Apple's willingness to ship an incomplete product

An amazing thing to me about Apple is their willingness to ship an incomplete product. The one negative thing that stands out for me on the iPhone 3G is that I can't copy-and-paste between applications -- and the software is currently on version 2.0.1!

Can you imagine shipping Version 1 of a product without copy and paste functionality?! Or shipping a portable device with 16GB of storage, but-oh-BTW you can't use it as a portable storage device?! I can hear people in the meetings screaming now: "Nobody is going to buy a 16GB phone for $299 that can't be also be used as a storage device."

If you're a software developer, do you think one of your customers would ever let you get away with something like this? You know the answer: no way.

Now, you may think I write this as a negative, but I'm really writing it with admiration that they have the cahones (cajones?) to do this. It proves that you can get away with things like this and sell a zillion devices. Maybe there's something to learn here, maybe all those "must have" requirements don't all have to be there in release 1.0 -- or even in a 2.0.1 release.

Update: I've written more about this in my article, Apple iPad Design: Incomplete, intentionally.

Say what you want about Apple, but they're a very disciplined company right now.