The best thing for Apple would have been for Jobs to let Apple TV top the Macworld agenda, then spring the iPhone on us during the summer.

5. Jobs put iPod sales at risk

Bernstein Research analyst Toni Sacconaghi wrote in a widely quoted report that "we believe the iPhone is likely to be largely cannibalistic to iPod sales, rather than entirely incremental to Apple, limiting upside."

Richard Gardner of Citigroup said that the fact that iPhone was announced in January but ships in June is "problematic because some iPod nano buyers, and even some hard drive-based iPod buyers, are likely to defer iPod purchases" during the interim. Even Keith Bachman, the pro-Apple analyst at Bank of America, fears that Jobs' early iPhone announcement may cause customers to delay iPod purchases.

Will Jobs' early announcement of the iPhone hurt iPod sales in the first half of 2007? Time will tell. It certainly won't help iPod sales. In any event, it was a needless risk.