking points: our service is supported by the most handheld devices, manufacturers and service providers worldwide. Emphasize the quantity, not the quality. We also have the hottest hardware like the BlackJack™ II, which has lots of features the iPhone doesn't, like Windows Mobile 6. It's just like their desktops at work running Windows Vista. No, wait, scratch that. Remember to downplay the Vista comparison these days.

Do focus on the multiple service providers though. Users love seeing lots of logos on product literature.

And stop trolling on the internet, Steve! Remember, every new "I'm a Mac" ad released before Windows 7 comes out IS COMING OUT OF YOUR PAYCHECK! GET BACK TO WORK!

I have one of those so-called “smartphones” (namely a Nokia E61i), which has the same functions as an iPhone, except implemented in a very mediocre way. In other words, it’s not that the iPhone does things that other phones don’t. It’s that it does them better.

Which phone am I gonna choose? The one who does email properly, or the one that takes a minute to open an email and chokes if there’s so much as an HTML tag in it? The one that actually lets me surf the web, or the one that runs out of memory every other page? The one that makes me navigate menu after menu, or the one with the best user experience? The fact that they created a phone that’s actually pleasant to use, that’s what’s revolutionary.

The strong developer network will result in a lot of great, cheap software that will put the iphone even further ahead of all other "smart" phones.

It would be nice to have the ability to text photos again, and cut and paste would be nice too.

Notice the response to the iPhone revolution - they raise the data plan costs. 'Nuff said.

It's good to actually see a company listen to what the people want (that's the only way you are going to survive in today's world). I'm glad it hasn't got everything yet because whenever a company tries to put everything in a product straight away it never works...iterative change :)

The software makes iPhone the most desirable mobile device. Apart from being a phone, a music player, a movie player, a browser, a games console and a navigation system, it can be anything you can think of and you don't need to be an MIT graduate to build it. No other mobile device is capable of this feat (unless you consider laptop a mobile device).

But the iphone ? I'm just not convinced its "revolutionary" because all the features it has exist already in other phones and more so - there are already phones which offer "touch screen" user interfaces. There are browsers coming out which easily rival the "safari experience" (firefox mobile, opera mobile anyone?)

I agree that their implementation is great - but its really only "geeks" that are frothing at the mouth to develop applications on a OS which has only sold as many phones (since it was released) as Nokia sells in one week. To suggest that this rivals other platforms - including the upcoming Android - is really stupid and is just promoting the hype surrounding the product. Business has already had huge costs in supporting blackberries - you think they are just going to go "oh well lets throw all that away so we can support iphones" - 100% unlikely.

I have an iphone and I love it. But to suggest its the most amazing thing since the wheel - its just exaggerating the product well above what its worth. Do you honestly think Nokia and all the other mobile brands are just going to stop innovating and think "oh well the iphone is just so good we can never beat it so lets pack up shop and move to iceland"?

Get a grip on reality people.

Both the hiptop and the iPhone failed to innovate as fast as anyone wanted. This "iPhone 2.0" seems to be really more like "iPhone 1.1", and Danger's UI which was amazingly simple and revolutionary in 2002 stagnated. I hope Apple are more successful in the long term, but we'll have to see. Apple's third-party developer program is pretty much identical to Danger's (though Danger didn't put the same ridiculous restrictions on 3rd party apps running in the background). It was a frustration for me and many of the other engineers. In the end it didn't bring the kind of innovation to the platform that we had hoped.

I also hope they manage to avoid the lawsuits that are surely about to arrive now that Microsoft has acquired all the patents on Danger's backend service infrastructure that MobileMe is modeled after.

Working on the first hiptop in 2001 people around me were resistant to shipping an SMS app because nobody in the US used text messaging back then. I was fresh off the boat (plane) from Australia so I had to be one of the voices of reason. The Silicon Valley echo-chamber is a powerful force for guiding companies in the wrong direction. The iPhone and the hiptop, while revolutionary in their own ways lack many of the basic features of mobile phones from the European and Asian markets. Perhaps it doesn't matter, but the Sidekick never made a significant dent in other markets it was introduced to.

People like Raph understand eventually. It just takes them a little longer.

Those who disagree are most likely carrying a brick in their pocket with the Blackberry logo stamped on it.

