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# Apple - Rate Plans for iPhone - start at $60/month for 450 minutes of talk, unlimited data, 200 SMS messages. 5,000 night/weekend minutes, and unlimited mobile-to-mobile calling. Minutes roll over. You can pay more for more talk time. They also have family plans with shared minutes, though it doesn't look to me like it saves much. Existing customers can pay $20/30/40 for adding iPhone data to their existing plan with 200/1500/unlimited SMS messages. Plus, if you look at the "Pricing and Availability" section of the press release, there's a $36 one-time activation fee. [everybody]

# Apple - Activation and sync video - how to activate your iPhone from home (self-activation with iTunes is the only option), and how to sync it to your contacts, calendar, photos, music, & video. [everybody]

# AT&T Find iPhone at an AT&T store - a dirt easy way to find an AT&T store that will be selling iPhones on Friday.

# AT&T's iPhone page has undergone a major revision. There's a FAQ, and there are other monthly charges on top of the advertised monthly rate. These vary by location. In my case, they are $1.25 "Regulatory Cost Recovery Charge", 3.05% "Federal Universal Service Fund", and 6.095% "Other Government Surcharges". That brings the actual monthly cost for the $59.99 450-minute plan to $66.70.

# Edwin Tofslie - Apple Product Evolution - a large jpeg (3435x2280 pixels, 730K) showing the evolution of Apple's products in pictures. Cool. I saved a copy here.

# David Pogue at The New York Times - The iPhone Matches Most of Its Hype - amazing, but not perfect, says Mr. Pogue. Entertaining video (embedded below). Mr. Pogue also posted some photos taken with his iPhone. The pictures are good if there is ample light (there's no flash), and no motion. He didn't say exactly what 2 megapixels means, though. [iphonecentral]

These drawbacks may be deal-killers for some people. On the other hand, both the iPhone and its network will improve. Apple points out that unlike other cellphones, this one can and will be enhanced with free software updates. That's good, because I encountered a couple of tiny bugs and one freeze. (There's also a tantalizing empty space for a row of new icons on the Home screen.) A future iPhone model will be able to exploit AT&T's newer, much faster data network, which is now available in 160 cities.

But even in version 1.0, the iPhone is still the most sophisticated, outlook-changing piece of electronics to come along in years. It does so many things so well, and so pleasurably, that you tend to forgive its foibles.

In other words, maybe all the iPhone hype isn't hype at all. As the ball player Dizzy Dean once said, "It ain't bragging if you done it."

# Walter S. Mossberg and Katherine Boehret at All Things Digital - The iPhone is Breakthrough Handheld Computer - a review after two weeks of use. The keyboard was painful to use after three days, but just as fast as a Palm Treo after five days. There is no search feature, something I use on my Palm almost every day. Could be a problem for me. They warn that the EDGE network makes for slow browsing and email, but overall they really like it. This quote is from the video below: [iphonecentral]

"This is a fascinating product that I think raises the bar for all other smart phones." -- Walt Mossberg

# Steven Levy at Newsweek - At Last, the iPhone - an in-depth review.

Certainly all those people lining up to buy iPhones will find their investment worthwhile, if only for the delight they get from dazzling their friends. They will surely appreciate the iPhone's features and the way they are intertwined to present a unified experience. But in the future--when the iPhone has more applications and offers more performance, with a lower price--buyers will find even more value. So smart consumers may well wait for that day. But meanwhile they can only look with envy as the person sitting next to them to them on the subway, or standing ahead of them in the Whole Foods line, is enjoying the phone that finally fulfills the promise of people-friendly palm-top communication and computing.

# Ernesto at Torrent Freak - uTorrent for Mac is Coming: An Early Review - Yay! My favorite BitTorrent client is already in pre-alpha for the Mac.

The main reason I like uTorrent so much is because downloads are considerably faster in it than in any other BitTorrent client. This held true when I compared uTorrent Mac to Transmission and Xtorrent. The downloads speeds in both couldn't match uTorrent's. Azureus was the only one that came close, just as I had expected.

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