Yes.  I know what Visual Voicemail is and how it works.  Do you?  It's a
neat feature, but it's smoke-and-mirrors.  At it's core it's simply call
forwarding with a "secret" push-e-mail account.  Calls you don't answer on
your iPhone are forwarded to a special server at AT&T who records it, and
pushes the recording as an e-mail attachment to you via a "secret" push-
mail account on your iPhone, hidden behind the VV interface.  The
attachment is stored on the iPhone and plays with a tap.

Non-iPhone owners have to use 3rd-party services to get the same thing.  My
phone is set to forward all unanswered calls to a phone number supplied by
Callwave.  Callwave records my message, then e-mails it to my phone's push
account as an attachment.  I get the e-mail with a subject like:
"UNIV OF SF left a 31 second message"

(Caller ID name info is added by Callwave- if name isn't available, number
is supplied.)  I click on the attachment and the audio is played from the
phone's storage memory.  Callwave even trans ribes the message in the e-
mail body's text, so you dob't even have to play it.  (Admittedly it's
often wildly innaccurate, but it's helpful for owners of "dumbphones" who
can receive the transcript of the VM message via text message, and then can
decide whether or not to call in to retrieve it.)

Wow.  Even if you don't have a picture of them is stored on your phone?  ;-)

Admittedly my phone doesn't display the caller's picture with VV, only in
my contacts.  You've got me there!

Again, any Verizon customer, (or AT&T customer, or any other carrier) with
a phone that has a media player and e-mail can use VV from a variety of
vendors.  WinMo phones, Blackberries, Symbian OS, Palms, etc.- all it takes
is e-mail and a media player.

True, but since my VV messages consume approximately 1kb per second, my
paltry 2GB storage card can still manage to hold a little over 500 HOURS of
recorded VM.

Like many other Apple fanboys, you simply don't realize what technologies
are out there until Apple implements a Version of them, and then you
believe the PRs that call them "new."  To be fair- it did take Apple to put
VV on the map.  Poor Callwave has been pitching it for over a year via full
backcover ads in the cellular trade papers (which is how I heard of it)
offering it to any carrier or MVNO that was interested and, as you know,
none of them bit.  Apple saw an opportunity to use it for differentiation,
and it's now a "talked-about" feature.  (At least to Pogue, anyway.  If
Apple invented an iPod that could actually squat and take a crap on your
desk, Pogue would write that it was an important feature too!)

If your cellphone already has a data plan, it's free- Callwave's VV has no
cost, and you can grab a free push e-mail account, if needed, from
mail2web.com.

Yes- iPhone users are already paying $20 for data, and VV is probably the
biggest reason AT&T and Apple forced data on iPhone owners- it's a feature
that requires a continual data connection to work properly.

I don't know if the iPhone's interface is "simpler," since using an
existing e-mail account allows you get all of your messages- e-mail and
voice from one place- a unified messaging system rather than treating them
separately.