The iPhone is revolutionary because it has shifted the bar for all consumer electronics not just phones. Having used and abused an iPhone for a full year I don't want a typical remote control ever again and I'm anticipating multitouch features on the next laptop I buy (likely a second gen Air or MacBook pro) the iPhone ui is game like. Simple easy to use and even a year later I'm learning new features regularly (and as apple adds features with each release) I will probably get the upgraded iPhone because I really do use it quite heavily.

Note I am writing this on my iPhone something hard to do on most other phones.

Shannon

Take a look at the phones available in Japan and you'll see what i mean. They'll be laughing at the iphone.

Having used many many smart phones in the past year, BB 8700, Moto q9h (which shipped with opera 8.5), Palm Treo 750, Samsung Blackjack II, and and iPhone, and having played with many others, including the pantech duo and EVERY Blackberry, the browser experience of the iPhone is unparalled. If i had a diamond to try out i might feel better about it, but PocketIE and Opera Mobile 8.5 and the blackberry browser are NOT where safari is.

Furthermore, speaking a Blackberry dev (third party), the level of support for the iPhone Development today is drool inducing.

My quams with the iPhone? Simple. Keyboard. Give me QWERTY. I cant stand the touch keyboard. The App Store i dislike as well, but i can understand it. My conserns about backgrounding have been MOSTLY addressed, though not fully. Teathering is missing to, being a winmo user this is the best thing it has going for it. Plug in a winmo device and xp trys to use it to access the internet via internet connection sharing. Third, i am anoyed that i can't pop my at&t sim into an iPhone, but i cant do that really with a blackberry either.

All that being said i may get only anyway. But it depends on if it takes $45 a month to access push exchange.

The iPhone is not a technologically revolutionary phone from a hardware perspective, excpt for multi touch and with the 3g battery life. However, the software APIs and the ui is light years ahead of RIM and at BEST on par with winmo. We shall see how these new high end winmo devices come out though.

But there's another reason that the iPhone is great. It's not just that the device is well designed, it's that the *entire experience* has been well designed and thought out.

How often have you upgraded your smartphone's OS / features? Was it easy? Do you think a non-geek would be willing/able to do it? By integrating the iPhone into iTunes, something millions are already familiar with, Apple made software updates just another "sync" for their digital devices.

The App Store is another piece of the user experience. How hard was it to get new programs onto your smartphone? How much you want to wager that the App Store is going to make it drop-dead simple to browse and pick up new applications?

I would classify the iPhone as revolutionary because it brings smartphone technology to the masses. The technology was there before, yes, but not in a form that non-technical people could accept. The number of applications that will emerge once a larger portion of the population have smartphone like capabilities will be truly interesting to watch.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/10/technology/10phone.html?ex=1370836800&en=3cd888a50e71f88e&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

Although i love the IPHONE, i have the agree with the guy. There is only one thing that makes the IPHONE stand out from other phones, the rest is pretty standard. The Multi touch interface(Though until another company can offer a similar interface i am sticking with the Iphone)

The rest of the things are all standard, the camera is shoddy at best. And while everyone is excited about 3G, most countries in Europe and some in Africa have started upgrading their networks to 3.5G.

I also tend to not agree with alot of the coverage and hype i.e 'Welcome to the mobile revolution' that should actually read: 'Welcome to the Mobile Revolution in the USA' the rest of the world has been doing 3G, SMS etc for years.

But all in all, this iPhone 3G makes Apple look desperate. In a time when all people talk about is "iPhone Killers", it looks like the iPhone knows its about to be killed.

I reposted Ralph's rant here:
http://phandroid.com/2008/06/10/iphone-3g-deceitfully-mediocre/

And linked back to this article. Thanks RWW and Ralph for some great insight!

Like that bloke the other week who said his firm was sticking with Blackberry because 'all' the iPhone had was a 'good user experience'.

That said - I'm still not getting one - as a 3G user already I know that the service is hugely over-rated. Fast at times, but very unreliable, even inside major UK cities, and even with 100% HDPSA signal.

Equally, it still lacks what I'd consider necessary features - if I'm going to buy a 3G phone I do want it to be able to act as a 3G modem, rather than paying two 3G contracts. I can understand entirely why the telco's don't want to do that, but I'd be happy to have a contract with capped data.

