Yesterday I saw something in the New York Times that got me really excited. It wasn’t a preview of Vista or yet-another-article about the Apple iPhone. It was a story about something distinctly low-tech and backwards looking, and that I’ve wished existed for a long time.

The subject of the story was a turntable that sends audio output directly to a computer.

Now, this isn’t for those of you who have already converted your vinyl collection to CDs or MP3 files, like my friend the satellite communications engineer whose idea of an exciting weekend is reconfiguring his home network. This is something for those of us who like to talk to friends on a telephone, watch video on a TV, and listen to music on something we used to call a “stereo.”

In other words, someone like me.

There’s a reason electronic entertainment and communications a hundred years ago grew around single purpose devices. It’s not because those people were less smart than we are now in the Internet age.

As a matter of fact, in one way they were smarter.

Inventors of the gramophone, telephone, radio and television intuitively understood that ease of use was key to the widest possible market. Thee more things a device does, the harder it is to use. How many of us ever learned to program our VCRs?

If using a telephone required the same level of technical knowledge as using a PC, I doubt the number of U.S. homes with a telephone would be the 98 percent that it is.

Because I write about technology, people are surprised to discover that I use a single-purpose Uniden cordless VoIP phone for my interviews rather than a soft phone on my computer. There are two reasons for this. First of all, I hate being connected by a cord — I want to be free to walk around, get a cup of coffee, or even let the cat out while I talk.

Second, it keeps me focused. Because I prefer written notes to recorded conversations — it takes too long to get to the statement or information you want — a single purpose “appliance” plus my detailed note-taking keeps my mind on the subject, rather than letting me get distracted with incoming email or other phone calls.

And that’s the point. The physical device provides a clear delineation for activities that keeps your attention on the task at hand. Even if the activity is relaxation, aren’t we better off not answering email or installing software upgrades at the same time?

It’s possible that my attachment to single purpose devices is just an anachronistic fetish having more to do with age than some innate characteristic of human psychology.

So consider my 16 year old who never owned or played a vinyl record and grew up connected to the Internet. It’s true that the computer is his music appliance. Or was until he got an iPod. Now the computer is merely a conduit.

Another telling piece of evidence is that one of the first things he saved up his own money for was a…TV. Which is where he prefers to watch South Park and play Grand Theft Auto.

That’s why I vote for the Linksys iPhone over the Apple iPhone. The Linksys phone is designed around what ordinary non-techies do with a telephone, like ordering pizza. And it does what it needs to at a price tag that doesn’t bust the family budget. My son is squarely in the Apple iPhone demographic and his comment when I asked him if he wanted one was, “What for?”

It’s certainly interesting to see how the Internet’s unifying technology enables us to combine many different ways of communicating and entertaining ourselves; as well as letting us take entertainment and communications wherever we go.

This richness of innovation definitely can make life easier. For example, replacing my overflowing Rolodex with a Treo made my life so much better (despite its awkward user interface) that I can’t imagine how I lived without it. It’s so much a part of my life that I sometimes have anxiety dreams about losing it.

But my attachment isn’t because the handy little gizmo can surf the Internet, read email, film video, play music and a host of other things that in two years I haven’t even attempted to do. It’s because I can do three important things with it: talk on the phone, keep my calendar, and carry a copy of my address book. Occasionally, when I forget my camera, I take a picture with it.

There is one thing I wish it did: record. It’s telling that designers of this device didn’t think of that. Perhaps they would have, had they consulted a few writers and journalists.

At first it looked like it was all settled: The new Apple mobile phone product would be dubbed “iPhone” afterall, and Cisco, which owns the trademark to the name, was on board.

Not so fast.

A day after Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced the company’s newest product line, and a day after Cisco officials announced they had been discussing the use of the name “iPhone” with Apple, Cisco has filed suit against Apple for trademark infringement.

“Cisco entered into negotiations with Apple in good faith after Apple repeatedly asked permission to use Cisco’s iPhone name,” is how Mark Chandler, a Cisco senior vice president and general counsel, was quoted in a Cisco press release today. “There is no doubt that Apple’s new phone is very exciting, but they should not be using our trademark without our permission.”

“Today’s iPhone is not tomorrow’s iPhone,” the release continues. “The potential for convergence of the home phone, cell phone, work phone and PC is limitless, which is why it is so important for us to protect our brand.”

“The Holy Grail of Gadgets”
“Shake-Up for the Phone Industry”
“Will Disrupt the Mobile Phone Market”

These are only a few of today’s headlines heralding the advent of the long-awaited Apple iPhone. In fact the scene at MacWorld, following as it did on Christmas, looked for all the world like the geek Magi adoring the holy child of Cupertino.

With a buildup like this it would be hard not to come up short, even if you’re golden boy Steve Jobs.

So what have we got here?

After all the ooh-ing and ah-ing about the slick, no-tiny-keys-or stylus-in-sight design, it’s…a phone. While the touch screen user interface is heads and shoulders above those of PDAs like Palm and Blackberry, even that is not the dramatic advance it’s made out to be. I use the touch screen on my Treo all the time – without the stylus. It’s an evolution not a revolution.

