The unremarked Apple iPhone thing

CNBC is on, in the motel room. “Chatter chatter chatter, skepticism skepticism, but it’s a cool phone, but it’s so expensive, we’ll have to wait and see, blah blah,” says a barrage of analysts.

Maybe I’m a dumb person. No doubt I am. Because I looked at the three things that Apple released yesterday: A really cool phone that works over GSM and Bluetooth and 802.11 networks, a TV appliance that rebroadcasts HDTV throughout your digital household, and a very powerful 802.11 network router.

And now I’m in the motel, and calling the people on the TV “morons”—clear indication that I’ve either watched too much House, or I am the moron these days—because these “tech” analysts are looking at the iPhone and thinking of it as a Cingular telephone.

I see myself sitting in my 802.11 network coverage area—at home, in my chic downtown neighborhood, in my motel room, in my school—and using my iPhone as an instant-on VOIP device. Fuck cellular. Apple (and Cingular), as far as I can tell, just implicatively PWNED those big cell towers cluttering up in your neighborhood, replacing them with fiber and future 802.11 network modes….

So what am I missing, exactly?