All-in-one iPhone looks nifty, but should you put it on hold?

THE iPhone.

It's the most highly anticipated piece of digital hardware since IBM unveiled the PCjr in 1983 to win over the masses to home computing.

The iPhone's battleground is outside the home, where for nearly a decade, digital alchemists have searched for the ultimate hand-held gizmo: a true all-in-one device that will not only make phone calls, play music, e-mail, manage an appointment calendar and take pictures but also surf the Web.

That device has been created several times over. But never entirely well.

Apple Inc.'s iPhone, set to go on sale June 29, is the latest aspirant in the portable arms race. It wants to do all of the above, plus show video, update stocks, give weather reports, display maps and flip through photos at the touch of a finger.

For $500, or $600 for a souped-up model.

Add on the monthly phone and data plan charges needed to fully operate the iPhone, and the first year's nut could sail past $1,500.

Is Steve Jobs, Apple's chief executive-guru-visionary-tyrant, crazy to think anyone would pay that much for a phone?

The collective wisdom of Wall Street is betting that Jobs isn't loony. Since Jan. 9, when the iPhone was announced, company shares have risen more than 40%.

It's not because the iPhone is offering any revolutionary new functions for cellphones.

The promise of iPhone is that it will be the first to get the whole package right. Or even near-right.

Other phones can e-mail, but the iPhone ditches the standard pixie-sized keyboard for one that is larger and on a touch screen.

Other phones show the Web as text. The iPhone is designed to present it in all its graphics-rich glory. (This is not just a nicety; a full-fledged Web is far easier to navigate.)

Other phones with loads of features are bulky enough to pass for rapper bling. The iPhone is sleek.

And most important, although there are phones that sport music and video players, the player aboard the iPhone is an iPod, the wildly successful device that was a watershed for personal technology. And for Apple.

In fact, without the advent of the iPod, it's doubtful there would be much interest in an Apple phone.

Pre-iPod, new releases from Apple generally got a big "so what?" from most computer aficionados and the business world. Mac computers were easy to use and even elegant, but they were seen largely as the province of elitist, artsy types. PC fans regularly predicted, with thinly disguised glee, that with less than 5% of the computer market, Apple would eventually disappear.