We’ve come to a strange point in time when a company restricts how many of their product the customer can buy and will not let them pay cash for the product.

This was the sentiment when Apple made it so customers could not buy more than 2 iPhones and could not pay cash for them. At first I thiought the not accepting cash portion was illegal, but apparently the “This note is legal tender for all debt, public and private” message written on money truly only applies to debt, not consumer purchases.

I’ve been asked about Apple’s iPhone many times over the past few months and have decided to share portions of these conversations with you. The most popular question is people asking me “Are you going to buy the iPhone?”, to which I reply “no”. As much as I like Apple, plan on switching to an Apple MacBook next Spring, and have faith in their talented engineers, I would not buy a first generation phone from anyone. There are companies that have been making phones for a long time, Nokia & Motorola come to mind, that still don’t have it perfect. And lets not get started on the issues with Windows Mobile 5. Why would I take a $600, two year chance with someone’s first attempt?

When people ask for more detail on why I won’t get one I point to a few reasons. First, the iPhone doesn’t work on AT&T 3G network, meaning internet speeds will be slow. I know AT&T upgraded the network prior to the iPhone’s release, but I don’t expect to see any gain from that once a million iPhones start abusing the network. In addition, the storage space is too small. I have a 60GB iPod which is hard to replace with a 8GB device. Next, I have a phone (with 3G connectivity, wi-fi, and Outlook synchronization) and an iPod, so the timing of a convergence device isn’t good for me. When I look to replace my iPod I’ll take a good look at the iPhone. (I say iPod because I go through phones pretty quickly and will probably replace a few phones before I replace my iPod). I also expect a new iPhone to be announced in January at MacWorld. Some say it will be out before Black Friday (the day after Thanksgiving, which is the busiest shopping day of the year), which seems a little soon to me, but I am expecting a full screen video iPod out by then. And finally, did I mention I wouldn’t buy a first phone from anyone.

The iPhone will benefit almost all mobile phone users in some way. In addition to AT&T’s network upgrade, which instantly puts pressure on competitors to upgrade their networks, AT&T had to make modifications to allow the visual voicemail feature, meaning it will be available on more phones. The iPhone also sets a soft cap of $600 for phones because competitors need a reason to charge more that the iPhone costs for a phone that isn’t as useful or cool. Finally, it will make competitors step up the features of their phones in order to compete. Competition benefits the consumer and Apple just woke up the competition with a resounding slap in the face.

People seem to love predictions so I’m going to make a few business predictions I can see happening in the next year or so. First is the one that gave me the idea of writing this post; Google buying Adobe. Imagine 2 of our favorite Silicon Valley brands combining and giving us on- and off-line version of Dreamweaver & Photoshop powered Adobe AIR and supported by Google’s ever exanding super computer network. Granted this is possible without the 2 companies combining, but where’s the fun in that. A third, significantly less likely player in this combiniation would be Apple. Adobe & Google both seem to have extraodinary tight relationships with Apple. Google CEO Eric Schmidt is on Apple’s Board of Directors and Adobe is consistently the first to take advantage of the full power of Apple hardware. A hardware/software combination involving all 3 companies would instantly be THE force in the tech industry.

Next we move to banking. Once Bank of America completes its deal purchasing LaSalle Bank from ABN Amro, making it a major player in the Chicagoland area, it will no longer be able to make significant deposit purchases in America because it will be bumping up against the 10% limit. Bank of America will turn its vision overseas, starting with the previously rumored to soon be a Bank of America target, and new ABN Amro parent company, Barclays. Buying Barclays after Barclays purchases ABN Amro, the deal which made LaSalle available for purchase, will help Bank of America’s presence in Europe and South America. In addition Bank of America will push organic growth within the States in an attempt to truly become the first and only nationwide, coast to coast, in every major and mid sized city, bank, or in other words the Bank of America.

AT&T & Vodafone - How does AT&T continue to grow following combining the companies once know as PacWest, Ameritech, SBC, BellSouth, Cingular, AT&T Wireless, AT&T, and soon to be Dobson/Cellular One, among others? It buys the largest GSM carrier in the World, Vodafone. Vodafone has a market capitalization of about $160 billion, meaning it could be purchased for under $200 Billion. The great part of the deal is it would give AT&T control over the 45% of Verizon Wireless currently owned by Vodafone. The Feds would never let AT&T keep that portion, but in a pre-arranged deal with a private equity firm AT&T could sell the Verizon Wireless stake, currently valued at around $65 Billion, for $80 Billion or so, cutting the actual Vodafone purchase price to somewhere in the neighborhood of $120 Billion. Who would be interested in 45% of VZW? How about KKR and/or Blackstone who seem to be buing everything. Or the Goldman Sachs/Texas Pacific consortium which recently puchased fellow CDMA carrier Alltel for $27 Billion? This would give GS/TP more leverage in it attempt to get VZW to buy the CDMA assets, probably raising the price to over $115 Billion.