John Gruber gives a particularly sharp analysis of the latest iPhone doubt-ery: Daring Fireball: Straws, Grasping Thereof

Enjoy.

AT&T isn’t the only ship full of loose lips. AppleInsider clues us in to a leaked internal memo (PDF-124K) that details Sprint’s anti-iPhone talking points sales pitch.

While the flat-out misinformation in the memo is frustrating (i.e., it’s a 2.0 megapixel camera on the iPhone, not 1.3, the most popular iPods (nanos) are 2, 4, and 8GB, not 40-60GB, and I can’t even type “The iPhone uses Yahoo and Mac email which is not secure” without rolling my eyes), what is perhaps even more striking to me is how the memo shows that the carriers still just don’t get what the iPhone is, or–more importantly–what their customers actually want.

For example:

• Who sees extra storage via minidisc as a practical option on their cell phone?
• Do they really think that “International” is a primary focus of Apple’s feature set design and marketing?
• And how can you live with statements like “The iP-830 is a slider-style phone which people tend to prefer over the iPhone style” when “people” haven’t yet used an iPhone, and probably don’t yet have a preference?

iPhone is truly a multimedia digital device, and I don’t think it will take long for the buying public to realize that there are a lot of intangible ‘features’ that make it truly hard to compare the iPhone to a standard smartphone. And, given memos like these, I feel certain that the carriers have no understanding how valuable and desirable these intangibles are.

The New York Times has an interesting take on this very notion.