Apple, Inc is up 8% in the stock market after they announced a new cross-technology product at Macworld 2007 today, the Apple iPhone:

The iPhone is a smart phone running some version of OSX, sporting a wide-screen touch-sensitive display, iTunes, Safari, Widgets, and other mac apps, 8 GB of Flash Storage, support for GSM, Wifi, Bluetooth, and Edge networks, 5 hours of talk time, and 16 hours of music time. The phone is just 11mm thick, and will go for $599 ($100 less for a 4GB version) exclusively from Cingular. Deals were also announced with Yahoo for push-mail, and Google for Maps. Some problems with this in the future:

• Vendor tie in w/ Cingular will limit market share
• Availability will be a big issue–can Apple meet the demand?
• Battery-life issues will be important. Everything here is innovative, except for battery life, which has not improved
• Can Cingular provide the iPhone with enough bandwidth?
• Scratching, smudging and assorted damage to the touch-screen
• TM lawsuits from Cisco / Linksys, who own the iPhone trademark
• Lack of open standards for programming in the new “OSX-like” iPhone OS

I predict, like the iPod v1.0, future versions of the iPhone will solve these problems and more. I’m still buying one in June, though! Update: Engadget has a nice comparison of the size of this baby on their blog. It’s a nice size!

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