Stephen: I must say that I had not heard of the account of Vieira and Lauer, I'll have to track that down. I do agree with you about the visual cues and the feel for a keyboard. I wrote about this is an earlier post:

http://correlate.wordpress.com/2007/06/14/rumor-apple-coming-out-with-phone/

I must say that I am very impressed, however, with the advancements Apple has made with their new visual keyboard. The demo on their sites is nothing short of amazing on how the keyboard knows and expands the touch point on the assumed next key. It does not get around the "touch" problem. For now, I am going with the Blackberry Curve 8300.

Lou, for all the RSS chatter about the iPhone, what has interested me the most is how little has been written about how good a TELEPHONE it is! Presumably, by now you have seen some account of Meredith Vieira failing to receive a call from Matt Lauer with the iPhone given to her for demonstration purposes on the TODAY show:

http://therehearsalstudio.blogspot.com/2007/06/friendly-to-which-users.html

There has also been no mention of the whole legacy of touch-sensitive interfaces whose displays (and, therefore, functionalities) keep changing. This has been researched all the way back to the days when Bell Labs was a research powerhouse, and they were looking for ways to make telephone operators (remember them?) more productive. Think about it, though: How often do you "fly" your hand-held device by touch, without giving it very much focal visual attention. I suspect that all of us are now very good at feeling our way around standard telephone keypads; and I bet there is a whole culture that can do the same with Blackberry-style "mini-typewriters." Now imagine what it would be like if your sense of touch were take away from you. My guess is that you would not be a very happy camper!