Apple Reinvents the Phone: Jobs Unveils iPhone at Macworld

Apple chief executive Steve Jobs spent the better part of his Macworld Expo keynote Tuesday morning telling the same joke three different ways. He told the crowd packed into Moscone West that Apple was launching three new products: a widescreen iPod with touch controls, a revolutionary mobile phone, and a breakthrough internet communications device. Then he repeated the list, faster, and watched the room catch on. "These are not three separate devices," Jobs said. "This is one device, and we are calling it iPhone."

What Jobs actually pulled out of his front pocket was a 4.5-ounce slab of glass and metal with a 3.5-inch screen, no stylus, no hardware keyboard and no number pad — just a single home button below a multi-touch display he spent the next ninety minutes demonstrating with pinch-to-zoom photos, flick-scrolled contact lists and a working version of Google Maps. The screen, Jobs said, ignores accidental touches from a cheek pressed against it during a call. The on-screen keyboard appears only when an application needs it.

Apple says the iPhone runs OS X, syncs with iTunes the same way an iPod does, and will ship in the United States in June through an exclusive partnership with Cingular Wireless. Pricing was set at $499 for the four-gigabyte model and $599 for the eight-gigabyte model, both requiring a two-year service contract. There is no scroll wheel anywhere on the device; instead, album art slides under a fingertip in a feature Apple is calling Cover Flow, lifted from the latest version of iTunes on the Mac.

The day carried a second piece of news that landed almost as a footnote. Effective immediately, the company is dropping the word "Computer" from its corporate name and going forward as Apple Inc. With the new Apple TV set-top box also announced this week and the iPhone still five months from store shelves, Jobs framed the change as a recognition of where the business is heading rather than where it has been. Apple stock climbed sharply during the keynote and closed up more than eight percent on the day.

For South Florida shoppers, the iPhone will not appear in the Apple stores at Aventura or Dadeland, or at Cingular counters inside Sawgrass Mills and the Galleria, until later this spring at the earliest. By the time it does, high school seniors weighing graduation gifts will have had several months to argue about whether a phone with no real buttons can survive a summer at the beach, a backpack at the bottom of a locker, or a ride on the bus to the BankAtlantic Center. The argument starts today.