It’s here! almost. Apple finally announced its long anticipated iPhone. The iPhone has a sleek, minimal Apple design with only one visible button. The most amazing feature is the beautiful 320 x 480 pixel multi-touch screen. Apple did an amazing job utilizing the multi-touch technology. The source of the technology is unknown, but similar companies have been pioneering the technology such as JazzMutant, which has had an up to ten finger multi-touch LCD product for a few years now called Lemur. The iPhone has a lite version of OS X which runs an amazing interface. Unfortunately third party development will be filtered by Apple. The phone gracefully switches between playing music, receiving calls, watching videos, visual voicemail, google maps, internet browsing and more. The two initial models will come in either four gigabyte or eight gigabytes of storage along with speaker phone, two mega pixel camera and wi-fi and bluetooth connectivity. I will be initially sold exclusively with Cingular mobile service in the United States for $499 and $599 respectively.

Personally I have a few issues with the iPhone. First the iPhone’s screen is begging you to watch videos on it, yet it seems like with only 3.5 or 7.5 gigs available once accounting for the operating system, there isn’t much room for videos and music. With today’s video and music collections, 3.5gb will get filled in a second. Second, Google Maps is crippled since the iPhone does not include GPS. Driving on the freeway or highway looking for directions can be difficult when you’re constantly moving. Third, I was disappointed with the lack of iChat AV. One of the fun features with all the new Macs is the built-in iSight and iChat AV. It would be great if people could video chat with each other, which is possible on almost ever other continent. Even worse, the iChat looking SMS is quite dated when considering many phones are AIM or Yahoo! Messenger enabled. Plus 2 mega pixels is quite low for a camera. Fouth, the lack of battery replacement will stunt business sales when considering that people may need to be on their phone all day, out of the office. If the phone dies on them, they lose money. Finally, Apple will lose a lot of potential killer apps by closing the phone to third party developers.

I’m hoping the iPhone is still only in concept mode and even if it’s not, there are still many references to other iPhone models soon to be announced. These current previews of the iPhone are scheduled to be released to the public in June.