Should Steve buy the iPhone

As long as you're throwing money away, can you buy me a parabolic mirror?

http://www.revas-holograms.com/mirage.html

If you're thinking about the iPhone I'd wait a few weeks to see how much it lives up to the hype and to see what problems pop up.

I'd add it's hard to judge without knowing what you are looking for in a phone. The iPhone's definitely not targeting the Blackberry market as it is lacking certain features. On the other side it's browser appears to be it's number one selling point. But the lack of 3rd party apps may be a big deal breaker for some.

What about other spec? $$$$ Not saying I won't ever buy one but I certainly wouldn't do so in the next month or two. I'm betting the price comes down and some bugs will be worked out. If neither occur I am probably going for another Treo.

Get OpenMoko, it's not available just yet, but should be this year. Plus their have been rumblings that the iPhone stole their design concept. Of course we will probably never know.

http://www.openmoko.org/

The original Mirage would be fine. Actually, you should just get one for yourself and put it in our office. That'd make me happy too ;)

1)iphone too expensive
2)doesn't do anything well, just a lot of things OK
3)have they got that whole exchange interoperability thing dealt with yet?
4)no 3rd party software
5)gen 1 apple items typically have problems, sometimes very significant ones.

1) "Too expensive" is in the wallet of the beholder
2) Things it does better than other smart phones:
* Web browsing
* Music/video playback (if you can live with no more storage than a nano has. Of course, that's their most popular iPod (:)
* WiFi downloading (more of a help to some than others)
* Going "woosh!" and making you happy :D
3) Exchange is irrelevant for many users, including me. But: it depends on what rumors you want to believe :p
4) If you usually have WiFi access, web apps are all you need. Things you can do with existing web apps:
* IM
* Edit/view MS Office documents
* Run a terminal window from the computer of your choice
* Play games (better than the iPod games ;P)
5) "Typically"? Gen1 anythings from anyone often have problems, it's true. However, many of Apple's new product launches have gone off without a hitch. And, you know, if you have a problem, that's what a warranty is for (:

Simple, because it costs money . less is more.

When my phone malfunctions I only loose my phone.

John Grohol's criticism of the iPhone was that it had an entirely visual interface, nothing tactile, but since you're a vision scientist maybe that's a good thing.

whatever happened to communicating via morse code or lantern signals in the night?

Look, it's cool, it will be the envy of all your friends, and it looks slick. Did I mention it's cool?

If Coolth weren't a factor here, go buy a Nokia.

Go buy a Nokia N95, E61, or E90 when they come out of stealth mode. The best OS on mobile (Symbian 9.1 - based on the legendary Psion) and it's not version 1.0 either. Nokia Series-60 UI's pretty good too. And the browser is Opera under the covers.

The big Noks ship with a 3.2 megapixel camera with a real, Carl Zeiss lens and a flash, too. And they have a 3G(UMTS) radio, (as do all those devices except the iPhone) so you can have reasonable data rates away from Wi-Fi hotspots.