And more to the point - it's not the only 3G phone out there crippled that way (even my new Nokia is a step back in Bluetooth connectivity from my last phone)

There are 3 parts to the iPhone.
1. The marketing. We know they are good at it

2. The device. They are also good at it. Sure, there are a lot of features that they don't have. But incorporating them is easy and "just" a question time, at some point we will see a nice camera, video, etc etc.

3. The software. Here is where the revolution comes, and it will require more than just time for Nokia and others to catch up. The time required to develop an app for symbian is just ridiculous; complexity, enormous. How often do people update their Nokia phone software? Do they even know how to do it? How many people connect their cellphones to a computer?

The way I see it, the iPhone will soon have an enormous impact on the mobile industry (we've seen nothing yet), not for how beautiful it is, but because of the huge amount of innovation that developers will add to it, and how easily regular people will be able to actually download - enjoy those new programs.

IMO the iPhone is way ahead. we'll see, I guess.

I agree the iPhone has been a great revolution in terms of UI & I gladly welcome that - at least, all other manufacturers are now seriously reconsidering their approach towards UI & we are seeing more innovative UI's than the iPhone being made - Win Mo 7 & S60 Kastor UI.

The specs are standard though - nothing to get excited about. GPS is standard on all Nokia high-end phones. & HSDPA has been available for a few years now.

With the SDK, everyone will be able to install apps on their iPhones - but even then, the iPhone would be a few years behind in terms of app functionality - S60 has a far greater developer & user base.

Go here:

http://events.apple.com.edgesuite.net/0806wdt546x/event/index.html

and watch the section of the keynote that starts around 1:27:00. Especially look at the comparison with the Nokia and Treo devices a couple of minutes after that. Not the speed differences, the appearance of the page. Yes, the other 2 can claim fast 3G web browsing on a spec sheet... but the actual result SUCKS. It's pathetic.

Spec sheets and checkbox features don't matter. How the features work for real people in the real world do.

Oh and Richard? Please don't start posting lightweight fluff like this just for pageviews. Informed, critical looks are cool... pretending some easily shot down comment has substance isn't.

But I'm a little insulted that people think I posted this just for the page views. Just look at the interesting discussion that's come out of this! I actually think Raph (not Ralph btw) is fully justified in saying the iphone is style over substance. Even tho I happen not to agree with him, you can't argue that phones out of Europe and Asia have had 3G functionality for 2-3 years now, plus some of the other features like GPS. It's a valid question: is the iPhone really revolutionary?

I personally think it's been a revolution in the Mobile Web experience, due to the UI and the fact that browsing the Web in the iphone is far above any previous mobile experience I had. But that's not to say that some of the features being touted today by Apple are revolutionary too -- 3G and GPS are clearly not.

The secret is in its implementation. I am so very glad that at least *some* consumer electronics manufacturers get it right some of the time.

I will try not to be depressed by the amount of idiots still prepared to count features and confuse design with looks.

The real hard part though, is to make something complex very simple. Real good designers only integrate what makes sense and dare to leave out features if they can't get them right (at least for this release).

That takes into account EVERYTHING that matters to the end user experience, such as battery life, form factor, ease of use, design, the possible use cases and even the network availability.

Pointing to all those so called iPhone alternatives, by leaving these factors out is exactly the reason why end users don't use all those features that are available since years from Nokia, RIM, Samsung & Co.

I have little doubt that carriers will sign up en masse, customers will see $199 as a relatively easy impulse buy, and once a couple 'have to have' iPhone apps start flooding into the market, Apple is going to do some crazy volume.

The demos that they showed in the keynote impressively showcased the capabilities of the platform. A couple of the gaming apps simply rocked. The different medical apps had me thinking Encyclopedia Brittanica: the Next Generation (I think that that's a good thing!); and the Band demo spoke to the earnestness and fun spirit of the platform.

And that's the point. It's a platform play that Apple is executing. They're not executing a feature list, as some of the commenters seem to suggest.

In terms of the capabilities of the SDK, look where they are enabling developers to hit the proverbial puck TO, not simply where the skater is currently standing.

Jobs was pretty transparent, in fact. He identified the market needs checklist that they have identified and then proceeded to pick each item off convincingly, IMHO.

I think of the WWDC Keynote as Apple's moment when they announced to their constituency base that they are committed to swinging for the global fence.

I have blogged on my take on WHY this is a big deal:

Jobs and iPhone: The (second) greatest unintentional head-fake in tech history?
http://thenetworkgarden.com/weblog/2008/06/jobs-and-iphone.html

Check it out if interested.

