@Bob: A few things to note.

The iPhone is plenty sturdy. If you look around on Flickr, you can find pictures of an iPhone that was run over by an eighteen-wheel truck; the case is a little scratched up and the plastic covering the antenna popped off, but it's still perfectly functional.

It also supports push e-mail from Yahoo Mail, although not from other services, to be fair.

As for third-party apps...well, I'm working on one right now, and the download statistics Apple released suggest I'm not the only one. The toolkit for the iPhone is great, and I think there will be plenty of third-party apps by September.

mememe!

"Really? By making commercial tourist flights so that Branson could turn a profit? Yeah, wow that will do it!"

If you're holding out for somebody to fund real space research that will truly improve our lives out of the goodness of their hearts, you'll be waiting a long time indeed. This may currently just be space tourism, but the research and development it funds will help make spaceplanes a reality. And fast intercontinental flights *will* help society.

And yes, Branson may very well make a killing. That's his reward for pushing the envelope. What's wrong with that?

Kirk vs. Picard has an iPhone as one of the prizes, but it's rather more involved than either of the contests you mention.

http://startrek.fanlib.com/

Because it is the most intelligent user interface I've seen in years. And because I can afford the phone or the service but not both at once.

Amazing--the Reality Distortion Field can even influence telecommunications grids...

A few things are revolutionary about the iPhone.

1. It's the first multi-touch consumer product. Prior to this, multi-touch has been limited to very expensive custom applications.

2. It's the first phone engineered for a good interface. Look at the iPhone commercials--have you ever seen a tech device advertised with nothing but a pair of hands showing how it works? I certainly haven't. If it's successful, we could see a much greater focus on making phones easy to use. (And I mean "easy" in the sense of "designed thoughtfully", not in the sense of "cutesy and simplistic".)

3. Apple got a *lot* of leverage over AT&T. Notice that the only branding on the phone is in the upper-left corner of the screen, where it lists the network it's connected to, and notice that Wi-Fi and dock syncing haven't been disabled. If the iPhone is a hint, we could see that sort of thing become more common, with the handset makers becoming more powerful so they can compete on handset quality without the networks crippling the phones. This is great news for gadget fans--even the ones who hate the iPhone.

You mean the Maps app? Google didn't write that; Apple used an API Google licenses to cell phone developers. I seem to remember hearing that Google was stunned at how nicely the iPhone Maps app came out.

Um...y'know, if you want to control your iPod and see what song is playing, there's a screen and control buttons right on the damn thing.

To me, this product screams "solution looking for a problem".