White iPhone 4, long delayed, finally gets the monkey off the back

The white iPhone 4 will surface “later in 2010″ which doesn’t tell you anything beyond the fact that it’ll be sooner rather than later. Apple didn’t say “later this summer” and it didn’t say “fall 2010″ – so if one reads between this lines, the real message is that Apple doesn’t expect the white iPhone to emerge any time soon. And while this is not the news that those who had been waiting for the white iPhone 4 had been wanting to hear, it’s likely the best in the long run. Those who want an iPhone 4 now, but had been waiting indefinitely for the white iPhone model, finally now know enough not to continue waiting; to do so would be to miss perhaps as much as half the iPhone 4’s lifespan (worst case scenario, by Apple’s estimates is that the white iPhone 4 doesn’t surface until just before Christmas), as Apple traditionally releases a new iPhone generation each June or July.

While fans of the white iPhone 4 certainly didn’t want to hear that it had been delayed again, this time for the long term and indefinitely (particularly after Apple had confirmed just a week earlier that it would be arriving by the end of July), the disappointing news does finally get the monkey off the back of those who had been held hostage by the delayed white iPhone 4 model, and now frees them up to go ahead and buy a black iPhone 4 after all. While plenty of people will end up buying the white iPhone 4 once it comes to market, these will be people who are at that time just getting around to wanting an iPhone; those who want an iPhone now aren’t going to wait until… well, whenever it finally arrives.