The iPhone: reality calling

This morning’s Observer column

Let us now brandish a clove of garlic and dispel the Reality Distortion Field for a moment. The iPhone looks like a cute gadget, but it does raise awkward questions. Will its screen scratch as easily as the iPod Nano’s does? Will it be as unreliable as the iPod range appears to be? (I speak from bitter experience.) Why does it have a built-in battery, just like the iPods? Will users have to send their phones back to Apple when the batteries give up the ghost? How robust is the mobile version of OS X – the phone’s operating system? Why is the mobile connectivity not 3G? And how did Apple come to overlook the awkward fact that the ‘iPhone’ name belongs to Cisco?

Answers, please – engraved on the back of a dead iPod – to Steven P Jobs, Apple Inc, 1 Infinite Loop, Cupertino, CA 95014, USA.