iPhone: still a breakthrough?

Well, let me tell you something about the iPhone. Everybody is talking about the digital divide, then who can afford the $600 to buy this phone? Premium price for what? $499 for a model with 4 gigabytes of storage and $599 for one with 8
gigabytes, hmmm and $59.99/month for 450mins and $36 activation fee.

The value of this phone in most of the cases is becoming a luxury good. Should the regulator jump in and ask them how they setup this price? It sounds way monopolistic to me.

Should I buy a Porsche or a Huyndai? I can drive them both, but the experience is different. Its a preference or an income statement question?
How about the network? AT&T’s network comes in for criticism. It’s signal strength isn’t strong in some cities and the EDGE cellular network is “excruciatingly slowly".Nice, iPhone is only for cities. Great,imagine driving a Porsche on Pennsylvania turnpike, uphill-downhill, its not fun, right?

But overall, the phone is a superbly engineered, cleverly designed and imaginatively implemented approach to a problem that no one has cracked to date: merging a phone handset, an Internet navigator and a media player in a package where every component shines, and the features are welcoming rather than foreboding. The iPhone is the rare convergence device where things actually converge.

-E