Cheers,

Mark

Having owned, tried, or tested nearly all top of the line smartphones out there (HTC, SE, Nokia), I can testify that sheer specifications do not do iPhone justice. And, even if you looked sheer specs only - taking everything into account - it's top of the line, with only a handful of phones that come close.

So, no, the argument that this is is a lot of hullabaloo over nothing is false. When Apple upgrades their iMac with a new CPU and everyone goes bonkers, that's overreaction. But the iPhone is one of the most technically advanced phones on the market, and - if you can forgive me a subjective pronoun - definitely the most exciting one out there. I do see what the fuss is about.

First, you're all right : my comment was bullish, and I intended it to be so. Why ? Because all we've heard these days on technology blogs (apart this one, maybe) is how Apple was going to make yet another revolutionary announcement, without anyone really drawing on facts to argue their stance, but with everyone going emotional on the subject - and that's confirmed by this post's comments.

On the substance now:

- yes, the iPhone has a great UI, a great style, and is in some ways a game changer

- no, I'm not a spec sheet freak, I was only remarking that the iPhone lacked features such as 3G connectivity, which on the smartphone market outside of America, are perfectly standard features that ARE INDEED USED by a lot of people. Demanding that a product shall give me the same features I've been using for a long time on other products of the same class seems just "normal", not being "spec sheet freak". Especially if I'm going to pay it $400 - now $200 with a 2-year contract. If you have a marvellous UI that does half the things you need it to do, your UI is useless.

- no, my comment was not only trying to shoot down the iPhone - that would have been vain. What was being shot down was the fact that this is a genius strategy for a genius product that was geniusly announced. And while it was indeed oversimplifying to state "update-or-die", prove me wrong when I say that without the price-cut and without the set of standard features that has been added the iPhone would have sunk quickly to the competition, no matter how great its UI is. Just because many of you are ready to throw a very large premium at an outstanding UI does not mean most of people are both willing and able to do so - in fact, it's the same story with the Mac. People are not ready to pay m uch more for a good UI : if it's there, great; if it's not, too bad. I want my device to fulfill my needs first (I said "needs" not "occasional great feature that adds to my spec sheet"), and then OK, if it's easy to use that's even better.

That's why now that the iPhone is going to come at a price that is nearer to the competition, supporting pushmail, and having 3G, I think it's becoming an interesting product that can make itself a good share on the market.

and, using a phone to surf the web is still way too much like looking at a house through the keyhole ...

We don't have access to the Internet you see, so we really appreciate you take the time to divulge this ground braking information.

Although I do have to point that maybe, just *maybe*, the reason why the iPhone is a great phone is not because of 3G, but because of everything else... And the point is that this "everything else" now comes with 3G, not 3G itself... I could be wrong though so don't quote me on that...

Ho, and thanks RRW for letting people with really interesting and original opinions express themselves like that, it really makes me want to come back for more...

Agree Raph's WAY too dismissive of the iPhone user experience, precisely for the reasons mentioned by @Todd. The UI and browser have changed the mobile industry for the better, no question about it.

The new phone is a 1.1 release. The big innovation news is 3G and price point. GPS, 2.0 feature set and battery life improvements are all welcome but incremental improvements.

Am I going to replace my 1st gen iPhone? Not right away. I can get most of the incremental benefits by running the 2.0 release, once it's jailbroken. I'll suck it up on the EDGE vs 3G gap and save money on data charges in the process. I do most of my surfing over WiFi anyway.

The new hardware is definitely welcome, but not revolutionary. Not upgrading the camera to at least 3 megapixels was a **huge** mistake.

Seems to me they should have added a $399 higher end phone option on top of what they released. Maybe it just wasn't feasible to get to the $199 price point without committing all the expected sales volume to the design they went with.

That's fine.

The sooner the rest of those lousy phones leave the marketplace, the better.

Oh, you know, maybe "Ralph" is actually Palm's Ed Colligan!

Those that keep saying "Raph and others will soon understand" I REALLY beg to differ. For some, buying the new cool looking (notice I said 'looking') device is what its all about.

I find it humorous how some of you think the people who are more interested in a device actually peforming will soon realize that its all about the style and not the features! Some of us have work to do that doesnt involve showing off our phones to everyone. Showing off a phone's FEATURES isnt bad though. But everyone got sick of me telling them my phone has GPS in it years ago.

