Nothing's perfect at launch - not even Apple. Sure, the iPhone's great and all, but are there some things they might have overlooked that could potentially trip this baby up? Hey, didn't we do this piece already? Yeah, well, it's Ars Technica's turn, and their regular Infinite Loop feature touches on a few potential iPhone misses we've already touched on, and quite a few that we didn't.

So, for the dog that barked: no 3G, costs as much as a PS3, tied to Cingular, and limited memory. Add it all up and it's a potential turnoff for all but the hardest of the Apple die-hards. At least that's the implication: this won't be the "killer app" (as opposed to) the iPod turned out to be.

And the dog that didn't bark. "No over-the-air downloads from iTunes." That would have been a killer feature to include... well, maybe. It's a consequence of lack of 3G support, whose bandwidth would have been necessary for the high-rate transfers that downloading from iTunes will require. Or maybe Apple was looking at prior experiences with phones working with iTunes and decided that it's not worth it. "No Wi-Fi sync with iTunes." Although the Infinite Loop columnist - and we - cover that if the software can support it, why not? Hey, it's probably just a firmware away - and it's a good use for the Internet-browsing Wi-Fi capabilities of the phone.

"No MS Exchange or Office support." For Infinite Loop, "this is a potential biggie to business users." Which is true - if the iPhone was meant to be a PDA to begin with. Here the QJ jury is out. At its price, it might as well have PDA features to attract a bigger customer base, but that will mean that Apple will have to face not only Nokia and Sony Ericsson on the one hand, but also Blackberry and all the other PDA manufacturers on the other. We've never seen Apple have to fight a two-front war on the underdog side before.

"Not extensible by third parties." Infinite Loop says that if Apple locks down the iPhone away from third-party developers, this will hurt the product in the long run. If Apple opens up now, and begins working with developers to at least set a standard for iPhone-compatible software, this will measure up favorably for the iPhone's chances in the market. It could even resolve the "No MS Exchange" issue by offering an alternative.

Finally, "No removable memory." Especially for a product that is essentially a kick-a** iPod, having an 8GB limit is very, very, very, very painful. Then again, what iPod had removable memory, either (of course, they didn't need to have one for the most part, but you get the point, right? 8GB)? We said it before, and we'll say it again: if the PSP can potentially get 32GB of memory all by swapping in a stick, why can't the iPhone have one built-in in the near future? Beefing up the memory is a good justification for pushing the launch date of the phone back - it will be more than worth it in the long run.