In terms of functionality, I can’t see that the $500-$600 Apple iPhone does anything that smartphones don’t do already at significantly lower cost and with a choice of service providers, unlike Apple which only offers Cingular service. Looking sexy is not a feature that most business users will pay a premium and sacrifice choice for.

I’m not the only one who’s underwhelmed by Apple’s iPhone. VoIP industry pundit Jeff Pulver’s pulse rate actually lowered.

“It sounds like a device that should work better than other such devices have in the past,” he says. “It’s not about songs or ringtones. What I was looking for was a next generation PDA that happened to be a phone.”

“It’s not the revolutionary change agent we expected from Apple,” he continues. “I had hoped when Apple came out with an iPhone that the little ‘i’ meant something.”

Still, Pulver concedes the device has a pretty face. “Would I like to leave CES with a phone like that? Sure.” Just what you say about arm candy.

While the unwired world has been buzzing about Apple’s putative mobile-phone-cum-music-player, the busy elves in Santa’s workshop have been getting the Linksys iPhones ready for Christmas delivery.

You read that right — iPhone. Cisco/Linksys has owned the trademark on that name since its 1999 acquisition of InfoGear. While it may not be as sexy as the mythic Apple iPhone, the Linksys iPhone is here now, and delivers very useful features at down-to-earth prices.

Today Linksys announced two new members of the iPhone family: the CIT400 dual-mode cordless Skype-IP phone and the WIP320 Skype WiFi phone. The new devices join the CIT200 and CIT300 Skype phones, the CIT310 Yahoo Messenger phone, and the WIP300 WiFi and WIP330 WiFi phone with Web browser.

Linksys CIT400

Linksys’ vision of the iPhone is a device that connects to the Internet to deliver many services to people - talk being only one of them.

With the launch of the CIT310 last fall, Linksys demonstrated how IT services like weather and phone number lookups could be delivered to handsets. The CIT400, which is expected to retail for about $180, extends that feature set.

The most significant advance of the CIT400 is that it takes the PC out of the equation, delivering IP services directly from the network to the handset. The phone is SIP-based to make it a platform for converging many IP services together through the one device.

“It follows the form-function of a cordless phone,” says Dennis Vogel, Sr. Manager Product Marketing, Linksys Consumer Business Unit. “It integrates all features. It’s a superset of existing cordless phone [functions] and a subset of PC applications. One of the first is presence. That’s a very simple way of enhancing what’s available today.”

The CIT400 is a full-featured cordless phone, with familiar features like call waiting, caller ID, and speakerphone. The base station has both LAN and landline connections, enabling both VoIP and traditional calls; you can choose the calling mode for each call or set it as a default. The unit supports SkypeIn, SkypeOut, Skype Voicemail and displays Skype contact lists and presence on the handset’s color screen.

The WIP320 is a “candy bar” phone, similar to the WIP300. Unlike the WIP300 and 330 which are SIP-based, the WIP320 is exclusively a Skype phone. It will retail for around $200.

Linksys WIP320

The device works with 802.11b/g wireless networks — again, no PC required. It supports SkypeOut, SkypeIn, Skype Voicemail and displays Skype contact lists and presence on the color screen. What’s more, the WIP320 has a handy push-button WiFi finder that operates without booting the phone up. “That’s key when you’re roaming,” adds Vogel.

Long-term, Linksys aims to make its iPhones the heart of the connected home.

“Phones in the home and cordless phones have been [built on] the same model for a long time,” Vogel says. “Being a networking company, we have a lot of insight into what you can do with IP that you could never do with an analog phone. It’s a new look at ‘what is a telephone?’”

Today we think of the Interent as a destination. Tomorrow it will become an embedded connection, like the PSTN.

“I can get a webcam and create video on the computer,” he continues. “I can get a SIP phone and make phone calls. When you combine those things you have something more interesting than a phone or a camera. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.”

In the next year Linksys expects to deliver on that vision with features like home IP-PBX that routes calls to individual handsets, each of which behave like a private phone line; multiple simultaneous calls on the same line; and a push-to-talk home PA system to save Mom’s voice when calling the gang for supper.

Further out, there’s “no limit” to the possibilities, Vogel says. “You’ll be able to access content regardless of what it is. You’ll have caller ID on the TV set, you’ll use the phone to access media stored in many places and connect to home monitoring systems. We’ll lose the concept of ‘telephone.’”

The Linksys SPA9000 5.1.5a firmware may cause phone reboots during calls.

Linksys has replaced the 5.1.5a firmware on their website with a previous firmware release (5.1.1).

Customers who are experiencing phone reboot problems with the 5.1.5a firmware are advised to rollback to the 5.1.1 release.

Linksys released the SPA9000 5.1.5a firmware on December 7th. By December 10th, the Linksys (Sipura) SPA Users Group was receiving reports of SPA941/SPA942 reboots during calls. Linksys responded on December 11th, by rolling back the firmware available on the Linksys website.

We will advise customes when a new SPA9000 firmware release is available.