It refers to polish and usability, not filling feature checkboxes. Yes, the original iPhone was "fully baked". It didn't have every feature that everybody wanted (and I'll agree that this was a big missing feature), but what it did, it did extremely well.
No it didn't. It was a mediocre-to-crappy phone, mediocre to-crappy browser, and mediocre-to-crappy ipod, a mediocre-to-crappy GPS navigator, and mediocre-to-crappy Youtube player, a plain old crappy camera. Putting a layer of gloss on the UI doesn't change that.
Now of course, we live in the world of apps and the iPhone has become what it was always destined to be: a mediocre-to-crappy, yet socially acceptable, gameboy. Ha-ha, only serious.
No really, having all those things in one touchscreen device was pretty cool, and certainly pointed the way to the future. The predictable myth-making around Apple is as boring as ever though.
It's just I can remember when the myth-making was around the iPod and "it only does one thing, and it does it really well", and suddenly the iPhone comes along and does everything and anything, usually (though not always) quite a bit worse than dedicated devices. And suddenly perfection gets redefined (yet again) to whatever Apple is currently doing.
It's not "myth-making." I was there, and the only reason I didn't keep my original iPhone was because AT&T sucked way too hard at the time. It was plenty "baked". You may disagree with Apple's design or implementation decisions, but it was definitely not unfinished.
