1. How fast is the iPhone? Touch-screen devices are often ruined by a delay when you press the on-screen, virtual buttons. Apple may solve this problem with its first-release product, but if it doesn’t, a persistent lag will degrade the user experience. Jobs said that the “iPhone runs OS X” and “desktop-class” applications. But will the OS and applications provide desktop-class performance? If so, Apple will have solved another problem nobody has ever been able to solve.
2. Will the Apple iPhone support Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents? Jobs said you can synchronize the iPhone with e-mail–and he even pointed to IMAP support, including Microsoft Exchange–but what about attachments? Without support for standard office documents, the iPhone is a nonstarter for most business users.
3. Will the iPhone scratch or peel? Previous Apple products, including some iPods and notebooks, had serious problems with scratching and peeling. People use and abuse their cell phones even more than they do other devices. Will Apple make the 3G iPhone rugged enough to avoid embarrassing blog write-ups about scratching, peeling, or other materials defects? Will the iPhone be too slippery to use without dropping?
4. Will Apple be able to fill iPhone orders accurately? No doubt the iPhone is very expensive to manufacture, and, unlike the iPod, is a very complex device, electronically. In the first year of the device’s release, Apple could very easily overbuild, making far more than it can sell in a given period of time, or underbuild, failing to keep up with demand and creating long waits and frustrated customers.
5. Will the iPhone really “change the world”? The iPod “changed the world” because everyone bought one. But will the iPhone’s price, Cingular-only support, lack of business usability, and other factors really make the iPhone just a niche luxury toy for the rich?

I popped by the AtPlay offices yesterday for a meeting with Allan Kent who heads up Saatchi & Saatchi’s interactive unit. Bandwidth blog has long had a fetish for snapping office photos and today we bring you a inside look at the open plan industrail look offices of AtPlay where some of South Africa’s top multimedia engineers work. Next up a inside look at MIH Internet’s offices.. keep checking back.

The Wii room

Allan checking out Speakerbox before it went live