Those that fork out money for a device because "the style is what the customer values!" obviously buy it for the wrong reasons.

Sorry, I take that back. You bought it for exactly the right reasons Steve Jobs wanted you to buy it for. Good job loyal customers!

A junky, cheap feeling plastic phone from Japan with 101 features doesn't matter unless people actually fall in love with the device.

Apple has almost put an anthropomorphic spin on this product.

Part of this hype is due to the very USA centric journalistic load of PR that is in motion around Apple.

Why is an SDK in any way revolutionary for the Iphone? Please remove the blindfold and take a look at J2ME, .net Compact framework and all the other development environments with several hundred million phones already in the marketplace.

Please admit that you WANT TO love this device and if it would have been dead ugly and super crappy, you would have loved it anyway.

10 million phones in one year is less than one percent of the world market for phones. The Iphone is nice but it will not revolutionize the telco market.

The iPhone isn't revolutionary in the sense of wiping out all that came before. But it's at least noteworthy for getting the smart phone right.

And Japanese phones with all their features?

Turns out, they're too complex to even use:

http://www.wired.com/gadgets/wireless/news/2008/06/japan_phones

It has been touched on in previous comments, but the reality of it is the same reason why Apple has a rabid and expanding fanbase. The same reason why nothing comes close to the iPod for music players. The same reason people pay $2500+ for a laptop.

It Just Works.

That's the secret sauce, and Apple is very blatant about it in the way they market things but people still don't get it.

If your primary focus is on "it works", people pay more. If I buy a phone or computer that just works, and works the way I want it to, then that is less time messing with it. Now, if I have a computer that simply works which allows me to work, I'm more productive and in turn make more money. Having a phone that works with my computer in the same way yields the same results. That's more important than a "pretty UI", but they're not mutually exclusive. Pretty UIs can be pretty unusable.

Apple hits on all 3:
- Seamless Device integration (amongst other Apple products)
- Functional User Interface
- Good User Experience

Before I bought my iPhone I spent 2 weeks inspecting the competition. I played with every Blackberry and Smartphone there was. I went into it discounting the iPhone until a friend suggested just getting one and jailbreaking it (since I did need SSH). Once the iPhone entered the playing field it automatically won in terms of integration and functional user interfaces. The email app is stellar, and I like the SMS app. Having Safari trumps the other browsers (though lack of Flash is disappointing, I don't miss it that much).

So, a short time later I have 3rd party apps on my iPhone and couldn't be happier. Having a terminal app with gesture support is the best mobile terminal app I've ever seen or used.

Revolutions don't come from fancy technology. They come from doing the same thing better than anybody else.

That out of the way, I'm also a European so I've had things like 3G, MMS, copy and pasting, surfing, open platforms, high megapixel cameras, video calls etc. for some time now.
And I've been using them. The Europeans, with simple triangulation positioning, have been locating pubs and ATMs too.

In fact, I don't carry an iPod anymore. I use my 8 gig phone to watch divx movies, play music, games etc. I use bluetooth stereo headphones and bluetooth keyboard to work on my mobile office clone.

I'm tempted by iPhone 3G not because of it's revolutionary design but because at that price it's worth picking up as an impulse buy. Unless the contract in Europe makes that prohibitive (6 month max contracts in Denmark, where I'm living at the moment).

David up at @17 made an amazing point. It is a disruptive piece of tech. Games have to be changed, not because of its feature list, but because of how the press is talking it up. Of course - without in-roads into Europe once Europhones get touch screen it's going to be a different story.

What I give Apple credit for is the style and simplicity - its open to a bigger market rather then just techs. The brand of Apple makes this desirable - they're cool right (right??!!)?

Advertising is king.

All of this talk about the Japanese laughing at our phones.. sorry, I don't think so. Surely tech heads will laugh and echo the same things about features like our tech heads do. However mainstream users are going to eat it up, because of the easy to use U/I. Its going to change the game over there and totally kill Docomo's Imode.

Trust me, japanese phones are hard as hell to use, I used them for eight years. Not one phone I ever owned there could browse the regular web, and good luck trying to get your media off of the phone. You have to buy separate software to sync anything with your PC/MAc.

