iPhone iS iHuge. iWant but iCan't have. iPout, Not.

If there's one thing Apple knows how to do, it's inspire customers. I was an Apple Mac user faithful from the first Mac Plus until I finally gave up the ghost and changed to Windows 95. Frankly, I tired of watching all my friends use Windows to do what I would like to do on my Mac but couldn't, all the while I spend my time explaining to them that the Mac really was better. Not.

But Apple's changed since then. They have their finger on the pulse of consumers, not just counter culture computer users. Apple is the new Pepsi Generation, but just a lot cooler and a lot more successful. Business isn't their focus for sure. And so far, and for the foreseeable future, Apple will continue to thumb their noses at the corporate elite and keep right on serving the masses with great music, phone and computer consumer products. Those Apple products will make it into the corporation anyway so why deal with all the hassles that business, security and IT folks bring. At least that's their philosophy and it seems to have worked so far. There's something to be learned from this philosophy. You can't make everyone happy, but the customers in your target market - delight them. Others will follow, and the rest don't matter.

Apple knows their customers are passionate and faithful. Apple continues to come out with industry changing consumer products in music and now the consumer phone market. Will the iPhone have enough battery power? Probably not. I can barely keep my Motorola Q running on one extended battery for a full day with all the email I get. Add to that playing music and the less than speedy Cingular/ATT EDGE network for web access and it will probably need charging twice or three times a day. But the faithful won't care because their Apple phone is cool and they know everybody else wants one too.

And yes, the iPhone has limitations when it comes to corporate Exchange email integration, security features that IT and Corporate Security organizations want - it won't matter at least not in the beginning. Either Apple or someone else will come along and address those needs. I hear my peers in the security and IT world talk about the iPhone being such a security concern. Answer: If iPhone security is that concerning to you, then you have a bigger problem in your security plan 'cause there are plenty of other devices on your network with just as many or more issues than the iPhone. The iPhone isn't the last networkable device that's going to throw a wrinkle in our security plans so rather than expecting the world to stop changing on us, we have to adopt strategies that assume things will change and we know how do deal with it.

I want an iPhone but I'm pretty sure it won't meet my needs right now. I've gone through the "cool" phase with phones and PDAs and I've learned that small, light, good email integration, very good phone quality, and a little bit of Internet is what I like. GPS would be next on my list. Music? Great, but not if my battery won't last because I need all of those other things first. I feel the same way about the MacBook Pro laptops. Sure, they now can run Windows and they are BSD based. But my world I work in is Windows and Linux which I have with XP, Vista and a big ol' built in laptop hard drive with VMware and lots of OS images on it. A friend told me after having his Intel-based MacBook Pro for six months; "ya know, it's surprising how little I use the Apple features and how much time I spend in Microsoft applications on my powerbook." Another business friend took the fastest Mac Pro desktop available and after less than two months, ditched OS X and installed Windows XP on it. You might want cool, but if it doesn't work for you it's going out the window pretty quick.

So I guess the lesson for me is that you can't always get caught up in cool. Sometimes its worth it, but not when you know what you want or what you need. Sure, if an mp3 player fueled my everyday world then maybe, but that's not the world like live in most of the time. mp3s for me are best when I'm sitting in front of a Fender Stratocaster playing some tunes. Now, speaking of cool... Let's talk about Stratocasters! Got a minute?....