Well, it seems like everyone and their mother (seriously - my mother just emailed me from her iPhone) got one this weekend. The iPhone has etched its place in stone as what will probably be remembered as one of the most successful product launches in history. Good for Apple.

So here's why I don't have one yet:

It's still the early days.

I'm sure many of you remember the original Apple products of the recent decades - the Newton, the Bondi iMac, the 5GB iPod. Certainly, none has had the buzz that the iPhone did - or the features - but they've all come, gone, and been replaced. And one thing is always true: the 2nd generation is always better.

Now, I'm not one of those people that always wants to buy the 2nd gen. I've bought plenty of first generation products (including the Newton) and been pretty happy with what I get from Apple most of the time.

However, in the case of the iPhone, my biggest issue is not with needing a 2nd generation product, but rather with needing a 2nd generation distribution system. I understand that Apple's deal with AT&T may have been the only way that the iPhone got to market - and I value that assessment. But I still think that the distribution model is crap.

The iPhone will only be the ultimate mobile device once the phone becomes unlocked. Unless I can use it on the Orange network in the UK with my Orange SIM or the TeleNor network in Norway with a TeleNor SIM, the iPhone is a "US-Only" device, which honestly, for me, is useless. International travel will mean paying huge amounts of money just to show the damn thing off to fellow travellers. I mean, AT&T's international data roaming charges in the UK are $19 PER MB! That's nuts. I could eat that in a couple seconds on an iPhone.

While many companies are working feverishly to hack the iPhone to unlock it using a variety of methods - and the end may justify the means - it's certainly not the Apple that I thought would come out with a phone.

I thought that Apple's phone would be network agnostic. It would operate with any data network, any provider. Just give it a SIM card, it would give you the ultimate mobile experience. That's what my RAZR and Nokia does - and while they can't do what the iPhone can, one does give me 3G and bluetooth modem capabiliites, which means my laptop can go at true broadband speeds and do all the things the iPhone can do.

Will there be an alternative? Well, I'm waiting to see what the European version has in store before I commit. To me, that should be an opportunity to show distribution model version 2.0.

I spend enough time on my computer already

Oh, this is a poor excuse, I'm sure some of you will say, especially iPhone owners. It's not that the iPhone will make me spend more time in front of a screen (although I'm sure that will happen), but I've already optimized my world so that I'm broadband available in as many places as possible. That means that I'd use my iPhone actually quite little.

The problem is that I'm too wired already. I have 8MBit broadband at home on WiFi. I go to restaurants and coffee shops with WiFi. I have a 3G phone with Bluetooth modem. And I'm used to my speed. Frankly, the EDGE network puts the iPhone on the bottom end of my broadband-enabled devices. And while the portability and cool user interface is great, this will relegate the iPhone to being a secondary device for me.

It will end up being something that I take and show off to friends. And while it's appealing to have it just for that reason alone, well, I don't even have time to do that either.

I'm still waiting for the killer apps - Terminal and iChat AV

Another thing that makes the iPhone secondary - the lack of apps and lack of open architecture. I think Safari on the iPhone is great. If anything, it shows the world that Apple can make a great browser.

What I need, however, is terminal. I need to SSH into client servers, my Asterisk-based PBX, network routers, whatever. I need that on a mobile device - and for now, that means that I need my laptop.

Then, I need Voice Over IP. I hate mobile phone carriers - they're one of the last remaining dinosaurs of the telecomm age - with their dedicated fees, contracts, and specifically licensed frequencies. Their business is made to thrive on limiting the technology that people use. There's no better evidence of that than the AT&T distribution model: "you don't come to our inferior network, you don't get an iPhone."

In the world of fixed line carriers, VOIP is the equalizer. It's destroying the phone companies and thank god for that. Skype may single-handedly bring down some of the biggest names in the business world - not because it will take all of the customers, but because it has popularized VOIP.

And VOIP will do the same thing to mobile phone carriers too. So far, however, those carriers have succeeded in keeping VOIP off of their networks - and in the iPhone, they've succeeded again. This is Apple, the creator of iChat AV, the free video/audio/text chatting application that allows free communication anywhere in the world with another Mac. That's been running on their OS X systems for years.

You're telling me that they couldn't get it running on a OS X on a phone in 2007? Doubtful. They were told they couldn't do it by AT&T. Until I can use iChat AV or my Asterisk VOIP phone system from my iPhone, once again, it will be a secondary device for me.

I have a better iPhone - the Mac Book Pro

It's clunky, it's big, it doesn't have 8 hours of talk time, but the Mac Book Pro is a whole lot more useful to me than the iPhone. Over a two-year period, it will probably cost the same.

What makes my Mac Book Pro so useful is that I can find a new application, download it, and install it - and by extending its capabilities in software, I've made it just one more bit useful to me in the real world. Simple concept, eh?

Try that on the iPhone. iWidget? That's just a webpage formatted for an iPhone. If you can't download and install software, it's once again, just a toy. For serious work, I need something that I can install an app on.

Even my Blackberry does a better job of being able to load Apps than the iPhone. I go to google.com/gmm on my Blackberry and it asks if I want to download it. Sure the iPhone comes with Google Maps, but what about the next killer app? Do I have to wait for Apple to come up with a deal with that company before I see it on my phone? Probably.

Sorry, Apple. It's great. But you've made too many sacrifices to make this the ultimate convergence device for me. I'll keep my Mac Book Pro, my iPod 30GB, my RAZR, my Blackberry, and my Shuffle for now. If you change the distribution model, unlock the phone, allow apps to be downloaded, or give me VOIP - I'll bite. Just one of those will be enough even, because that means that deep down underneath all of the black plastic, coated glass, and metal, it's the Apple of the old days - the one that moved technology forward, not just into the hand of the big companies that own it already.