I think more likely is they delayed based on the iphone 4s and not wanting to get lost in the shuffle. I think the "respect for steve jobs" thing is a PR cover story.
So for the higher initial and similar monthly cost as an iphone 4s, you can carry 3 devices and generally have worse performance and less long term usability as software demands increase. I guess whatever floats your boat.
Of course, if you're going to have a mobile phone anyway, the iphone 4s has a better processor, more memory, and you don't have to play games to get it connected to the internet when you're not near a wifi router.
lte being irrelevant for the current phones
I stream from pandora and turntable on my iphone a fair bit, and I've never come close to 2gb. But I do most of my listening in wifi range.
I do agree it's pretty weak they don't let you use any drive in the imac, but maybe there are a lot of genius bar issues based on people replacing their hard drives on their own