Nutters all. They'll be giving them away in 18 months' time.

Are you sure about the sales exceeding expectations? It's not what I heard.

The "Jesus phone", eh??? Will it resurrect itself three days after the battery dies??

Down here in the provinces of SW UK , there were no queues and not a lot of "flying" iphones either. O2 was host to numerous curious punters wanting to see what all the hype was about.
Unfortunately, as soon as the very nice young ladies mentioned the cost and contract conditions, many faces took on the look of a plumber as he surveys the that "little job", contemplating the real cost involved.
All who I saw, left the shop without an iphone.
Runaway success....only if you're running away from the contract and cost.

Still, if the court case in France with Orange and Apple v EU fair trade law resolves itself against Orange France, we might all be getting the iphone free with different contract conditions. So watch this space. At the moment I think Apple and O2 just got the marketing wrong if they are serious about maximising market penetration with this first offering. Lets hope they get the product and market right next time. But for now they are just fleecing their faithful.

The words fool, money and parted come to mind.

This is a real exchange overheard between two students in Edinburgh.
Student 1 - "you getting a new Iphone?"
Student 2 - "what network do you need?"
S1- "o2."
S2 - "result! That's my network."
S1 - "I have heard they don't work and are shoite to use!"
S2 - "yeah but you still have to have one don't you?"
And we wonder why we have credit issues. Like Pavlovian dugs, all it takes is an advert, an idiot and a credit card to find the general public slabbering over yet another thing they don't need!

Kirkcaldy yesterday: Carphone warehouse unable to sell any because you need a debit/credit card and the machines were down.

Had a fiddle with one in the O2 store. Not really impressed and trying to use the virtual keyboard with your finger was virtually impossible.

There's better deals and better phones out there. Orange were giving away phones and the 8gb ipod nano on new contracts, with more minutes and texts and no £269 up front.

What dire forecasts! You all sound like the American sourpusses back in June. Now that the iPhone has proven to be a runaway success they have stopped blathering and just stare at any they see with unbridled envy. The iPhone will be a success in Britain. It is just that the people who understand what a great achievement it is are not the chronic complainers who frequent this site.

Most of you simply do not understand what is happening.

Firstly the business model is precisely what happened with iPods. Start at the high end with something which is markedly better than anything else in that sector. With Apple's interface, that is simply, a statement of fact. Later, roll out the second and third generation models which take in other sectors and which improve the form even more. Interesting is the fact that Apple have a patent for a tactile touch screen which can give the feeling of buttons ....

The issue of 3g is irrelevant. This model, like the iPod Touch, works with the wifi hotspots. When energy consumption of the chips comes down, 3G will be adopted.

No-one should miss the significance of what has happened with the iPhone. The iPhone is a high-level phone which is attacking Blackberries and other smart-phones. Already there are a million plus handheld devices with Apple OS X (Leopard) out there in the wild. It won't be long before the numbers of Apple OS phones exceeds Windows-based phones. After that it'll be Symbian in the gunsights.

Next year's big technological leap : the handheld personal computer from Apple. Who would bet against the introduction of the modern version of the Apple Newton as everything a PDA could and should have been ?

It is also a fact that anyone on a contract probably spends quite close to that amount anyway. To get an iPhone means very little other than to pay for the handset upfront.

Looking at the figures, I will save money by replacing my Nokia with an iPhone early next year.

As for No.5

The words misanthrope, luddite, grapes and sour come to mind