[techweenie]

For everyone still thinking "phone:"

---- from SiliconValley.com ----
One button. How we all laughed. A mouse? OK. A phone? They'll never be able to do it ...

Well, they did it. And as I write this, Apple shares are trading a bit north of $96. Which means the only folks laughing today are Apple CEO Steve Jobs and the company's shareholders, who are surely beaming with smug satisfaction over the reception given the iPhone Tuesday.

"This goes beyond smart phones and should be given its own category called 'brilliant' phones," said Tim Bajarin, principal analyst with Creative Strategies. Jupiter analyst Michael Gartenberg was even more effusive. "The iPhone is the most beautiful and functional phone I have ever seen," he wrote. " First time I held it, I was speechless for more than a few seconds."

Over at Bank of America Equity Research, Apple analyst Keith Bachman managed to duck the reality distortion field that held his colleagues long enough to consider the device's impact on Apple's bottom line. "We believe [the iPhone] is a major evolutionary step, given that it has effectively eliminated keyboard keys and plastic input keys and is using a touch interface with software as its strength," he wrote in a research note to clients. "Apple indicated that they expect to sell 10 million units in calendar year 2008. ... Given the nature of the device as well as the 'wow factor,' we believe that the number sounds low." And that may well be, especially if the iPhone proves to be everything that Apple and those few who've seen it claim -- an instantly transformative device.

"The iPhone breaks two basic axioms of consumer technology," wrote Time's Lev Grossman, who's had some hands-on time with Apple's latest creation. "One, when you take an application and put it on a phone, that application must be reduced to a crippled and annoying version of itself. Two, when you take two devices --such as an iPod and a phone -- and squish them into one, both devices must necessarily become lamer versions of themselves. The iPhone is a phone, an iPod, and a mini-Internet computer all at once, and contrary to Newton -- who knew a thing or two about apples -- they all occupy the same space at the same time, but without taking a hit in performance. In a way iPhone is the wrong name for it. It's a handheld computing platform that just happens to contain a phone."