I sat in the keynote. Well, that’s a lie — I stood in the keynote because I was not fanatical enough to stand in line for more than a half hour. I watched the normal procession of events — Steve Jobs showing increasing sales, growing market share, previewing some new ads (including a PC & Mac guy ad), and then it was on to the products.

The [Apple Logo]TV is the lamely monikered evolution of the Airport Express. I use an Airport Express now to play music on my stereo, and it does that well, but I wish I could control it from that room instead of going to the host computer. I also use it as a wireless to ethernet bridge to provide net to my TiVo — looks like the AppleTV doesn’t do that neat trick. A shame. But, still, it looks nice, and I’m getting one. I know what to expect from it — I’m not buying any iTunes video content until we see 720p video from them. I stopped by the Apple booth on the show floor and looked at the video quality. Funny… the scenes from the Office and the other video they showed looked really good on the giant screens in the keynote, but the video I was watching on the plasmas in the Apple booth showed obvious artifacting that comes from watching compressed 480i video on a big screen TV. Still, I’ve set my expectations and I’m sure this is going to meet those.

But then came the big announcement. The one that everyone hoped was coming, but wasn’t sure would happen — the iPhone. And I admit it, I was sucked in. It looked gorgeous. The user interface is a piece of work unrivaled. It has some wonderful features — the proximity sensor is a wonderful idea. But some blatant lies were told, and we ate it up. It wasn’t until I had some time to dissect it, that I recognized them.

First lie — it runs OS X. Really, Steve? It really runs OS X? Don’t you mean some crippled version of OS X? Saying the iPhone runs OS X is a lot like saying my HTC Wizard runs Windows. It’s technically true, but it’s a pretty disingenuine statement. If the iPhone ran OS X, I could run more than just Safari and Widgets. I could run an SSH client, for example. I could install applications.

So let’s call a spade a spade; it runs Mac OS Mobile. There. Now that’s a truth we can live with.

Next up, it’s running the best browser in the world — Safari. Okay, I’ll let the bias slide and let you call Safari the best browser in the world, but we all know that it would be running Firefox were your statement actually true. But that’s not the point. It’s not running Safari any more than my HTC Wizard is running Internet Explorer. It’s running Safari Mobile. Spin it how you like, but it’s not Safari. It’s a version of the browser optimised for a small screen, with some nice zoom functionality. Well, my phone will also show you an optimized version of a page, and it can also render it as a desktop would, full size, with scrolling.

Now, don’t get me wrong; the iPhone does some cool stuff. It’s got an iPod Nano built-in. In fact, it’s a widescreen iPod Nano that plays video. That’s pretty cool. It’s got a killer UI; the scrolling is splendid. My phone has Windows Media Player. It’s not near as cool as iTunes, and won’t play my iTunes music without some converting. So I just don’t use it to do that. If my Phone synced with iTunes, I probably would.

The list of features that are supposedly exclusive to the iPhone are trivially debunked, except for Visual Voicemail. That’s pretty nice, and others should adopt it. But Google Maps with GPS, push IMAP, threaded SMS chats — all handled trivally by my HTC Wizard. My Palm Treo and Sidekick II both did push IMAP and threaded SMS.

Now let’s look at what my phone does that the iPhone can’t or won’t do. I can install applications, including some that provide the functionality of the widgets. I sat in a session today, and there was no wireless net to be found. So I used my HTC Wizard as a bluetooth modem and connected to the net that way. I can replace my phone’s battery when it dies. I can use a soft keyboard to input my data, or I can flip out the nice, wide, and easy to use QWERTY keyboard for fast entry of text. And, trust me, predictive text is not unique to the iPhone (though their implementation of it to avoid mistypes on the soft keyboard is certainly a good idea).

And here’s a really nice feature of my Windows Mobile device; I can choose my carrier. Apple and AT&T have seen to it we can’t do that. And without a contract, I can buy a new phone for less than the iPhone, including the substantial reduction that should come with a 2 year contract.

No, I think I’ll be passing on the iPhone. If they release an iPod with a similar UI and a hard disk, I’ll certainly consider that. But for the time being, I remain unenthused by this phone.

But I’m sure excited about AppleTV! Sigh. I guess I’m not totally immune to the distortion field.

[Edit: 1/16/07 - I've since cancelled my order for the Apple TV. I fell out of love with it as well. I'll just convert my iTunes library to MP3 and use my TiVo.]