It’s been four or five days since Steve Jobs announced the new iPhone at MacWorld, and I think most of the Internet buzz has died down by now. It would be impossible to provide you with links to all of the articles, commentaries, and reviews of this new razzle-dazzle cell phone, and a lot of them are simply regurgitations of the basic press release material. But you might want to read David Pogue’s review (with his “answers to iPhone frequently asked questions”) here; and Tim O’Reilly’s plea that OS X developers be allowed to develop applications for the iPhone, lest it degenerate into a “fancy tin can”; and Steve Borsch’s review, which reminds us that, up to now, “smart-phones” have merely been “okay”; and David Weinberger’s JOHO reminder (by way of Global Voices, which has some really interesting commentaries from around the world) that there are a lot more important things that we should be focusing our attention on besides a fancy new cell phone.

The Global Voices commentary is all the more appropriate when you remember that we’re not even going to be able to get our hands on this new device for another four or five months; at this point, all we’re doing is reacting to a spectacular piece of showmanship on Steve Jobs’ part. This is a relatively unusual phenomenon at Apple: in most cases, when Steve announces a new product, it’s available that day on the Apple Store website; I can only remember one or two occasions where he announced a new product a month or two before its actual arrival.

Giving competitors 4-5 months to respond to your announcement before your product is actually in the hands of customers seems a little risky; and giving analysts, pundits, and bloggers 4-5 months to realize they were over-excited about a product that isn’t so perfect, after all, is also risky. There has to be a reason for all of this, and it’s all the more intriguing when we learned, a day or two later, that Apple had not even concluded its negotiations with Cisco, which allegedly holds the trademark rights to the name “iPhone.” Some analysts were making dark comments that Jobs felt pressured to announce a new product now because iPod sales are about to collapse; I think it may have been simply that Jobs couldn’t find any other good “platforms” (conferences, Olympic Games, or other extravagant events) in June when he could announce the existence and the availability of the iPhone.

The other thing I find curious is that nobody seems to have asked any teenagers or young 20-something adults what they think of the iPhone. Most of the analysts, pundits, and bloggers seems to be in their 30s, 40s, or 50s; who cares what they think about Apple’s new device? Can you imagine if the success or failure of the iPod had depended on what a fat, balding, 45-year old computer journalist had thought about it in 2001? Most of these toads still don’t have an iPod; so who cares what they think of the iPhone? Conversely, if Apple did some focus-group studies of hip teenagers in Shanghai, Hong Kong, Tokyo, San Francisco, New York, London, and Paris — and found that they didn’t like the iPhone, then they’d know they were in trouble. And if they haven’t done such surveys and focus-group studies, they may be in for a surprise.

There’s a lot of talk about how the $599 price-tag for the 8GB version of the iPhone means it will only be attractive to the business customers who are currently using Treos and Windows Mobile devices. Phooey! I don’t know how savvy Cingular’s marketing folks are (at the moment, they’re the only telco selected by Apple to act as a service provider), but everyone knows that the way to hide the high cost of a smart-phone is to bundle its price into a two-year phone-service agreement. The consumer thinks he’s getting the phone for $99 (or even free), but the actual cost of the phone is buried invisibly in the $79/month phone bill.

In the end, Global Voices may be right: we may realize, in another couple of weeks, that the iPhone announcement was a huge, but irrelevant distraction from the things that really matter; after all, the iPhone was announced on the same day that Emperor Bush announced his “new way forward” plan for Iraq. But if the level of interest does keep up, and if the iPhone really is as successful as many people think it will be, then it will demonstrate Steve Borsch’s point: we’re satisfied, but not really happy, with the cell phones we’ve got now. And we want something that will make us gasp with awe and delight every time we turn it on… It sorta reminds me of the way I feel about my Mac, every time I turn it on …

I should note that I’ve read dozens of articles and reviews about the iPhone, but I haven’t even seen the video of Steve Jobs’ presentation. And I certainly don’t have the status or reputation to ask Apple to show me a “real” version of the product; heck, even David Pogue was only given an hour or two to play with one before he wrote his article. So I’m in no position to offer any substantive opinions about it, all the more so because the actual product that’s released in June may or may not look like the prototype that Jobs displayed at MacWorld. Will I order one as soon as it’s available? Well, maybe … but I’m not sure I’m ready to deal with the hassle of switching my cellphone service from T-Mobile to Cingular.

On the other hand, I have to admit that I bought every model of Apple’s hand-held Newton when it appeared back in the mid-1990s. I have to admit that I’m an unrepentant gadget freak .. so, yes, it’s only a matter of time before I have an iPhone to play with.