Sitting here in the Bloghaus with a few Nokia bloggers. They are slamming the iPhone. Can't expand memory. Can't update battery. Closed software environment. Two years of "selling your soul to Cingular." Glass keyboard sans tactile feedback. Scoble says iPhone OSX is as much OSX as WinMobile is Vista. Scoble also points out that it's vaporware, and a lot can change between slideware and the reality of manufacturing.

I'm sure they are all correct. 

And it doesn't matter.

The iPhone will overcome these limitations.

Think of it as a statement of intent: Apple is moving into consumer electronics.

This iPhone is a 1.0.

Compare it to the first, clunky, underfeatured, overpriced iPod. Sold well.

Obsolete almost before it shipped.

Archaic just a few years' later.

And a bellwether of consumers embracing a new category.

Apple knows how to iterate, to adapt, to refine.

And the charismatic Steve Jobs can sell ice cubes to Inuit.

So, 24 months from now...

• Apple's released its fifth iPhone
• The Apple consumer electronics campus is adding buildings faster than the Mac campus is being abandoned.
• Microsoft shows Vista Mobile vaporware
• Dell and HP announce phones running on OSX-mobile

Competition at the OS level should drive phone makers to differentiate in the application layer. This will, in turn, push interoperability and standards, good for consumers, hard for manufacturers.

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