If Apple had gone with multiple carriers, those carriers would have dictated the phone's features, as they do with all other smart phones. There would have most likely been no WiFi, and it would have been riddled with all sorts of lame software tied into the carrier's services that couldn't be erased. Take a look at any Treo to see what I'm talking about.

Exclusivity was one of the compromises Jobs made to get what he wanted on this first run. Once the phone sells in the tens of millions, he'll have a lot more to bring to the bargaining table.

The significance of iPhone has nothing to do with the specifics of iPhone's features, by the way. If the iPhone experiment is successful, it will literally change the way phone creators interact with carriers, getting the power out of the hands of the carriers and back to the phone makers. This will ultimately benefit consumers all around.

These cannot be "last-minute" changes. It takes months to ramp up production of the hundreds of thousands of units they need on launch day, which is only 11 days away. The manufacturing logistics involved in creating a glass face and a longer life battery are enormous and can't simply be magically slipped into the production line on a few days notice. These plans must have been under way for months in order to dig up suppliers and manufacturers who could provide the parts in sufficient quantities, as per exact Apple specifications. Imagine putting in an order for 500,000 to 1,000,000 glass faces which have to be a precise thickness, an exact shape (with precisely curved corners), and made of an exact formula of glass--then once this has arrived at the factory, working out the processes involved in placing it in the phones, along with revamping the automation or assembly lines to accommodate the revision. Nope, this aint an overnight project kids.

Take a look at this: If Apple had all of a sudden changed their minds on using glass instead of plastic, all the plastic faced phones that had already been built would have to be scrapped or taken apart and refurbished with glass. Apple would lose hundreds of thousands of dollars on plastic faces that they would have already ordered. So, the whole idea that this is a last minute change is ridiculous when you stop to consider the actual logistics involved.

Now, I'm hoping to hear on launch day that the models have been bumped from 4 and 8 GB to 8 and 16 GB for the same price. Now that would make me smile!

While that's true to an extent, anyone who has ever tried to download a ring tune for their phone understands the bizarre complexities that relate to carrier. You need special versions of some software depending on the carrier you're tied in with. Doesn't make a lot of sense to me, but there it is. There are many factors behind the scenes dictated by the individual carrier, including SMTP support, configuration issues, drivers for some software and so on. Apple would not want to release a product that gets bad press because one carrier doesn't properly support one of the applications. That would be pretty stupid. So, while I too am frustrated that they didn't release an unlocked version, I fully understand the reasons and will happily wait until these issues are resolved enough that the release of an unlocked phone won't impact the future of the iPhone.

I can only comment on my experience with glasses, having worn them for around 26 years now and having gone from thin glass to high-index plastic (prescription is now at -7). So I went from optical glass to plastic to polycarbonate to high-index plastic. Of course, these are thicker amounts than you'd get on an iPhone, but I think the observations are valid, anyway. Obviously, the primary reasons for switching (the above progression represents the weight (plastic) and thickness of the lens (poly and high-index) dropping compared to glass don't really apply much to a display cover, whereas refraction doesn't matter.

1> Glass - Reasonably good scratch resistance, but heavier material. Far from being shatter resistant, though, especially at thinner layers (needed to keep light). Basically, this one is going to break easier than plastic, but it's clearer and more scratch resistant. I'd still think twice about using something like a tissue to dry them after cleaning, though.

2> Traditional Plastic - Lighter and they don't break as easily when dropped. Even with a scratch resistant coat, they scratch so easily it's not even funny. I took really good care of my glasses and they STILL had scratches on them after 2 years. You'd need to get new glasses every couple of years whether you needed them or not. You HAVE to use special cloths when cleaing them or they WILL start to scratch. Terrible material overall--worst of the bunch, IMO.

3> Polycarbonate Plastic = HUGE improvement over regular plastic. These lenses are naturally scratch resistant (no scratch coat needed) and it works MUCH better. I could dry my lenses with tissues even (doctor's will tell you this is a big no-no with plastic) and they would NEVER EVER get a scratch. In fact, it would generally take YEARS before I'd see any kind of scratch on them. I can't deny the fact that CDs and DVDs (which also use polycarbonate) DO easily get scratched, so perhaps the thickness of the material plays a part in it (or the quality of the polycarbonate used??), but with lenses I never had a real problem. I think my lenses scratched LESS than with glass. The real problem with polycarbonate is that they are not as clear as glass and at higher prescriptions (around -5 or -6), they get harder to make without any distortions. Eventually, it got too unreliable for me to use.

3> High-Index Plastic - This is what I use now. It's heavily scratch resistant (considering the cost of my lenses at this point, I didn't want to press my luck with tissues to compare to polycarbonate, but I usually use a clean t-shirt or a lens cloth and I have not ever had a scratch, even on my one pair that I had for about 5 years). They simply don't scratch under normal glasses use. Clarity is better than polycarbonate and works at very high prescription levels (refraction index is MUCH higher). They're also the thinnest lenses I can get (probably no thicker than my glass lenses were at -2). The downside is it's EXPENSIVE by comparison (I think I paid $250 for the lenses in this pair, not counting the frame cost (another $200) at Lenscrafters).

Personally, I'd say regular plastic is the WORST thing they could possibly use. Glass is definitely better than plastic or cheap polycarbonate, but it seems bad to me because it's so hard it can break. I would have preferred lens quality polycarbonate or high-index plastic, both of which are softer than glass, but highly scratch resistant compared to plastic. I can't see dropping your phone surviving with glass if it lands on the glass surface. Maybe if they have a rubber surround around the glass part so that the screen itself is unlikely to actually directly contact something like a cement sidewalk, but if exposed, I don't imagine it would be good.