As virtually everyone on the planet knows by now, Apple (AAPL) just released a drug on Friday that cures cancer, fixes broken bones and eliminates bad breath. No, sorry, I mean the company released a definitive solution to world peace. No, that's not right either. It has solved the mystery of death, and on Friday it simultaneously resurrected Albert Einstein, Jimi Hendrix and Princess Diana.

Well, actually, I guess that's not true either. Apple's actually had something bigger than that in mind. It released a brand-new cell phone, called the iPhone! Which has a built-in camera! And accesses the web! And has a touch screen! (You can check it out at Apple's website.)

I know you can just barely contain your excitement. I pretty much feel the same way.

What is all the hype about? I mean, most people who want a cell phone already have a cell phone, and they're locked into multi-year contracts. And fewer than 10% of the people who have phones with built-in cameras have ever taken pictures with them. And having music and your contacts list in the same device isn't exactly a big whoop either. I've had them on my Treo for years. There's some pretty cool map, traffic and voice mail features in the iPhone, but there are some problems, too, like the fact that it only works on one wireless carrier's network, is slow on the Web and will end up costing you at least $2,000 over two years once you add the least expensive data service fees to the device.

But I guess there's no point in being cynical about the new iPhone. Apple will probably sell at least 1 million of them through the end of this fiscal year in August, and up to 8 million of them in the 2008 fiscal year. After that it really gets interesting, because the 2.0 version of the device is bound to be a lot stronger than what's released on Friday. Already, Apple has promised that the second version will work on faster networks, provide more storage and have a longer battery life.

No promises about curing cancer, but perhaps that's in version 3.0.