Rumor Mongering

There seems to be a healthy business on the net in prognosticating Apple's product releases. Even if there's no money to be made in it, it should at least drive traffic to your website (or humble blog). So I'm gonna get me a piece of that sweet, sweet pie (apple pie? Too obvious). I will preface this by saying that I have no sources or insider information. This is just good old-fashioned guessing.

There's a lot of buzz that a 3G version of the iPhone is imminent. It only makes sense. If you have the most powerful phone from a computing standpoint (and like it or not, there's not much even close to the iPhone in that regard), then it stands to reason it should run on the fastest networks. Recently, the founder of Digg.com (which I admit I've never been to) postulated that the new version of the GodPhone (as some technorati have dubbed it) will have a camera on its face in addition to the one on its back. Why? Video conferencing, of course! He speculates that Apple will include a mobile version of iChat and equip it with a camera that you can hold to your face so your friends can see you. This is a cool idea. I mean, if you had told me when I was a kid that we would have pocket video phones by the time I was 25, I probably would have squealed and giggled like an excitable school girl (yeah, I wasn't popular).

Here's where my rumor mongering begins: Assuming that Mr. Digg's guess is true (which many people seem to believe it is), I believe that there will be a folding, external keypad on the new iPhone. People won't want to hold a phone the whole time they video chat, and they won't want to carry around a piece of plastic to prop it up on. Apple's big on form and ease of use, so it only makes sense that they build in a stand. Plus, as sleek and classy as the current iPhone is, the lack of a real keyboard is still a big gripe for a lot of people. So, build a keyboard into the back of the phone that slides out, but can also be folded back to become a stand for video conferencing. I would draw a mockup, but I don't think it would do a better job of getting my point across.
It only makes sense, and I truly believe that not only will Apple work this in to the iPhone in some form, they'll also make it look damn good.

And whether any of this is true or not, I want one.

Cheers,
Eli

Crosswords (typical difficult Friday)-
NYT- 16:05 (made it harder than it needed to be)
NYS- 13:39
LAT- 17:40
CS- 5:02
Y! - 8:25