Is that Steve Jobs there to the left, or a cardboard cutout, or just an admiring fan?

I hope they sell the 10MM they predicted. It might make Palm wake up, but probably not.

Steve's way in the back. He offered to lay a free phone on me, but I explained that we bloggers must avoid even the slightest taint of worldliness or corruption, lest the whole structure collapse like a house of cards...

One of my coworkers picked one up yesterday. I must say that I can't _wait_ until they release a version that's A)80-120gigs, and B)isn't a phone. 'Cause _goodness_ I want one...

I think you are describing next Christmas's iPod!

Before you get all mushy about the wonderfulness of the iPhone, take a gander at what Steven Den Beste wrote about it, based on his experience as a cell-phone designer.

iPhone?

If many women's purses are any indication (can you say "rat's nest"? Men seem to make do with just a wallet), using 10 AA cells for the torture test may be too easy on the iPhone.

Well actually, according to those few people who got review copies two weeks ahead of iDay, they seem to do fine carried in ones pocket with change and keys. Not that I would do so.

I suspect that Apple did give them a torture test, because they announced the glass screen as a change, just a month or two ago...

Not that I would do so.

Why not? That's what people do with phones. It's a phone, for heaven's sake, not a splinter from the True Cross.

This is part of the Apple/Jobs problem for people like me...you have no trouble dunking the Treo in a purse or pocket, but heaven forfend you do such a plebian thing to something from Holy Apple. When yall start treating their consumer products like you do all other consumer products and therefore expect the same qualities from Bro. Jobs, guys like me will quit whining. Until then, all the flappy picture elements are just geegaws.

Geegaws running on WiFi, I will add...like I'm supposed to be impressed it's fast on WiFi. Knock us all over with a feather - it's fast on WiFi. Whooddathunkkitt? Two orders of magnitude faster than EDGE, WiFi is.

Buy it, put it in your pocket, get on a plane, go to Tucson, do a day's worth of business email, and let us know how it's going. That's what I'm waiting to hear, and I think I've got six to twelve months before I hear any of that. Sorry, but it only matters to me if it works for biz. Outside of that, it's just another toy, like my plastic Springfield .45 or my nail guns or my (ach) iPod. Fun, but not a moneymaker (for me, not Steve.)

So defensive! C'mon Scott, no one is suggesting you should buy one.

Actually, I'm just a person who treats all tools with respect, and I'm equally bothered that Charlene drops her Treo into her purse. I would not do that either. And if my phone is in my pocket, it's one without keys or coins. In fact I'm annoyed if I see an old crowbar getting rusty...

I don't much care for the chi chi aspect of Apple myself, though it's smart marketing. But really, your Apple-is-a-cult defense is getting obsolete. The cultists are now far outnumbered by the ordinary people who just want a tool to do a job.

And the biggest reason for the current strength of Apple is you. Or rather, tech guys with the same attitude as you who sneer at the ordinary consumer and her desires. They think they are being "businesslike," but in fact it's just the opposite. One of the classic business mistakes is giving the customer what he needs, not what he wants.

Maybe I'm overdoing the reasonableness thing—it's boring. Who's ever going to link to me? Maybe this is how I should be treating those who resist the True Faith:

"...I have been waiting for the ability to manipulate technology by pressing dynamic symbols for basically ever. If you find such things unpleasant, then I suggest you develop a taste for forced labor because by the year twenty-twenty all that sneer is going to get you is a slot in the underclass boiling corpses. Get with the fucking program. Come and touch the neon glyphs..."

As for people who wonder why the iPhone is selling well, they have obviously never been in the presence of true geeks who did things such as watch the Star Wars I trailer (before the painful disillusionment of Jar-Jar Binks), Firefly, or the iPhone demo, because the first thing that happens after such a thing is a collective breath, followed by "I want one."

Pretty. Shiny. Geek bait.

Incidentally, my wants are more abstruse. I want an Elizabethan theater, for example.

It always seems unjust that the people with interesting fancys never become the billionaires...

A book I've enjoyed is The Globe Restored, by Hodges...

Well actually they do, since some American did re-create the Globe, in London....

Every been up to Ashland? That's where my fancies developed. Okay, it's actually a modern theater in an Elizabethan style, but that's a little more workable in the long run.

I've never been there, but it looks like fun...