So the iPhone does exist...

And it's only for Cingular... ugh!

Well, I guess I won't be getting one since I use Verizon and the disappointing Chocolate phone which I just signed for another 2 years, with a year and half left - and there are no indications CDMA will be supported. Beyond not being able to use it, this thing looks sweeeeeeet! Oh man, I am blown away.

The iPhone is 3 devices wrapped in a single unit: It's an iPod, it's a phone and it's an internet device, the interface is the dessert topping. The interface consists of a full screen and no physical buttons. To interact with it you use simple gestures with your finger, like tap to select something or sliding your finger up like a flick to scroll. It also support multi-touch which you can use for other actions like zooming in a picture. This device also knows which orientation it's at, being either landscape or portrait will give you slightly different views depending which mode you are in. If you are listening to music, you can turn you phone on its side and scroll through your albums with Cover Flow. Movies are always displayed in landscape view.

The phone portion looks amazingly simple to use - so straight forward that my business partner who can never figure this stuff out should be able to use it, and use it to its potential with out asking too many questions. One of the best features is the random access to your voice mail. What is it with Verizon (I assume the other services do this too), where I have to listen to my old messages before I can listen to my new messages? The options are so backwards that I sometimes don't even want to see what the caller had to say but just call them back and see what's up. That's how bad the voice mail is. Good job on that Apple.

The internet features are pretty cool - I don't know if any of these services are extra in terms of retrieving mail or getting on the internet - I suppose they shouldn't be because its using a local Wi-Fi connection or hot spot - but you never know with these phone companies. It's not a huge selling portion to me but it's got huge potential.

The other big ticket item is the appleTV box which I find very cool. It's a little box about half the height of a MacMini, which has a wireless device that looks for local computers and iTunes running. You sync to to and can view movies, listen to music, gaze at your photo collection, listen to podcasts and video podcasts all on your HD television. It supports 720p resolution which I know some HD fanatics will piss and moan over. I can just hear it - 'Where's the true 1080p...", blah blah. This is the first device of this kind from Apple so relax. One nifty feature which Jobs explained in the keynote was the auto syncing ability. If you are say subscribed to a show on Apple iTunes, you can have it auto download those unwatched files to the appleTV box and watch when you are ready. A TIVO like experience but limited to what you have paid for or what is running on a someone's computer.

Other than that only an updated Airport Extreme was released but not mentioned at the keynote.The new device has a new form factor and looks just like the appleTV box, maybe so you can stack them. It also support the same 802.11 a-g and now n standard.

s For all of those many, many rumors floating around I guess about 90% of them were wrong. I love it when we are all wrong, makes this that much more fun.