Apple unveils all-in-one iPhone

Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Inc., unveiled the company's highly anticipated iPhone today, which marries the popular iPod music device with a cell phone and a handheld Internet device to create an all-in-one handheld product tailor made for the new digital media landscape.

"It's the best iPod we've ever made," said Jobs, addressing a rabid crowd of fans at the Macworld Expo in San Francisco. "No matter what you like, it looks pretty doggone gorgeous."

The iPhone, which features a small, black touch-screen with no conventional buttons, marks a new era for the Cupertino technology company, entering them fully into the cutthroat, global mobile phone market. To commemorate the shift, Jobs said Apple would change its name by dropping the word "Computer" from its corporate moniker.

To get into that phone market, Apple is partnering with Cingular exclusively to offer the phone and cell phone service, which will be available in June and cost between $499 and $599 per device. Apple has also teamed up with both Yahoo and Google to offer e-mail, mapping and Internet services on the phone.

Yahoo will provide a special e-mail service that acts like a Blackberry and "pushes" the emails to the iPhone, so that the user receives the latest message instantly. With Google, whose CEO Eric Schmidt sits on Apple's board, the iPhone will have Internet search functions and mapping including satellite images on the iPod phone.

The phone will also feature a 2-megapixel camera, a 160 dot-per-inch screen and is less than 12 millimeters thick. 

Everything from typing e-mail to making phone calls is done via the touch screen. People use their fingers, not a stylus, to type or touch the screen. The phone's features include the ability to "pinch" the screen to zoom in and out, as well as switch to a widescreen picture.

The iPhone will also incorporate Apple's Web browser, Safari, and operating system, Mac OS X.