Becoming an iPhone Believer

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Second, it gives Cingular even greater incentive for ensuring excellent coverage, thus heading off complaints from new iPhone users. Nothing will make Cingular look bad like lackluster network performance for new iPhone owners.

Next, I'm not all that worried about the fact that the phone doesn't support HSDPA (that stands for high-speed downlink packet access, and it's essentially broadband for the wireless phone). Yes it's fast, but it's not yet all that widely deployed in the U.S. Why release a phone that supports a technology that only a few people can use? Adding the components to support this high-speed access would only boost the cost to build it and leave a lot of frustrated customers wondering when Cingular will get around to deploying it in their area. Truly put off by the lack of HSDPA support? Wait for iPhone version 2.0.

The lack of wireless downloading directly to the iPhone itself is another source of disappointment. To that I respond, "What is it about 99¢ per download that you don't like?" Adding a wireless download means cutting Cingular in on the revenue pie, and that means boosting the price. The 99¢ price for iTunes downloads is something of a sacred cow at Apple, and anything that could result in raising that price isn't likely to happen in the foreseeable future.

Worth the Wait

And then there's the price of the phone itself: $499 for the 4GB version and $599 for the 8GB version. Yeah, those are high prices for a cell phone. But the iPhone is a little more than a phone. It's a video-ready iPod. How much do you pay for an 8GB iPod nano now? The answer: $249. Add that, plus the cost of a gorgeous, wide video screen to the price of, say, a Palm (PALM) Treo 750, which I see listed for $399, and you're at a price that's well north of $600.

If your list of iPhone complaints is growing the more you think about it, think back to the original iPod and what's come since. If there's something you still don't like about it come June, save your money and wait a while. History shows that it's only going to get better with time. The iPhone isn't just one product, but I think the first of what will be many generations of iPhone. The iPod took more than five years to reach the point it has today, and the iPhone is a direct result of that evolutionary process. And evolution, as we all know, takes time.

Hesseldahl is a senior writer for BusinessWeek.com and his Byte of the Apple column, covering all things Apple, appears biweekly at www.businessweek.com/technology.