The iPhone. I don't get it...

Thursday night, after the first day of Codemash sessions, I was sitting around with fellow SRT consultants Alex Gheith, John Hopkins, co-founder Bill Wagner and Microsoft DE Jennifer Marsman.  The subject of the iPhone came up.  My response -- "I don't get it".  Steve Jobs is a master at marketing and getting people "pumped up".  We all agreed that the iPhone has some interesting capabilities (like automatically switching between portrait and landscape modes when you flip the phone or turning speaker-phone on and off when it detects it's proximity to you).  But as a whole, it's not a revolutionary device.  According to Apple's website, the iPhone is a combination of three devices:

• Mobile phone
• iPod
• Internet communications device

Ok, I (and many other people) already have these capabilities on their current phone.  My Samsung i730 is sitting right next to me (today.  now!) and it's a phone, an Mp3 player and I can browse the Internet with it.  I can check email and surf the web.  I can watch videos.  But I can also develop apps for it!  I think the "oooo... wow!" factor is starting to fade on the iPhone and other people are asking the same question: What's so special about this?