Some one crack this I phone I wish. What a great invitation for hackers.

Did you see Business Week's interview with Clayton Christensen, The Innovator's Dilemma dude? It's the 10-year anniversary of the publication of those sweet pages - anyway, in the interview he says the iPhone is not disruptive, but is sustaining. Taking an existing offering and incrementally improving it along the same curve. Yet how is the iPod disruptive, when it took existing mp3 players and incrementally improved them, albeit with a totally new user interface (scroll wheel), which would also be the case with the iPhone's new touch interface? I'm perplexed. Maybe the iPod or iTunes (taking existing services, peer-to-peer, and making you pay for it) were not disruptive, but merely unimaginably dominating incremental improvements, which the iPhone will also be.

Paul,
http://www.publictivity.com/iphonechat/
You may have seen this iPhone IM client - since you specifically mentioned that there will be no IM client *shipping* with the phone. It seems like a viable alternative and it works inside of your browser.

If true, these plans will move a lot of iPhones -- even when you factor in all the taxes. Since I communicate mostly by email, I don't need more than 450 minutes, especially with the rollover feature.

With all the hype and investment that Web 2.0 companies receive, it's striking that web based apps are either forgotten or looked negatively upon for potential use with the iPhone.

Why should Apple ship an Instant Message client with the iPhone when web apps like Meebo (http://www.meebo.com) exist?

Paradigm shift people.

Paul,

Naively, hasn't Apple been demoing iChat in some form on iPhone so far; thus, isn't iChat at least "an" IM client, even if not perhaps as open as one might like...?

Best,

Martin