Jumping on the bandwagon of iPhone commentary doesn’t necessarily mean jumping on the iPhone bandwagon itself… but in this case it does, sign me up. This thing looks pretty damn cool.

Steve Jobs and Apple announce the iPhone and it somehow turns out to be the biggest thing in technology since Google, despite the fact that it’s not actually on the market yet (June 2007), it’s going to cost $599 ($499 for a 4 gig model), and Apple itself is being sued by Cisco because the networking giant actually owns the rights to the name “iPhone”.

How can it be that a phone is having such an impact? It can be because if this “phone” is even 75% as cool as it looks, (meaning it does even 75% of the stuff it is supposed to do, which is usually the case) then it could well change the market of handheld devices. It doesn’t actually have anything that other devices don’t have already, but it looks like possibly the most ingenious user-interface design to come along yet. And the touch screen patents that Apple has been hoarding recently may indeed create a one man market for Jobs. If it catches on you’ll have to buy an Apple if you want that interface. Period.

Jobs has also announced that there will be no (or very, very limited) third party software for the iPhone. You might be thinking, “Anti-trust lawsuit, anyone?”

That would make sense if this were 1999 and end-user applications where the way things got done. But this is 2007, and web-based applications are ubiquitous. It’s been argued by some over recent months and years that an operating system need only run a browser nowadays to be “useable”. The iPhone runs a sophisticated version of Safari, so really if you have internet connectivity you don’t need anything else.

It’s an MP3 player, a portable computer, and oh right, a phone. It will likely be the best six thousand dollars you ever spend. And I don’t even like Apple.