The big iPhone news circulating on the Web this weekend is a leaked AT&T manual. The "iPhone Sales Training Workbook" is intended to teach cellphone-store employees how to tout the phone's features and overcome customer objections. The manual's very existence raises an interesting question: Why would they have to "sell" the phone? Reading the paeans from Apple's supporters, I would have thought it was self-evident that the iPhone would fly off stores shelves, obsoleting all communications devices which sullied the ether before its universally acclaimed arrival.Sarcasm aside, I welcome the manual. Indeed, its posting verifies that the iPhone cannnot operate via a telepathic connection to its owner's brain. The device has features and functions which must be physically accessed.

The manual was purportedly leaked to MacRumors by a forum denizen who goes by the handle of Cindynjgirl79. You can read that post here . For those who want a quicker take, along with some additional iPhone criticism--have I mentioned that I hate the lack of a hard keypad-- I've dissected the manual's high points.

Here's my breakdown:

Good Features:

Support for IMAP and POP3 email.

Support for Yahoo Push email.

Automatic syncing of contacts from Mac or PC.

Sync your photos from a Mac or PC as you would with an iPod.

Use of on-screen displays to create three-way conference calls, and to manage multiple calls.

Automatic recognition of phone numbers.

According to the leaked sales manual, this means "users can call someone back simply by pressing the telephone number that appears in the body of the email message."

iTunes integration (sync up the phone just like you would an iPod).

Mac-like widgets to display the weather and stock prices.

Safari to browse the Web.

But it's through AT&T's EDGE network. The iPhone will also work via Wi-Fi, but I suspect most phone users will be surfing through EDGE most of the time. And the EDGE network, while great (I use it on my Blackberry) simply isn't fast enough to support surfing speeds touted in Apple's iPhone TV commercials.

Bad Stuff:

iPhone users will not be able to conduct IM conversations with instant messaging users.

Interestingly (sadly?), Apple is kinda-sorta trying to plug this serious hole. (Lack of support for IM is also a serious shortcoming of AT&T's Blackberry service. There are third-party IM solutions for Blackberry, but Cingular/AT&T doesn't offer any out-of-box IM with the phone, and it's prohibitively difficult to go an unsupported route if one has a corporate phone.) The iPhone sales manual promises: "SMS text messages on the iPhone will 'look' like instant messaging."

iPhone doesn't support MMS messaging for photos or videos.

This inability to support the Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) standard is a serious shortcoming. Apple is getting hammered for this on the MacRumors forums. MMS lets you embed images, audio, and video clips within text messages. You definitely want MMS support in a phone which, for all my criticism, is nevertheless the highest-profile, converged phone-and-music/photo device ever to hit the market.

Only content compatible with iTunes can be used on iPhone.

Can you say, proprietary lock-in?

Mixed Bag:

In the section on SMS text messaging, the sales manual promises that the iPhone has a "full QWERTY keyboard."

However, as I've previous complained, it's not a hard keyboard like on the Blackberry. It's a "soft," or virtual, keyboard, which appears on the glass screen. (How does a user hit the correct key, or get the thing to correctly decide whether one has hit "a" or "s"?) Still, the manual promises that's not a problem. It says:

"With built-in error correction and prevention, the keyboard makes sending messages easier and faster than ever. And you'll never give up valuable screen real estate because the keyboard is only displayed when you need it."

This is Apple at its best--paging iPod Shuffle--making a short-fall out to be a feature. Hey, my Blackberry's keyboard doesn't take up valuable screen real-estate either! (Cause it's NOT ON the gosh-darned screen.)

Perhaps Apple and AT&T realize there might be some customers who pine for a keyboard. On page 27 of the workbook, in a section entitled "Overcoming Objections," it lists as a possible question a sales person might receive.

Potential Buyer: "I'm used to a keyboard with real buttons so I know when I've actually typed a character." (Hey, me too.)

Recommended Response: "With an actual keyboard, it's easy to make a mistake and press the wrong key. iPhone's virtual keyboard helps prevent this by through [it really does say both "by" and "through"; I assume they mean just "thorough," though perhaps it's supposed to be "thought"] software that can predict what you are trying to type and correct errors. For example, if you type "thamks," iPhone will propose "thanks" instead." (That's what I through!)

No GPS.

Not really bad, unless you're in Europe. (I.e, this is a carrier problem, not something that's Apple's fault. Most American wireless companies don't support GPS on their handsets.)

In closing, I want to point out that the biggest rumor making the rounds in advance of the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference, which kicks off June 11 in San Francisco, isn't anything to do with the manual, but speculation that Steve Jobs will open up the iPhone to Mac developers.