Does a well designed UI mean that users are more inclined to use all functionality that is available in a unit? Probably.

But is a poorly designed UI the *primary* reason why previous 'smart phones' (with all the functionality of an iPhone) weren't used to their full extent? No.

There are two main reasons why these technologies were not used to their full extent:
1. Availability - 3G networks are still not as ubiquitous as some advocates would have you believe; and
2. (And this is the big one).. Cost - the charges incurred from surfing content and downloading emails on a 3G phone can be absurdly expensive. Packages from phone companies are still outrageously high for data downloads, and when travelling (perhaps the time when ultra mobile portable devices should be most valuable) the costs are higher than ever, because they are outside of your 'normal' zones of activity. So the very time you need to use your browsing, communication and downloading functions are in fact the times you are LEAST likely to be able to afford them.

The iPhone is NOT going to overcome the problem of availability nor the cost of transactions. But sales of the iPhone will have nothing to do with the available functions of the device, or the issues of availability and cost. The iPhone is a fashion accessory. And when it comes to charges for services, people will simply see the purchase of a premium product (the iPhone) as an excuse to pay extra for premium services (expensive data packages). That is, the same services you could get before on a smart phone at the same abysmal rates, but these rates will now be considered as 'appropriate' or reflective of the cost of a premium device.

So... people will use an iPhone for two reasons:
1. Because the user experience is comfortable; and
2. Because an iPhone (premium device) justifies the charges for a premium service.

And my bet is on suppliers selling out of their stocks of iPhones within a fortnight.

However, the commenters on this troll are up to RWW standards, it's a pleasure to read them.

Next time, give the space to a commenter who has something useful to discuss, like "Why can't other phone manufacturers make a phone that's easy to use for people who don't care about tech?"

The iPhone is the best phone out there, but it needs some serious competition.

So actually the iPhone is a product targeted towards dumb users?

Get real fanboys! Just admit you were stupid enough not to be able to use a damn phone! LOL

Sorry if you felt insulted, but it's a common tactic to post something inflammatory about an Apple product when a new one is announced and watch the pageviews roll in. And, frankly, Raph's comment isn't even remotely insightful so it felt like linkbait.

Is the iPhone revolutionary? Define revolutionary. It certainly is revolutionary on the user experience front. on the raw feature front? Nope. But did Jobs claim it was revolutionary? They're certainly not using that word on apple.com where it's touted as "Twice as fast. Half the Price."

So all Raph and you have done is setup a strawman and throw rocks at it. Congratulations, but that's meaningless. Raph makes a mistake in his original comment and repeats it in his comment on this thread, asserting that it's about the features - it's not. It's about how they're placed into a user interface that people LOVE to use, not one that they tolerate. If you don't value that, then of course you'll look at the raw feature list and say 'ho hum.' But if you want the iPhone user experience and yet the lack of 3G and a few other things has put you off, here you go.

Is the iPhone a great product? Yes. Perfect? Heck no. Like all products there are compromises (notably the keyboard), but the pentup demand is indicative of how much people hate their current phones UI and want to see what can be done by a company that's known for delivering on that front. If you want another phone... go buy one.

Get your facts straight. Apple is not a "relatively small company." It is the 16th largest company in the United States as measured by market capitalization. (SOURCE: Financial Times Global 500 based list as of March 31, 2008). Apple is larger than ConocoPhillips, Intel, Citigroup, Hewlwtt Packard, Pepsico, and Oracle. Apple is almost 3 times as large as Dell!

Steve

Who cares about the plastic back or the new headphone connector. Even the so-called new features (3G, battery life, gps, etc) are standard on any other smartphone.

but, listen up, all that is irrelevant. The most important part is exactly what he showed BEFORE the phone: the apps!

what will really make the iphone 3G revolutionary are the applications. We'll soon see a massive flood of apps developed by all sorts of people - from hackers to Fortune 100 companies. This - and not the improved battery life or 3G support - will make it truly remarkable.

so, let's stop talking about atoms, and start thinking on bits. The phone is now on software..

THIS seems to be what the hubbub should be about - the chance to utilize some solid technology to develop for a new platform. THIS is where the possibilities arise, and THIS is what jobs and co spent so much time on in the presentation. The rest ARE simply survival/evolution updates, but the door has been opened for EVERYONE to create new software that can drastically improve use. Anywhere.

Congratulations.