With all the buzz, if Apple doesn’t unveil a new iPhone next month at MacWorld, it’s going to feel like Santa left us a lump of coal.

Morgan Stanley analyst and Apple-watcher Rebecca Runkle laid out her list of likely iPhone features today in Barron’s Online, which is based, she is quoted saying, “on proprietary supply chain checks.” Runkle also claims that at least two models are already in production and offers up plenty of details on the phones as well as the suppliers.

List prices for the gadget — wider than a nano, thinner than a Video iPod — Runkle says will be $599 for a 4GB unit and $649 for 8GB. Features include a three megapixel camera, MP3, and video. E-mail and calendar functions “unconfirmed.” For six hundred bucks, one would hope it has email.

In the past Runkle has also predicted that the iPhone could generate $1.2 billion in new sales for Apple. However, she also predicted that the iPhone would debut in 2006.

The next question inquiring minds want answered is who will be the service provider. Barron’s West Coast Editor and Tech Trader Daily blogger Eric Savitz suggests that Apple will be its own carrier, buying airtime from other carriers — Cingular is named — as a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO).

Savitz’ source for this is UBS telecom analyst John Hodulik. Hodulik’s reasoning is as follows: Apple wants to maintain maximum customer control and increase store traffic. Even if that’s at the expense of market share.

But operating as an MVNO is a tough row to hoe.

“While we believe Apple has been able to negotiate an attractive deal with Cingular,” Hodulik is quoted saying, “we do not know whether it will be attractive enough to allow it to compete for high volume users and still make money on the phone services (if that is its intention at all.)”

Yesterday Apple applied for a patent for a new device that combines an iPod with a mobile phone, Bloomberg.com reported.

According to the report, Apple’s application is a “‘tube-like device’ made using zirconia and alumina and that would be ‘cost effective, smaller, lighter, stronger and aesthetically more pleasing than current’ designs.”

“…those ceramic materials would result in a ‘highly scratch-resistant surface,” according to the application. Zirconia could be used to create cases in a variety of colors, including white, black, navy blue, ivory, brown, dark blue, light blue, platinum and gold.”

Analysts speculate that the new business could increase Apple sales by as much as $1.5 billion.

The video phone has for the most part been a thing of the future and of ancient Jetson cartoons. It’s not that it hasn’t been available, it’s more that no one has come up with a good reason to use it.

But it looks that someone — specifically Packet8 — has taken steps to pitch video telephony in a way that makes it something more current, and useful. In short: Forget business, get it in the home.

Over the past couple of years, there have been a handful of video phones available using SIP that have gained very little traction. I’ve tried a couple for 5 minutes, said “Cool,” and never used them again.

For some reason, video telephony has been focused on the business sector, as though seeing the person you’re talking to on a 4-inch screen will make an important transaction go a bit more smoothly.

Wrong.

When it comes to work, I’ve got a look made for voice, not video. I won’t remember to brush my hair when the phone rings in order to appear business-like. And I won’t wear a tie to the office daily in the off-chance the CEO of AT&T calls to chat about the future of internet communications.

Here at Fall VON in Boston, Packet8 announced a new offering called the Freedom Unlimited VideoPhone Plan (Packet8 Video Phone Plans) tailor-made for the home. For $20 a month you can make unlimited video phone calls over a softphone client (made by Counterpath) on the Packet8 network.

It’s a good start.

Of course, with a small amount of tech knowledge and the right gear, any two parties can do what Packet8 offers for free. I’ve been videoing with my daughters back home in San Francisco nightly from my hotel room the past few days using the built-in cameras on the Mac I carry and the one that sits semi-permanently in our living room at home.

Using the built-in capabilities of iChat in OSX, it’s been relatively easy (save for the occasional glitch caused by the very poor broadband connection at the severely overpriced Sheraton I’m at) and free (save for the usurious $10 Mr. Sheraton is taking each day so that I can access the internet).

To connect this way, my wife and I have to arrange to be at the computer at the same time, usually by cell phone. Packet8’s offering removes this inconvenience in that I can just “call” home from my computer, and the computer in our living room will “ring.”

Ultimately though, the way video telephony will take off is to take it off both the phone and the computer. The right way is to make it part of the home entertainment system. The hardware to do that is already, for the most part, readily and cheaply available.

Imagine a typical eyeball camera attached to the top of your TV and connected directly to a home theater PC. Place a well-made microphone at your coffee table (Hello Polycom . . . you can do this . . . are you listening?).

Now, sit down with your kids on the sofa and click to call their grandma with a similar set-up. In an instant, and with a big enough TV, your mother-in-law is in your living room, sitting down in front of you. Click, and she’s gone with no need to call a cab.

We’ll see this because it makes sense and its cheap to do. But first we have to get over the idea of the video phone as a business tool (and as a way for geeks to geek).

You’ve made it part way, Packet 8. Now take the next step and make it something we can all use. Someone will soon.

The BEEPBEEPBEEPBEEPBEEP of propane forklifts aggravated my mood for most of the day today, as hundreds of Teamsters and employees of many of the world’s most important IP Communications companies banged and whirred and taped and hammered together display booths and tradeshow paraphernalia on the cavernous exhibit floor of the Boston Convention Center.

Now, a little less than an hour from the VON Conference’s Opening Reception, the fork lifts are in clean-up mode at the far reaches of the hall’s rear corridors, and just the buzz of the occasional power screwdriver can be heard as I roam up and down the Exhibit floor’s 16 aisles, surveying the advance mood of perhaps the industry’s most important conference.

And the mood seems one of decided maturity. Almost everyone has been here and done this for the past several years running and the atmosphere strikes me as more “carny” than “rock show,” despite the new play being given to companies and concepts focused on video, as opposed to the conference’s former fealty to voice.

Tomorrow is another day, however, and until the big glass doors of the convention center’s mezzanine open to the paying attendees, it’s probably not fair to start pinning labels on the personality of this year’s show.

As for Martha, Eric, and I in the Voxilla booth, we’ve got our network up and running, our booth display erected, the CommunigatePro Mini Mac server registering a Polycom IP601 and a brand new Linksys SPA962. I’ve also got my cell phone hooked up to a PhoneLabs Dock n Talk and we are ready to talk the talk for the next three days.

I’ve already had a very interesting conversation with a service provider who claims to have the SIP WiFi puzzle solved and operational on some high quality hardware I’ll be able to identify after I get my test units, so maybe there will be some new and good news out of this conference after all…