Speculation about the "iPhone" has been rampant, with discussion, speculation, mock-ups, fakes, history, concepts, and jokes like the one above.

Here's my prediction about Apple's phone: it's just a phone. Yes, there will be a camera and a click wheel, and games, and it will play music, and it will make calls of course, but it will still just be a phone.

JUST A PHONE??? This is Apple and they always make this groundbreaking stuff, so how can it just be a phone? Actually I may be overstating things. It probably does not have a camera, and may well not have all sorts of other features that high-end phones have today. That's because Apple wants mass appeal and they want something that is basically a low-price, simple device. A very simple device. Because simple devices are easier to design, make, sell, support, market, and everything else. Apple wants to do one thing well with this phone, one thing so well that it is head and shoulders over the other phones that are out there. So what is there?

Integration. This phone will be so integrated with the iPod, the Mac, and the internet that it will be hard to tell where one ends and another starts. Many of the features that would normally be crammed onto a small display and keyboard will be missing entirely, transferred to your desktop. Syncing will be effortless and automatic. Your address book and calendar will be there. And your music and games. And the phone will have multiple identities, like fast user switching, to allow families and other groups to share one phone. You'll be able to listen to your voice mail on your iPod or in front of your TV (via iTV) because your Mac will automatically download voicemail for you, and you will be able to manage it in iTunes. You'll also be able to use the phone as a voice recorder and have it drop those files into iTunes. If you call someone else's phone (any phone) and get voicemail, you'll be able to press a button and have your phone leave a standard message.

Wonder why speech is going to be so much better in Leopard? You'll be able to have your Mac call you as long as it is connected to the internet to provide status information or to pass on voice mail it has received. There will be exclusive Apple ring tones that you buy on the iTunes store. You'll be able to use your iTunes account to pay for time used on the phone. And you'll be able to use your phone number as an identity for email, iChat, and other forms of communication through the Mac.

Your calling history will download to your Mac and display in nifty ways. If you pull up a contact in the address book you'll see when you last called that person. Reminders will be able to ring you phone when they occur. The phone will be able to take part in audio iChats too. You'll be able to start a chat on your Mac and then dial out to anyone you want to include. Chat invitations that come in will be routable to your phone. All phone functions like call forwarding will be done on your Mac.

You'll have a choice of bandwidth too: need it fast, pay for the call and deal with a slow transfer rate. If you can wait until you get in the office, sync through Bluetooth for a faster choice. Or for best speed (USB 2.0), use the cradle. The screen and keyboard will adapt to the environmental light level so it is never dim or glaring. It will have an audio input jack so you can hook up an iPod to it and play through one set of headphones attached to the phone.

But despite all that, it will still be just a phone.

Tags: Apple, iPhone, Wild Guesses