The iPhone

People have been conjecturing for years about Apple making a cell phone. Then they finally do it, and yet they were still able to blow away people's expectations. That's pretty amazing.

As for the phone itself... Well is there any piece of technology out there that looks sexier? I'm really curious just how functional it's user interface is. It certainly seems like a leap forward and Apple has a pretty good track record of making UIs that people fall in love with.

I'm also incredibly curious about just how much computing power the thing has. Jobs claimed it is running OSX. Clearly it is a lighter version of OSX, a la Windows Mobile vs. Windows. It seemed to have some Apple widgets, but what kind of apps? Will it be able to open Word documents and PDFs? Maybe Excel spreadsheets? It can obviously sync, but can you edit contacts, etc? And speaking of sync, will it sync with Outlook. Or will you have to do some kind of dance like where you use iTunes to put contacts from Outlook onto your iPod? With its high price point, it's going to competing with smart phones that all can do many of the above things.

Personally it's a very tempting gadget! Would it really replace my iPod? If so, then maybe the money would be worth it. It doesn't have enough to storage to be a good video iPod, but I have little interest in that kind of iPod anyways. The $499 iPhone has the same memory as my iPod Nano (4 GB,) though I would assume that a good chunk of that gets eaten by OSX-lite and phone related stuff. Would I be comfortable strapping my $500 phone to my arm and running for two hours with it? Would I be willing to switch from Verizon to Cingular also? Ask me in ten months when my Verizon contract is up...