When are people going to learn that the best phone isn't the one with every imaginable feature tacked onto it? And when are they going to learn that Apple isn't prone to empty-headed copying of its own success, let alone other people's failures?

I agree, we'll probably see a net book long before we'll see a slide-out keyboard on an iPhone. This Photoshop rendering, as usual, defies the laws of geometry by suggesting that a fold-out keyboard could be included on such a thin device. Apple would never have a slide-out plastic keyboard, no matter how many articles get published, for two obvious reasons:

1. Steve Jobs is obsessed with “thin.” iPhones will get thinner over the next five years, not thicker. No matter what the cost in battery life or lack of extra add-on features.

2. Apple has invested its entire future on touch technology. Adding a physical keyboard would be an admission of defeat and a huge step backwards technologically. Outside of press bashing for the sake of press bashing, the numbers suggest that touch-screen keyboards are just fine for most users. People are buying iPhones in droves without keyboards, and every competitor is making phones with touch keyboards. Why would Apple go backwards to a plastic keyboard, exactly?

Even those with extra long fingernails have accepted the touch keyboard. And many users, myself included, find the touch keyboard EASIER to type on than any plastic keyboard they've ever owned.

Plastic keyboards have way too many shortcomings that slightly easier typing can't make up for. The fact that I can switch to foreign layouts with the press of a button alone makes the touch keyboard worth the price of admission.