Having given the iPhone a bit more contemplation over the last couple of days, it’s still pretty cool - but not quite as cool as I previous thought.

Apple bills the iPhone as a smart-phone. To some extent, if the feature-list is to be believed, it is indeed pretty damned smart. The Google Maps functionality is perfect for those of us living in or near large metropolitan areas, the email integration looks superb, and finally it looks like we will be getting an actual fully-functional, mainstream web browser in a phone-like handheld device.

However, there is something missing - the opportunity to expand the capabilities of the phone via 3rd parties. Steve Jobs has said that he does not intend for the phone to be an open platform, which implies that the only software that will end up on the phone will be only that which is put there with Apple and Cingular’s blessing (likely, for an additional fee).

As much of a Mac fan as I am - and generally impressed with Apple’s products in general - I have no illusions that they can or will provide everything that people would want in a smart-phone. Would I buy a Mac if I were limited to only using Apple’s applications (iTunes and the like)? Absolutely not. BBEdit beats TextEdit, iTerm beats Terminal, Photoshop beats iPhoto and so on. The strength of the smart-phone concept rests almost entirely on the ability of 3rd parties to offer ways to extend and improve upon what comes with that phone.

The problem is that this scares Apple - and it really scares Cingular, Apple’s chosen cellular network provider.

Were the iPhone truly open, its capabilities could easily be used in conjunction with a 3rd party VoIP (Voice over IP) application, allowing you - if you are near one of the increasingly more common wireless access points dotting the American landscape - to make phone calls without ever giving a dime to Cingular. If anyone, Skype and their contemporaries would stand to benefit. iPhone users would benefit even more.

Were Apple to allow that - or better yet, facilitate it - it would truly turn the mobile phone industry on its head in the favor of consumers. As it is now, Apple is providing a “closed box” at the behest of Cingular, and as cool as the iPhone is to behold it is not particularly revolutionary.

Beyond VoIP, there’s another matter of games, technical tools (I really want a quality SSH client, and wouldn’t expect Apple to offer one), etc. As poor as the Treo and other smart-phones may be in comparison to Apple’s offering, they do provide a large number of 3rd party developed applications - quality applications, at that - that fulfill the needs of those that Palm and the like could not. This has spawned a sizable industry of independent developers, which is exactly the sort of mindshare Apple needs to cultivate.

I hope this is simply a matter of Apple gaining market-share ahead of time so that they can eventually dictate to Cingular how this whole thing should be done (as they more or less have done with the recording industry). I hope that a later software update will open up the iPhone - and its associated APIs - to 3rd parties. Until then, though, the iPhone itself isn’t nearly as interesting as it could be.

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On a side note: I think Apple is being absolutely ridiculous in its apparent infringement of Cisco’s “iPhone” trademark. There are actual products out there - phones, even - bearing the “iPhone” name. Apple is in the wrong on this, and it blows my mind that they’re trying to pass it off as a valid use of the term.