Every newspaper and every technology news web site is today full of the excitement and hype from the launch of the new Apple iPhone, revealed by the company's chief executive Steve Jobs yesterday at Macworld in San Francisco. The coverage generally follows the line of Jobs' claim that the new device 'is going to reinvent the phone.'

Excuse me for disagreeing - the semi-religious mania around Apple at the moment doesn't bode well for anybody who might claim the Emperor is naked except for his iPod.

Clearly, the iPhone is a pretty cool gadget. Touch screen, a few whizzy features such as a proximity sensor to detect when you put the phone to your ear, and the marketing buzz that goes with being sold as the iPod for the mobile phone world. But who is going to use it?

At $500 each, this isn't a mass market product. You won't be buying one for your kids, and it won't be in Carphone Warehouse in the pay-as-you-go phone department. And in the US at least, it is only available on one mobile network - something that would kill it in the UK.

Is it for business users? Not especially, there's not much more than you can do with a top of the range BlackBerry. Being a music player won't attract professional users. And the lack of a Qwerty keyboard means it won't be much use for those long emails replying to the boss.

Apple geeks, of course, will love it. Anybody whose life is not complete without an iPod, Mac, Powerbook, and all the add-ons, will be first in the queue. And there are probably just about enough of those to make the iPhone a reasonable commercial success.

But let's face it - this is not a new phone. It's at best a new smartphone, in reality a PDA - a handheld computer. If you use a Palm or a Treo or an iPaq and you would like the cool design cache of Apple, this is no doubt the product for you. It is an XDA with a connection to iTunes. it doesn't even have a 3G capability. And I bet those batteries won't last long without a recharge. The iPhone is something Apple had to do, in response to the number of mobile phones that double as MP3 players that may eat into the iPod market.

I didn't see all of Jobs' speech, but I suspect that the word 'Newton' was not mentioned. The Apple Newton was the firm's abortive attempt to crack the handheld market in the 1990s. The iPhone is undoubtedly a good product, but it is simply a 21st century Newton for the iPod generation.

Don't go rewriting the history of mobile telephony just yet.

But last night's other announcement - Apple TV - the ability to connect your PC to your TV wirelessly for showing movie and TV downloads to all the family on a big screen - now that might just be a milestone product...