It is known as The God Machine. Sleek, black, barely larger than a credit card, and with a 3½inch (9cm) colour screen that changes from portrait to landscape depending on which way you hold it, Apple’s iPhone is creating mass-market hysteria ahead of its launch later this month.

With a fortnight still to go before the iPhone’s launch on June 29, Apple’s army of devout followers have worked themselves into a frenzy.

Apple, the company that redefined the music market with the ubiquitous iPod, has taken one million calls from customers anxious to place their orders. Celebrities are privately begging Steve Jobs, Apple’s enigmatic founder, for advance models.

Technophiles are already eyeing their camping spots outside Apple Stores in advance of ‘i-Day’. Meanwhile, Google is offering 7,653 news stories about the iPhone, along with 73 million website hits.

When Apple launched its first TV ads for the iPhone last week (following a teaser during the Oscars broadcast), technology bloggers pored over every frame of the four 30-second spots, trying to deduce how certain features would work.

In one of the Apple ads, a number was briefly shown on the iPhone’s screen. The owner of the number — a fish restaurant in San Francisco — was promptly inundated with calls, including one from Africa and one from a local jail. Perhaps inevitably, a journalist discovered that the restaurant used PCs.

A blogger, ‘Dr Macenstein’, informed his readers that the iPhone now had 12 icons on its screen, instead of the previously shown 11. What was this extra mystery function? Furious speculation followed.

Nevertheless, a worrying question is beginning to stalk Apple, whose shares have risen by 50 per cent on iPhone euphoria since blueprints for the device were released in January. Will the ‘God Machine’ be any good?

Doubts are growing. The biggest concern is that the iPhone relies on a touch-screen keyboard instead of the tactile, mechanical keyboard on the rival Blackberry. Yet touch-screen technology is often frustrating and unpopular.

The iPhone will also have a slower data connection than rival products, and owners will probably have to sign up to a two-year contract with AT&T, Apple’s partner in the US.

Then there is the price: a whopping $599 (£300) for the 8GB version in the US. When it launches in the UK later this year it could cost as much as £600.

Andy Hargreaves, an analyst with Pacific Crest Securities, admitted that some people’s nagging concerns had turned into full-blown worries. “It’s because people are getting a little bit of a closer look at the iPhone,” he said, “and they’re thinking that it’s not going to live up to all the hype.”

Adding to the creeping doubts over the iPhone is a recent blog posting by John Dvo-rak, the influential technology journalist and noted Apple sceptic.

He quoted an anonymous ‘industry source’ as telling him: “The keyboard is a disaster, and people are going to return the phone in droves. I’m guessing 20 per cent will go back.”

Apple’s supporters have pointed out that the iPhone aims for only a niche share of the market and boasts some revolutionary features, such as ‘visual voicemail’, the motion-sensor screen, a Safari web browser and wi-fi capability.

Apple hopes to sell 3 million iPhones this year, followed by as many as 10 million of the sleek devices next year.

In the UK operators including Vodafone, O2 and Orange are engaged in a fierce battle to become the exclusive provider of the iPhone. The gadget, they believe, could provide a weapon in seducing high-spending customers from their rivals.

The imminent launch has also triggered a spate of rival offerings such as Sony Ericsson’s freshly released W960 Walk-man phone. This handset — hailed by online reviewers as a potential “iPhone killer” — has space for up to 700 albums of music. Other features include wireless listening and a touch screen display.

Ben Wood, research director of CCS Insight, a mobile consultancy said: “The launch of the iPhone will get people into the mobile phone shops. The question is with products like this, will they leave with the iPhone or with something else?”

Apple bites

Misses

The Lisa: Named after Steve Jobs’s daughter, this ahead-of-its-time 1983 carbuncle cost $10,000 and was slower than a quadriplegic tortoise. Apple reportedly dumped the unsold machines in a Utah landfill.

The Rokr: Not technically an Apple product, but a much-ballyhooed Motorola phone that could run iTunes. Ingenious, until consumers realised it could store only 100 songs. Now the Rokr is partnered with Windows. Macintosh Portable Alas, at 15.5lb, it was about as portable as a dead elephant. And it cost as much as a family car. Still, it was 1989.

Hits

iPod/iTunes: Even your Great Aunt Nelly probably owns three iPods by now. The closely related iTunes music store has sold 2.5 billion songs, leaving CD retailers weeping into their shattered jewel cases.

Intel iMac: This combined Apple’s beautifully simple iMac home computer with the ability to run Windows alongside Apple’s OS X software. Those who had longed for an Apple but needed a PC for business finally had no good reason not to switch.

I’m a Mac, and I’m a PC: Ad campaign for Apple starring the American author and humorist John Hodgeman as an anthropomorphised PC (in cardigan and flannel trousers). The Mac is played by a cool Justin Long, in jeans and hooded sweatshirt. In Britain the roles were taken by comedians David Mitchell and Robert Webb.

Sources: Wikipedia, Forbes.com; Associated Press

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