8. It's pricey. As much as $600 for the phone. As much as $100 per month for a reasonable service plan. That's almost $2000 for the first year of iPhone, which is a lot of cash. Worse yet, after the first year of service, first-gen iPhone users will still have another year remaining on their contract with AT&T but by then, Apple could well be up to its third iteration of the iPhone.

7. No MMS. The absence of MMS technology means that you can't send or receive pictures via text messaging. This takes about 70 percent of the fun and usefulness out of the phone's camera. This is something that will likely be rolled into a future version.

6. Touchscreens lose their sensitivity. The hard reality of using a touchscreen on the go is that, over time, it will lose sensitivity and begin to malfunction. Ask anyone who has toted their Treo or Palm Pilot around in a bag or pocket for a few years.

5. No IM. Initially, the inability to use instant messaging apps may seem like no big deal. But it's a huge convenience for both workplace and social connectivity. BlackBerry users and Windows Mobile devices can already IM away.

4. No enterprise e-mail connectivity. Chances are that if you are reading this, you'll want to use the iPhone as a work-oriented device. Unfortunately, if your workplace doesn't utilize POP or IMAP e-mail servers, you're out of luck on the e-mail front.

3. No third-party applications. Given Apple's insistence on closed environments, it's no surprise that iPhone will not support third-party applications unless they exist within the Safari browser environment. Congratulations, Apple -- you have just stifled innovation and development on your brand new phone for years.

2. Locked to AT&T? In the eponymous 1984-themed commercial that marked the debut of the Macintosh, Apple went out of its way to emphasize freedom of choice, freedom of life, freedom from the hegemony of the PC. Does anyone else think it strange that Apple is now releasing a phone based on a closed OS with virtually no third-party application support and limited file flexibility? The clincher is that iPhone users only have one choice of service providers: AT&T. June 29, 2007 could mark the moment that Apple becomes the sort of oppressive, inflexible bad company that it has long accused Microsoft of being.

1. The smug factor. How excited are you to be on a plane surrounded by legions of iPhone users, each of whom is smugly confident that their iPhone has transformed them into a superior being? Admittedly, this complaint ranges into grumpy old man territory, but still. Remember when Apple used to be cool because it was alternative? On June 29, those days are officially over.

George Jones has been an avid technophile since the day he got his first Commodore 64 (and almost electrocuted himself by cracking it open with the power on).